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Coach is using digital identities to enable “instant resale” through a partnership with Poshmark. Customers who own any Coachtopia product — the brand’s Gen Z-geared collection of leather goods, ready-to-wear and shoes — can now automatically be uploaded to Poshmark, product images, details, descriptions and all.
The technology is provided by Eon, the digital ID company that recently introduced the “instant resale” concept. It enables any product that already has a digital identity through Eon to be integrated with resale platforms, which so far include Vestiaire Collective, The RealReal and now Poshmark, making it easier for customers to list products for sale. It also adds a layer of product authentication for resale buyers.
This is a major milestone in the path toward using digital IDs to enable circular economies. Digital identities — or “digital product passports” (DPPs) — are becoming more commonplace among luxury brands. By 2027, all fashion products sold in the European Union will be required to have DPPs, which will need to include details on a product’s materials and place of manufacture. Brands are beginning to explore further uses of this technology, including authentication, digital extras (such as augmented reality filters attached to the product), loyalty rewards (such as access to products, discounts and events), repair services and resale.
“In a linear system, this tends to be more transactional and unidirectional: brands sell their products to the consumer and then, for the most part, lose visibility of what happens to those products out in the world. But in a circular system … a brand has a more lasting responsibility, regardless of who owns the product,” says Joon Silverstein, SVP of global marketing and sustainability at Coach and head of Coachtopia.
These product details can encourage reselling by making it easier to do so, and at the end of a product’s life, inform recyclers on the materials, construction and recommended recycling or waste disposal measures. On the brand side, this enables authentication, the opportunity for brands to continue the conversation with customers after a product is sold and to eventually develop a relationship with a secondhand owner through scanning the product’s ID. When the second owner of the bag receives the product, they can then scan the item to find out product details that might typically have been only previously attached to a long-lost product hangtag and subsequently access loyalty rewards perks and more.
“The value of this tech is transcendent across all geographies,” Poshmark CEO Manish Chandra says. “Even though the EU is pushing it, having this information integrated into software is valuable for sustainability, resale, inventory management, sourcing and supply chain — it will impact everything.”
Eon founder and CEO Natasha Franck, recently speaking to Vogue Business, described Eon as “an operating system for products, in which physical products will be able to speak to us and will be connected to the internet”.
The Coachtopia process works like this: products come in a cloth bag that invites the customer to tap a cloud emblem on the product with their phones to access the product’s digital passport. (This is enabled through an NFC, or near-field communication, chip, which is the same tech used in tap-to-pay credit cards.) When the customer holds their smartphone over the emblem, a pop-up redirects the person to the product’s information page on the Coach website. The information page includes an image of the product, information on product materials, where the product was made, details on the product’s environmental impact and access to circular services, including repair, re-gifting and selling on Poshmark. People sign in to create a Coach account to “connect” their product and add it to their Coach profile. The profile page includes products and purchase history, payment methods, wishlist and more. When people elect to list their item on Poshmark, they sign in or create a Poshmark account, and product details are automatically input; people can choose to add additional product images.
Once a Coachtopia item has been shipped by a Poshmark seller, ownership is automatically “deregistered” on their Coach profile. The item’s new owner can then scan the item, connect it to their Coach account and start the process all over again.
All Coachtopia items have had digital passports since the project launched in April 2023, meaning that products previously sold will automatically now have one-click resale functionality built in. Every time a customer interacts with the product via the digital passport, such as to claim a reward, watch special content, repair a product or take advantage of other future services, the brand can gather data on their behaviour. The resale data helps Coach better understand consumer behaviours and the secondary market for used Coachtopia products, Silverstein says. “We can continue to upgrade the circular services associated with every digital passport. As we continue to grow our capabilities and gain more information about our products as they live multiple lives, we’ll be able to make new services available to all our customers, regardless of when they purchased their Coachtopia product. Our goal is to continue to expand and build upon these types of services.”
This is also a way for Poshmark to attract new users. Coach is one of the most popular brands on the platform, and more than 16 million people follow the brand on Poshmark, says Poshmark head of business development Alison Lyness, who led the partnership.
While this partnership is a first for Coach and Poshmark, other brands have started adding “instant resale” options through Eon. In February 2023, Chloé enabled instant resale through Vestiaire Collective. The RealReal has also integrated with Eon’s platform.
Expect more resale enablement soon — and not only through Eon. The Aura Blockchain Consortium is used by LVMH, Prada Group, Richemont and OTB Group, among others, and is gradually attaching digital IDs to luxury goods; it has thus far recorded at least 50 million luxury goods on its private blockchain. Other brands, such as Mugler, use Arianee for digital IDs. As brands continue to explore how to monetise circular business models, they could deploy a similar user experience on internal resale platforms.
As Coach identifies circular solutions and strategies that work at scale, the intention is to expand to all Coach products, Silverstein says. Coachtopia bags are made with “upcrafted” and regenerative leather (including using scraps that would normally be discarded and leather from animals raised using regenerative agriculture), and customers can take back Coachtopia products, regardless of age or condition, in exchange for a store credit. Already, some of these points have expanded to the wider business, including the use of materials made with recycled leather fibres and the adoption of a more circular and zero-waste mindset in the design and creation of new Coach products, she says.
“Our ability to keep track of a product’s journey across multiple lives is critical to powering a circular economy — and engaging our community in that economy — so our hope and goal is to roll out digital passport technology across Coach in the future.”
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