AI for fashion & footwear sourcing

One email.Global supply.

Frank is your AI supply-chain research assistant — not a platform. Ask him a sourcing question by email. He searches what's known, goes back to suppliers when something's missing, and returns a sourced answer. Suppliers ask him too — to decode a brief or find their own gaps.

contact@askfrank.com

A platform gives you somewhere to look.
An AI research assistant comes back with the answer.

And if the answer isn't there, Frank goes and gets it.

Any size of team One buyer or a whole sourcing organisation — one category or all of them

The grunt work, his Chasing, checking, translating, consolidating, remembering

Every language Suppliers answer in theirs, you read yours

A team in one address — research, translation, chasing, consolidation. Capabilities you'd otherwise hire for.

Ten questions, one address

Don't evaluate Frank.
Ask him something.

Brand Frank

For sourcing and procurement, product development and materials, sustainability and compliance, merchandising and planning. Most of these need dozens of suppliers checked at once — Frank writes to all of them in parallel.

Material innovationwho runs bio-based or chrome-free tanning at production volume — not who is piloting it

Capacity, confirmedTier 1 assembly with small-batch runs open before October — checked with each factory, not inferred

Your whole base at oncewhich approved suppliers hold current evidence, which lapsed, which never had it

Tariffs & shiftsVietnam versus Indonesia landed-cost exposure, every claim sourced and dated

Dual-sourcing & riskif 30% moves out of one country, who absorbs it — capacity, tooling, lead time

Supplier Frank

For Tier 1 factories and the Tier 2 tanneries and mills behind them. Brands are busy — the difference between being shortlisted and being skipped can be one missing certificate, capability detail, test result, MOQ or lead time. Frank shows you what the brand needs, what you already meet, and what you still need to provide. No portal, your own language.

Understand the briefdecode brand requirements, map them to your capability and explain what a compliant response needs to contain

Demand matchinglive brand demand, matched to what you make

Get brand-readysee exactly what you already satisfy, what is missing, and what to fix or provide to stay in consideration

Capacity routingyour open runs matched to brands needing short lead times

Your own sourcingTier 1s ask Frank too — materials, components, the T2 tanneries and mills behind your production

Industry intelligencethe capabilities brands are asking for most this month

Small gaps lose opportunities.

You may already be capable of serving the brand. Frank helps you close the small gaps in evidence and information before they become the reason you are left out.

Never written to Frank before? Send something like this.

We're a tannery in Ambur. Chrome-free and vegetable, 40,000 sq ft, LWG Silver. Attaching our capability sheet and certificates.

No form, no fields, no account — write it in your own language and attach whatever you already have. Frank structures it, checks the certificates at source, tells you what's missing, and your record is answer-ready. One email, once.

Any of these, in your own words — contact@askfrank.com

From data to super intelligence

Any tier. Any question.
Decision-ready intelligence on demand.

Frank can work at any tier of the supply chain — Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4 and beyond. He gathers missing data directly from suppliers, structures it for the systems and requirements brands already have, and turns live evidence into the answer, dossier or dashboard you need.

Any tierfrom finished-goods factories through materials, processing, farms and origin — follow the question as far upstream as it needs to go

PLM-ready datacollect, structure and fill supplier and material data so it can move into PLM, BOM and product workflows

EU Digital Product Passportgather and organise the supplier, material and evidence inputs needed for DPP workflows under ESPR

Dossiers on demandask for a supplier, material, category, country or risk dossier — Frank assembles the current evidence and shows the gaps

Dashboards on demandturn a live question into a decision view — coverage, readiness, certification, capacity, risk or whatever the team needs to see

Super intelligencenot a static database. Frank connects the evidence, asks what is missing and produces decision-ready intelligence around the question in front of you

One gap closing · illustrative example

When Frank doesn't know,
he finds out.

Frank knows a lot, but he isn't omniscient. When an answer has a hole in it, he says so — then closes it with the supplier, in the same medium everything else happens: email.

brand → frankTue 09:12

Chrome-free Tier 2 tanneries in Tamil Nadu, current LWG rating, 50,000 sq ft monthly, sampling in four weeks.

frank → brandTue 09:14

Six match on current evidence — attached, each claim tiered and dated. Nine more fit on capability but hold no current LWG status on file. I've written to all nine this morning and will update you as they reply.

frank → 9 suppliers, at onceTue 09:14

Your capability matches a current brand request, but we don't have a current LWG certificate on file. Reply with the latest certificate and Frank can include your verified status.

1 of 9 → frankWed 07:30

Attached. Gold — renewed in March. LWG_Certificate_2026.pdf

frank → brandWed 07:41

Seven of the nine replied overnight. Checked against the issuer: thirteen tanneries now, each addition dated and on file. Two didn't respond — listed as unconfirmed, not dropped.

The gap closes once — and stays closed. The certificate now sits in the corridor, tiered and dated, part of the answer for every brand that asks after. That is how Frank's map fills in: one real question at a time.

New use case? Same loop.

A question nobody has asked him before doesn't get a shrug. It gets a corridor.

