SHANGHAI, China—There is no factory at 89 Yanping Road. In fact, there is no building with that address at all.

But there should be, according to the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a non-profit organization that monitors the labor conditions of factories that produce goods for more than 170 colleges and universities, including Harvard.

The FLA website gives the 89 Yanping Road address as the location of Shanghai Goldluck Necktie Co., Ltd., a factory that supplies ties to Global Neckwear Marketing of Dorchester, Mass., which in turns sells them to Harvard.

But the website is wrong.

Down the road, on the fourth floor of a building at 69 Yanping, is the headquarters of Shanghai Goldluck Necktie. But the company factories, where workers fashion ties that will travel thousands of miles before they are shelved at the Harvard Square Coop, are not in the city of Shanghai.

One is in Jiangsu province to the north and the other is in Zhejiang province to the south. It takes several hours by car to reach either factory from the dusty street in Shanghai where the FLA believed the ties are made.

Shanghai Goldluck Necktie is one of three Shanghai factories of companies licensed to manufacture products for Harvard that The Crimson attempted to visit by traveling to the addresses listed on a public database at the FLA website. Companies that do not submit factory information to that database are not allowed to affiliate with the FLA—and therefore cannot remain as Harvard licensees.

“Factory disclosure is a major component of a licensee’s affiliation with the FLA,” says Andrew L. Nelson, FLA University Program Associate. “The licensee is required to submit to us the address of all of the facilities where their collegiately licensed goods are produced.”

But a seven-story building covered with white tiles at 669 Chuan Sha Road suggests that FLA regulations aren’t always followed. In the Pudong industrial district of Shanghai, off a pot-holed street glistening in the 90 degree heat, rises Shanghai C&F Arts & Crafts, Inc—the sole factory of Harvard licensee C&F Enterprises of Newport News, VA, according to the FLA.

Two security guards are posted at the gate into the fenced-in facility. A room on the second floor contains a bedspread and pillows neatly laid out for a photo shoot, but conspicuously lacking are the hum of factory machines and the presence of workers.

“There’s no factory here,” explains Chung Lan-Seng, the building manager. “This is an office. We process orders here.”

Although at first Chung, a middle-aged woman originally from Taiwan, refuses to say where the factories are located, she eventually reveals that there are several company factories located in both Shandong and Zhejiang provinces.

But Chung refuses to provide more specific information about the factory names or locations and also declines to comment on working conditions in the factories.

“It’s a trade secret,” she says.

Michelle Taylor, a spokesperson for C&F Enterprises, confirms that the company has produced handcrafted quilted throws, needlepoint pillows and needlepoint stockings for Harvard, but said the company would have no comment on its factories.