Digital product passports: consumers want more, new survey says

Already, Eon enables brands to link these digital IDs to resale sites such as The RealReal and Vestiaire Collective, making it easier for products to be instantly listed for resale. This could eventually encompass a mechanism for attributing royalties back to brands and maintaining a link to the new owner even after a product changes hands.

Currently, only about a quarter of consumers buy secondhand, but 56 per cent would be more inclined to do so if DPPs were available, according to the research. Additionally, 65 per cent said that they thought that DPPs would facilitate resale. DPPs potentially make it “easier and more attractive” for consumers to buy and sell pre-owned luxury items, Buckley says.

Earlier this month, Arianee, a Web3 fashion company that works with brands including Breitling and Moncler to create DPPs, issued a paper outlining the potential for DPPs to enable resale and add value to existing products. In terms of enabling repair, resale and remanufacturing, “the economic case is increasingly clear because it allows companies to create multiple revenues from one product,” wrote the researchers.

Getting a head start

It is still unclear what exactly the regulations will be and when they will be imposed, but more information is expected after the next session of the EU parliament, with implementation starting in the next two to three years, Ott says.

Buckley says that brands that are early adopters will gain a competitive edge and advises luxury brands to begin testing via small pilot projects to align DPP offerings with consumer expectations.

But even if the intention is there, there are still barriers. A recent report by traceability platform TrusTrace unveiled to coincide with this month’s Global Fashion Summit, found that key limitations are a lack of supply chain traceability, a lack of access to live data in the supply chain, and the potential for the data shared with consumers via QR codes to be at odds with disclosure requirements in markets outside the EU. One of the most significant logistical issues is ensuring that product information is readily available in terms of traceability of the supply chain, Ott says, and then brands need to decide which DPP provider to use, which data connector will be used (such as vision AI, QR code or NFC chip) and how they will communicate the benefits to consumers.