In the middle of 2004, when the MFA Forum was first formed, the initial Forum participants were concerned not just with the impact of the end of the MFA on jobs and labour standards in the textile and apparel sector, but also more broadly with whether they could contribute to developing a useful model for advancing responsible competitiveness in other industries.
Together they argued that there was a potential for demonstrating how to enable responsible competitiveness in the apparel and textiles, and also other sectors. They began a programme of research and dialogue to understand the challenges and opportunities and to establish a basis for working together, both internationally and on the ground with other actors in vulnerable countries. At that time, the MFA Forum commissioned a suite of research publications to understand and predict what the new post-MFA trading environment would bring.