For decades, apparel companies have profited from moving their manufacturing to low$-$cost countries and several academic studies have focused on understanding whether low$-$cost locations could support optimal supply chain configurations. However, the exploitation of resources in foreign sourcing countries often resulted in many environmental and social issues and apparel companies became progressively more concerned about the negative exposure that they could face with a limited supply chain transparency. Therefore, this paper aims at investigating global sourcing strategies of fast fashion retailers in order to understand whether the decision criteria influencing sourcing locations have changed over time to also embrace sustainability considerations. Drawing on a literature review on sustainability in fashion supply chains, offshore outsourcing, and fast fashion global sourcing, a new theoretical framework concerning fast fashion retailers$$ sourcing locations is proposed together with a content analysis of their reports. The findings show that fast fashion retailers identify sustainability as a key element to consider in selecting sourcing locations since sustainability issues at suppliers$$ factories may represent relevant hidden costs. Moreover, actions aimed at checking and improving sustainable practices in global sourcing policies are proven to support the development of a strategic sourcing reputation for their fast fashion brands.

Globalization and a growing reliance on network relationships have led to renewed interest in global sourcing for higher competitiveness and productivity $[13].$ Within international business academic literature, several studies have focused on manufacturing location decisions $[46]$ to examine whether low$-$cost locations can support optimal supply chain configurations $[7].$ For decades, European and US apparel companies have profited from moving their manufacturing to low$-$cost countries in the Far East looking for minimum labor costs $[8].$ However, exploitation of resources across globally dispersed supply chains often resulted in many environmental and social issues $[9].$ The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in $2013$ in Bangladesh $[1013],$ which caused thousands of deaths, placed the fashion industry under increasing public scrutiny and fashion companies felt the urgency of bridging the gap between economic sustainability and social and environmental performance $[14].$ Consequently, they are now trying to make their manufacturing sourcing more sustainable by focusing on the triple bottom line $($TBL$)$ approach, which involves the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of sustainability $[1519].$ Fast fashion $[2025]$ represents a unique context in which to investigate global sourcing strategies since large fast fashion retailers such as Gap Inc. $($San Francisco, CA$,$ USA$),$ H&M $($Stockholm$,$ Sweden$),$ Fast Retailing $($Yamaguchi$,$ Japan$),$ and Inditex $($Arteixo$,$ Spain$)$ depend on complex global supply chains to facilitate garment assembly and production by using offshore suppliers on a contractual basis $[26].$ Fast fashion pertains to the apparel industry and can be defined as $$the retail strategy of adapting merchandise assortments to current and emerging trends as quickly and effectively as possible$[25]($p$.6).$ Past studies $[2729]$ highlighted that in order to be both convenient and quick, fast fashion retailers leverage global and local sourcing locations which are often selected based on two main decision criteria: cost and time $[30].$ In fact, for a lengthy period, apparel location decisions have been largely based on quantitative cost measures $[7,15].$ However, the need to contemplate additional factors beyond cost has arisen and companies are often re$-$evaluating their supply chain design $[28,3133].$ In $2013,$ Fine argued that in the future companies would no longer place so much emphasis on searching for the lowest price locations since they would be increasingly concerned about their reputations and the exposure that they could face in more transparent global supply chains $[34].$ Consequently, companies would embrace a more ethical perspective on manufacturing location decisions as well as sourcing decisions $[7,34].$ This paper aims at exploring global sourcing strategies of leading fast fashion retailers in order to understand whether the decision criteria influencing sourcing locations have changed over time to embrace a more ethical approach as suggested by Fine $[34].$ The research question investigated in this paper is therefore the following: Do $$cost$$ and $$time$$ still represent the key decision criteria influencing sourcing locations of fast fashion retailers? Alternatively, has the criterion of social and environmental sustainability become relevant?From above paragraph, Please provide me an introduction which includes below points,

$1$ Introduce your problem $,$describe the objective of your problem

$2$ Mention why is the problem important, other important fact$($s$)$ about your problem