RecruitFrank writes to the suppliers who can answer — one email each, in parallel

Fillthe knowledge assembles as replies land, tiered and dated from the first answer

Rememberretained as reusable knowledge — the next brand to ask gets it in minutes, not weeks

A new material, a new regulation, a new region. Frank doesn't need the corridor to exist before you ask — asking is how it gets built.

Open and closed

One knowledge layer.
Two very different rooms.

Open · industry

Ask about the industry

Not a marketplace — nothing is listed, nothing is bid on. Frank connects the industry's data, cluster by cluster, so a whole corridor becomes answerable rather than one factory at a time. Every relevant supplier can appear, paying or not.

free · ask by email

Suppliers can hire Frank too — to keep their record answer-ready, organise evidence and respond to briefs. It never changes whether or where they appear.

Closed · yours

Ask about your supply chain

Same Frank, same loop — pointed at your approved suppliers, your documents, your standards, with your authority. Live in minutes: it's email, there's nothing to implement.

Built with Microsoft on Azure Your closed system is completely private. Your data never enters the open network and is never used to train an LLM.

Network diagnosticyour whole base against current evidence, expiries chased before they lapse

Brief executiontech packs qualified, routed to your suppliers, replies consolidated into one report

PLM & DPP datagather and structure missing supplier and material data across any tier, ready for downstream product and compliance workflows

Institutional memoryevery brief, quote and decision kept — through staff turnover

Open → privatepull a candidate across, screened against your onboarding criteria

Supplier prospectingFrank can approach, question and qualify new suppliers without revealing your brand. The supplier deals with Frank; your identity and contact details stay private until you choose to connect.

Quiet questionsevaluate a move without signalling it to the market

paid private deployment

In production today. Closed supplier networks are live with a multi-billion-dollar US footwear brand and a major European fashion group, running inside their own environments across footwear components, denim and textiles.

“Frank gives us a way to work across our supplier network without introducing another platform. We can ask a question, identify what we know, see what’s missing, and go directly back to suppliers to close the gaps.”

— Supply Chain Leader, multi-billion-dollar U.S. footwear brand

Example · requested by FDRA

FDRA asked Frank to:
map global leather supply.

FDRA asked for a way to make global leather supply answerable for U.S. footwear brands. Frank is building the corridor cluster by cluster — suppliers, capabilities, standards and evidence. Each brand question shows what is already known, exposes what is missing and pulls the right suppliers into the answer.

“Frank gives the industry a single research assistant across a fragmented supply base. Leather is changing fast, with tariffs reshaping sourcing and new data requirements such as EUPP adding more pressure. Frank already has 1,000+ leather suppliers behind it. Brands can ask real questions about suppliers, materials, capabilities, standards, traceability and compliance data. Frank identifies the gaps automatically, goes back to any tier of the supply chain for what’s missing, and continuously builds a better picture of global supply. That’s good for brands, good for suppliers, and good for the industry.”

— Andy Polk, Senior Vice President, FDRA

The request in practice

U.S. footwear brands can ask Frank directly about leather supply. Frank answers from the cluster, identifies the gaps, goes back to suppliers where evidence is missing and expands the network around real demand.

Structured supplier records — growing with every question

A question in — many suppliers asked — one answer back

MappedLeather clusters across 13 countries, Tier 1 & Tier 2

LearningEvery question asked pulls new suppliers in — not a fixed directory

1Email address to reach all of it

brand → frank: "Where does EUDR leave leather?"answered Aug 2026

Out of scope — almost, and not entirely. The Delegated Act removing hides, skins and leather was adopted in July. Cattle and beef stay in; so do rubber and wood, which keeps many footwear exporters in scope through soles and components.

Positions change — ask Frank for the current one, with its source and effective date. The chain evidence outlives the regulation either way: the same tannery-to-origin evidence can support the next traceability requirement.

Frank's résumé

Free by email.
Hired for closed networks.

You don't procure Frank — you write to him, and that costs nothing. When you want him inside your own walls, working only your suppliers and your rules, you hire him.

Frank

The fashion & footwear AI research assistant — hired because your team ran out of hours, not ideas.

Available immediately · no desk, no login, no onboarding project

What he does

Finds and qualifies suppliers against your brief — evidence, not marketing claims.
Reads tech packs as written; flags the ambiguity before it costs a season.
Tracks certifications, capacity and tariffs — sourced, dated, expiry-watched.
Gathers structured data across any tier for PLM and Digital Product Passport workflows.
Creates supplier dossiers and decision dashboards on demand.
Consolidates every reply into one report, whatever language it arrived in.
Builds institutional memory from every approved interaction.

Things he will not do

Let payment touch the results. Money never buys inclusion, ranking, recommendation — or an introduction.
Carry anything across your walls. Private brand information never enters the open network and is never used to train an LLM.
Call self-declared data verified. Every claim is tiered, dated, and the tier is shown.
Guess. Where he's uncertain he says so, and goes and closes the gap.

Availability

Free by email. Available on paid private deployment for closed supplier networks — set up in minutes, and your data leaves with you.

Write to Frank.