The Chain by The Frank Co. – 2
Cost to Close overview via The Chain Dashboard
A newly introduced tool links factory salary information with product-level procurement decisions, enabling fashion companies to see the financial implications of bridging living wage shortfalls
Cost to Close™ provides brands with a clearer method for understanding how their purchasing choices affect workers. It bridges the wage data already gathered across supply chains with commercial decisions”— Frankie Hewitson, Founder of The Frank Co.
BRIGHTON, EAST SUSSEX, UNITED KINGDOM, August 24, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — The Frank Co., a sustainability advisory and technology firm serving fashion labels, has introduced Cost to Close, a new offering that converts factory wage data into the expense required to close living wage gaps at the level of individual garments and orders.
Developed within The Frank Co.'s supply chain visibility system, The Chain, Cost to Close links factory payroll figures with product and order details to reveal to brands what bridging a living wage shortfall would cost per piece and per purchase. The goal is to incorporate worker impact into the same commercial discussions surrounding product cost, pricing, and procurement.
[Turning wage data into a commercial decision]
Fashion companies are increasingly gathering data on wages and living wage adherence across their supply networks. Yet this wage information generally stays separate from the buying process, where choices regarding product expenses, factory pricing, and orders are determined.
The Frank Co. created Cost to Close to bridge that divide.
The tool translates a factory's monthly wage shortfall into a wage gap per minute, applies the labor minutes needed to produce a garment, and computes the resulting living wage increase per piece. Buyers can then multiply that figure by the order volume to see the full adjustment required.
This delivers a concrete financial number to buyers, rather than leaving worker impact as an isolated sustainability metric.
The need for such a figure became evident to The Frank Co. through its collaborations with brands. In a detailed review of a supplier in Bangladesh, payroll data revealed that approximately one in three workers earned below the legal minimum wage over a six-month period, despite earlier social compliance audits. This finding underscored the value of knowing the actual size of wage gaps and converting them into numbers that can steer commercial choices.
[Making the cost of closing the gap visible]
A recent Cost to Close case study demonstrates this need, focusing on an unnamed international fashion brand with factories across several countries.
The evaluation examined payroll-level wage data from 25 factories and discovered that 21 experienced negative real wage growth in 2025. This indicates that workers' purchasing power decreased even when nominal wages went up.
The analysis further showed why headline wage increases can offer a misleading picture.
In two factories based in Europe, workers received nominal wage hikes exceeding 40%. At one facility, real wages rose by 16.8%. At another, real wages dropped by 18.4%. Both operated under the same inflationary conditions, illustrating how nominal wage increases alone can obscure falling purchasing power.
Cost to Close advances this type of wage analysis by linking it directly to the product a buyer orders.
In one scenario, the calculation indicated that closing the living wage gap for an oversized cotton tee would require a £0.50 uplift per garment. For an order valued at £2,500 FOB, the total expense to close the gap was £50, amounting to a 2% rise in the overall FOB value.
A separate pilot brand, monitoring payroll across three factories that produced the bulk of its orders, used the tool over three years. All three factories eventually exceeded the local living wage benchmark, starting from wages that had previously hovered near the statutory minimum. Real wage growth at the most closely tracked factory reached over 25% year on year, with the largest gains going to the lowest-paid workers.
As one factory remarked after seeing its own wage position for the first time: "Seeing the gap, not just a pass or fail, was in itself valuable to us."
[Giving worker impact a place in the buying room]
The Frank Co. designed Cost to Close to make wage information actionable at the moment purchasing decisions take place.
The solution offers a per-product and per-order view of the living wage gap, along with worker impact data, living wage benchmarking, and confidence scoring. The Chain ties wage data to the relevant production date and factory, linking the calculation to the conditions of a specific order.
For suppliers, this creates a pathway for their wage data to enter the buying conversation. Wage information collected through The Chain can flow into the procurement process without requiring additional data submissions or audits from the factory.
In practice, this can mean the distinction between an order that needs adjustment and one that does not. In one order for 400 units with a 14-minute standard minute value, Cost to Close revealed a £0.05 uplift per garment before the brand confirmed the order. On a second order from a factory already meeting the benchmark, the tool returned £0.00, confirming that pay was already adequate rather than leaving the question unresolved.
"The objective is not another sustainability score. It is a practical mechanism that helps brands understand the cost of closing wage gaps and gives worker impact greater visibility when commercial decisions are being made." – Harrison Atuokwu, Sustainability Compliance Coordinator at The Frank Co.
[Available to fashion brands]
Cost to Close is accessible through The Frank Co. as part of The Chain, its supply chain transparency platform. The Chain consolidates supplier management, factory-level wage information, environmental data, and other supply chain transparency tools, with Cost to Close adding a procurement decision layer focused on living wage impact.
Fashion brands can schedule an introductory call and provide a sample order for The Frank Co. to demonstrate how Cost to Close operates and discuss how the solution could support their buying and sustainability processes.
To learn more about Cost to Close, contact info@thefrankco.com or visit thefrankco.com.
[About the Frank Co.]
The Frank Co. is a sustainability advisory and technology firm for fashion brands. It blends deep sector knowledge with proprietary software to make supply chain transparency genuinely useful, not merely a compliance task. Through The Chain, The Frank Co. helps brands unify supplier, wage, environmental, and product-level supply chain data to support more informed decisions.
Miranda Rose Preston
The Frank Impact Company
+44 7368 399220
email us here
