Digital Product Passport for textiles
Is your business DPP ready?
Digital Product Passports are coming in Europe and beyond, but what do they mean for textile businesses? This guide explores it all.
Now more than ever, consumers are looking for transparency in supply chains so that they can make informed purchasing decisions. Whether they’re B2B buyers or B2C customers, consumers want to know where products originate, how they’re made, and much more.
A Digital Product Passport (DPP) is a new legislative approach introduced by the European Union that will respond to this question of transparency. When the DPP comes into effect, it will contain that detailed information. In the textiles sector—an industry with a reputation for its outsized environmental impact—readiness for the forthcoming DPPs is becoming crucial.
This guide explores the role a digital product passport for textiles has on sustainability, compliance, and more.
Key benefits of Digital Product Passports for textiles
By implementing a Digital Product Passport for your textile products, not only will you be meeting the upcoming legislations, but you will also enjoy numerous benefits, including:
- Transparency across the value chain: A DPP offers unparalleled insights into a product’s history, allowing customers to track their purchase’s path through sourcing, shipping, and beyond.
- Support for a circular economy: DPPs inform consumers how to mend products and, eventually, how to dispose of them. This guidance enables brands to recover usable materials and recycle the rest.
- Consumer empowerment: A DPP provides buyers with details to make informed decisions at every touchpoint both online, in-store, and via catalogs.
- Enhanced compliance: When the Digital Product Passport is fully implemented as a regulatory tool, it will become mandatory for all companies operating within the EU. The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles outlines the requirement that, by 2030, every textile product sold in the EU will need an EU Digital Product Passport. Ensuring compliance now eliminates delays in the future.
- Global standardization: Even if DPPs aren’t required everywhere, they allow your organization to meet international standards. As such, they’re ideal for existing global textile businesses and those eyeing expansion.
- Optimized supply chain management: On the business side, DPPs enable efficient product lifecycle management—from sourcing to final sale.
Digital Product Passports and sustainability in textiles
Perhaps most importantly, DPPs offer insights for both businesses and consumers into sustainable sourcing and production. With 78% of consumers prioritizing a sustainable lifestyle, pro-environmental legislation is essential to meeting this demand. A DPP will inform buyers across all markets and sectors about the sustainable credentials of your products. This will allow for greater transparency in purchasing, as well as other sustainability benefits. For example, by providing information on the composition and production of products, end-of-life users will be able to make more informed recycling or disposal decisions, further lowering the environmental impact of your products.
Leveraging technology for Digital Product Passports
Digital passports combine cutting-edge technologies with the age-old practice of textile manufacturing. This meeting of worlds enables some impressive features, including:
- Blockchain for secure data sharing: Blockchain—a “distributed ledger” technology—allows for the safe storage and sharing of product information. All data recorded on a blockchain is permanent and secure, guaranteeing total transparency and inspiring consumer trust.
- IoT for real-time updates: The Internet of Things (IoT) powers the seamless collection and sharing of data from physical objects to the cloud. This network of devices makes a DPP’s lifecycle tracking possible.
- AI for data analysis: As DPPs gather data, textile companies can leverage AI to process it. AI tech allows organizations to:
- Identify patterns
- Anticipate trends
- Improve operations
Steps to implement Digital Product Passports for textiles
If you’re ready to affix a digital passport to your textile products, follow these steps:
- Step 1 – Assess readiness: Review your data management systems, including ERP and supply chain software, and identify gaps.
- Step 2 – Develop data-sharing frameworks: Work with stakeholders to standardize product data, ensure interoperability across the value chain, and shore up cybersecurity.
- Step 3 – Invest in a PIM system: Adopt a Product Information Management (PIM) system to collect, store, manage, and distribute accurate, market-ready product information.
Benefits of using a PIM system for DPP
With the right Product Information Management system implemented in your tech stack, you can simplify the complex process of handling DPPs for textiles. DPPs need a vast but as-yet unspecified amount of data to be collected from across the supply chain, so it’s essential to have the right PIM solution in place to allow for the onboarding, storage, management, and distribution of all this data.
However, that’s not the only benefit of a PIM system. The right PIM software can revolutionize every aspect of textile product experiences, from manufacturing and shipping all the way through to sales and marketing.
- Centralized data management: With a PIM system, you have a single source of truth for product data. All information—from DPPs or otherwise—is assembled. This aggregation of data streamlines the creation and maintenance of digital product passports.
- Improved data accuracy and consistency: In the modern supply chain, data comes from endless sources. A PIM solution keeps every detail—from material composition and certifications to manufacturing processes—accurate and up-to-date across channels.
- Facilitates compliance with regulations: Sustainability and transparency standards, like the EU Sustainable Products Regulation, will evolve. A PIM system easily integrates regulatory requirements into the DPP framework so you can always stay a step ahead of changes.
- Enhanced collaboration across the value chain: You can also think of a PIM solution as a means of communication between suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers. With the right software, all parties can seamlessly exchange DPP data throughout a product’s lifecycle.
- Supports multi-channel integration: PIM systems are equally valuable for sending uniform, accessible DPP data to various sales channels, including:
- E-commerce platforms
- Brick-and-mortar stores
- Third-party distributors
“What is PIM?”
Hear inriver experts answer the all-important question.
inriver: The PIM to power DPP compliance for textiles
Digital Product Passports are set to transform the textile industry by enhancing transparency, promoting sustainability, and driving growth among eco-conscious consumers. With that in mind, DPP readiness is pertinent for all textile brands. As regulations materialize and customers demand responsible practices, embracing DPPs is a significant step forward for any organization. If you’re looking to take that step, inriver can help.
As a world-class SaaS PIM solution, inriver is uniquely positioned to meet these needs—and many more. Explore its full range of capabilities to see how it can help power your DPP compliance strategy, align internal and external channels, and take your business to the next level.
want to see the inriver PIM in action?
Schedule a personalized, guided demo with an inriver expert today to see how the inriver PIM can get more value from your product information.
