Do people care about digital product passports (DPPs), or even understand what they are? Probably not. Do brands? Increasingly so, as there is inbound European Union regulation making it mandatory by 2030 for any garment or accessory to come with a QR code (or other scanable technology) embedded with detailed information on where it was made and where it has been. It will help brands grow direct relationships with their customers, fight fakes and should make resale and recycling much easier for customers. That is, if customers can be convinced to engage with DPPs.
Today, innovation agency IoDF (formerly known as the Institute of Digital Fashion) and product engineering giant Epam are announcing a partnership; its goal is to make DPPs customer friendly by integrating storytelling, community-building and blockchain-driven royalties into the framework. What does this all mean in practice? The press release mentions “a next-gen DPP framework that is designed to seamlessly integrate RFID, NFC technology, blockchain authentication and artificial intelligence-powered data analytics”. I called IoDF CEO and co-founder Leanne Elliott Young and asked her to put everything in layman’s terms.
Vogue: Congratulations on your alliance with Epam. What is it?
It all starts with this new EU mandate for digital product passports as part of its circular economy initiative. Fashion companies have to comply with the regulation by 2030, and while there’s been a couple of test cases and tech companies launching their versions of DPPs, no work has been done on the customer. And since the customer has to do a fair bit of work when it comes to DPPs, you need to inspire them to get on board.
This is where we at IoDF come in because we speak the fashion language and understand the customer. We built this alliance with Epam because they are trusted technology partners. They’re present in over 50 countries, they’ve got a 61,700-strong team. Partnering with this Big Tech daddy is insane for us as a small UK company — we realised the language that they use in tech is very confusing, it can put you to sleep. So it’s like, how can you get the customer to care about DPPs? That’s our part.
Vogue: What was it like to partner with this ‘Big Tech daddy’ then?
It’s been very interesting. Because at IoDF we are small, we can be fast and nimble, which allows us to innovate. They are bigger, slower and steadier — there’s always like 20 more of them on every call than us. So we bring the thought leadership, and they massage it into all the different pockets of reality. It’s a great marriage.
Vogue: What is the ambition here? What are you trying to do?
We want to build a map that allows customers to quickly see where their products have been — so they can be inspired by it, and so that they can also effectively have them authenticated. Epam’s team and our team are coming together to not just onboard the brands to the tech, but actually build it together with them; to ensure the right type of storytelling as well as opportunities for community growth are embedded in the user experience (UX) — so that those digital product passports are engaging for a brand’s audience and not just a bare-minimum effort people will swipe past.
Vogue: Fashion companies have to comply with the new regulation regardless. Why would they also bother making DPPs engaging?
If you are going to do something, you might as well do it right. The biggest ROI for brands here is the relationship with the customer. So in building something that customers can care about, they get to have a communication thread with their audience. What we’re proposing could actually disrupt the industry massively because it makes the funnel to the customer much tighter than social media. At the moment, a brand needs to talk to their customer on a myriad of platforms — this makes the relationship much more intimate.
Vogue: And what’s in it for the customer?
Customers want to be influencers and feel like they’re part of something — there’s endless opportunities to do that, once they know the story of their product. One is value, both cultural and monetary. If a product sits on the blockchain, the value of it could go up depending on who owned it before. Imagine, for instance, that Rihanna owned your T-shirt and wore it on a photo shoot. You can post about it, and you can make money from it.
Co-creation is another. For example, you could scan a product and see all different colourways that are in production and be able to create your own colourway, too. So that space also becomes collaborative — a vocal cord for the consumer.
Then, of course, there’s the circularity incentive, because it allows customers to authenticate their product. That helps with your garment’s end-of-life management, and there’s royalties to be made when you repair or resell in-store — but you will have to prove it’s actually from a specific brand or store and for that you need a DPP.
Vogue: You said earlier that at IoDF you speak the language of fashion. How do you define that?
It’s about desire. It’s about building something that is inspiring and feels personal — not tech orientated. The product we are building has an eloquence, which technology generally doesn’t. Technology is like sustenance, it’s the ‘have you had your protein?’. We’re the butter or the spices on top.
Vogue: Could you give me a snapshot of the future? How will my son’s wardrobe work 10 to 20 years from now?
I think there will be an emotional reckoning derived from our wardrobes — our clothes will hold information in an emotive way. You’ll know when you are buying an item from somebody who has cared for it and worn it at certain places. You will be able to see if and how they’ve upcycled it. I think this is all so inspiring because right now clothes are on a very short life cycle. I think that we’ll see things revert back to where clothes are worn for longer.
That won’t take away from brands’ earnings potential because brands will be able to capture raw data and insights directly from the customer to build exactly what they want. Instead of producing a million SKUs, you’re producing 400,000 because it’s all been made with the exact demand in mind. And there will also be much less spent on marketing because of the direct data capture. The only way to really get ROI is direct relationships with your audience. That’s the future.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
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