From Jiangsu mill town to Cascale CEO

When Ying McGuire talks about fashion supply chains, she is not speaking in the abstract. She grew up in a textile town in China’s Jiangsu province, where her family ran a mill through the turbulent shift from a planned to a market economy.

As a child, she watched the industry pull her family, neighbours and “entire community” out of poverty – and, at the same time, saw the water waste, chemicals and heat that came with that growth.