Kingpins Amsterdam will be held October 23 to 24, 2019. More than 50 exhibitors are expected to participate. Most of them are from Asian countries like Taiwan, Thailand, China, India, Bangladesh, Japan and Singapore.

Kingpins will mandate corporate social responsibility standards for its exhibitors. The denim industry event series will ensure all its exhibitors comply with a set of mandatory environmental and social standards by 2020. These denim mills will also be expected to meet stringent chemical management standards aligned to ZDHC (zero discharge of hazardous chemicals) criteria. The show’s goal is to become even more engaged in promoting environmental responsibility within the industry. Advise and support will be offered to exhibitors in order to help them transform their approach. Kingpins does not wish to introduce new certifications, but the organisers are keen to promote the strictest existing ones. Once they have drawn up a set of social responsibility specifications for exhibitors, they plan to share them with other textile shows, in order to promote collective change across the supply chain. For the time being, the new exhibitor admission criteria are limited to the show’s Amsterdam edition, but the goal is to eventually apply them to the New York, Hong Kong and China shows too.