How to do it: Brands talk about DPP implementation

The digital product passport (DPP) is currently being rolled out under the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). From 2027, it will be mandatory for priority product groups, including garments and textiles, and will apply to almost all physical goods sold in the EU, regardless of where the manufacturer is located.

For fashion brands and retailers, the DPP provides many advantages that go beyond mere compliance, from transparent communication with consumers to tracking and documenting one’s carbon footprint. On the data side itself, switching from various, fragmented data sources to one comprehensive platform is a big relief, avoiding duplicate data entry and being able to respond to data requests faster and more efficiently.

FashionUnited looked at six brands and their DPP story as well as one solution provider that managed to build successful data identities and the data foundation behind it. By “simply showing the work behind a product,” they are tapping into the future of fashion

Dedicated

Stockholm-based label Dedicated evolved from a retail-only T-shirt business into a full-fledged fashion brand in 2012, proving that bold colours and playful graphics can be sustainable. When corporate social responsibility (CSR) head Margaux Schleder joined the company in 2019, it knew all its Tier 1 suppliers and had partial visibility into Tier 2 and some cotton sources, but traceability information was stored in Excel files, which were maintained manually. “I was spending more time organising data than using it. And traceability is not a goal on its own. You need it for communication, for carbon footprinting, for B2B clients. We needed a system,” recalls Schleder in an online statement.

Joining the transparency platform by software provider Retraced had two key advantages: better internal traceability workflows and customer-facing transparency tools. Today, 88 percent of Tier 1 suppliers have been onboarded, 85 percent of the product volume can be traced back to cotton producers and 100 percent of DPPs have been integrated into the online shop. Retraced’s built-in widgets makes it easy to publish verified supply chain data directly to product pages.

Looking ahead, Dedicated wants to strengthen its traceability system further. The next step is onboarding more suppliers and using the new Supply Chain Mapping feature to track sourcing decisions earlier in the process. “We want to be involved from the beginning, especially with the current disruptions in organic and fair trade cotton,” explains Schleder.

King Louie

Dutch fashion brand King Louie started as a vintage market stall in Amsterdam and today has more than 900 stores across Europe. The label is known for vintage-inspired clothing that is made to last and sourced responsibly. In 2025, 77 percent of the collection was made from certified organic, recycled or lower-impact materials, and 99 percent of transport is done without airfreight.

“We are not a brand that shouts how sustainable we are. But we want to be transparent. Our customers care and so do we. That is why we needed a way to show the work behind each product,” states Laura Tol, CSR specialist at King Louie, in a blog post. Documentation and speed was the problem: Sustainability data lived in folders and spreadsheets and follow‑up was manual, document collection was done via email. This meant less capacity for strategic improvements and slower responses to buyers’ compliance deadlines.

“At some point, we were spending more time chasing documents than using them. We needed a system that helped us stay on top of things without adding another layer of work,” recalls Tol. King Louie implemented Retraced as a centralised system to support all of the brand’s supply chain activities from onboarding and compliance to communication and collaboration.

Today, all active suppliers have been onboarded and manage their data in the platform. Certification tracking is fully automated, thus reducing the need for monthly follow-ups. DPPs have been completely integrated in the online shop, in stores and in B2B showrooms. That means every product comes with a DPP, which shows the supply chain including audit scores and certifications. “We train our store teams to talk about it. Our marketing team uses it in campaigns. And our customers can scan the tag and see the full story. Some want just the basics. Others go deep. It works for both,” confirms Tol. In addition to the platform, King Louie hosts swap events, upcycling workshops and product styling sessions as part of an independent sustainability content and community strategy designed to make eco-friendly practices more engaging and accessible.

KnowledgeCotton Apparel

Danish sustainability-driven brand KnowledgeCotton Apparel was inspired by the organic fibre work of the founder’s father. Since foundation in 2008, it has grown into a globally recognised brand. However, keeping track of suppliers, certifications and data requests became increasingly difficult as the business grew. “We had the information — it just was not accessible,” recalls COO Anders Langhoff-Jensen in an online post. “If a buyer asked for a specific audit or certificate, we had to dig through folders or Excel files.”

Implementation into one system began country by country, starting with Tier 1 suppliers and working down to the raw material level. “We have now mapped every supply chain. Not just Tier 1 and 2, but all the way to the source,” reports buying assistant Mads Mariboe. “It was a challenge at first, especially in regions like China. But the Retraced team supported us closely. Their Mandarin-speaking staff helped us onboard even the more cautious suppliers.”

Since early 2024, every KnowledgeCotton garment includes a DPP via QR code, which gives access to its full production journey, regardless if a product is accessed in store or online. “We added the QR code from Retraced to our care labels and hangtags. Now sales teams and customers can see all the production steps without needing to ask or wait. It is very helpful in retail settings. When a customer asks where something was made, the answer is a scan away. It can reveal the 15 steps behind a single T-shirt,” explains Langhoff-Jensen.

Going forward, KnowledgeCottton Apparel wants to include a garment’s environmental footprint. “We are working with Carbonfact to link emissions data to the same product-level QR code,” adds Langhoff-Jensen. “Ideally, everything a customer or partner needs to know is available through one label.”

Löffler

Austrian brand Löffler, founded in 1973, not only makes performance apparel but also produces more than two-thirds of its fabrics in-house and handles nearly every step of the supply chain: from yarn selection and knitting to finishing, cutting and sewing. While the company gained deep insights into its supply chain through this vertical integration, the challenge was to make this transparency visible to retailers and end customers.

Personal contact over the course of three months helped bring over 50 suppliers onto the platform, from yarn suppliers and dye houses to trim providers and sewing partners. “Emails were not enough. I learned that a short 15-minute video call worked best. I would walk them through what needed to be done in Retraced, and we would get it done on the spot. We kept things simple at first and only asked for core company data, certifications and short descriptions. We would expand over time, but the foundation is there,” states Markus Reisegger, head of Sustainability at Löffler, in a blog post.

Every product in the brand’s main collection, apart from gloves and socks, now features a QR code that links to its supply chain data, thus laying the DPP foundation. One hundred percent of the own-brand summer 2026 collection will be traceable via QR code. The next step is to explore modules for product-level environmental data and to deepen supplier engagement.

Pangaia

Pangaia was founded in 2019 as a platform to scale breakthrough material solutions. Today, the London-based clothing brand is offering contemporary wardrobe staples made from bio-based, regenerative, recycled and responsibly sourced materials. Communicating that to the consumers has been always been a priority: “At Pangaia, we have long believed that transparency and circularity require a digital layer that travels with a product throughout its lifecycle. That is what initially drew us to digital product passports and why we explored this space so early on, before it became a regulatory priority,” explains Maria Srivastava, chief impact officer at Pangaia, when talking to FashionUnited.

“What has been most interesting to watch since then is how the industry conversation has evolved,” she adds. “A few years ago, digital passports were often viewed as a bit of an experiment. Today, they are increasingly recognised as critical infrastructure for the future of fashion. Brands are realising that trusted product-level data can support everything from compliance and traceability to resale, repair, authentication and deeper consumer engagement.”

Asked about one of the biggest lessons from early efforts across the industry, Srivastava mentions that “the challenge is not simply creating a digital identity—it is building the data foundation behind it.” She stresses that this “requires greater visibility into fashion’s notoriously complicated supply chains, stronger collaboration with partners and understanding of the systems that can connect information from multiple sources in a way that makes sense.”

The way forward is thus not about the ‘why’ of DPPs but the ‘how’. “As regulations accelerate and consumer expectations continue to evolve, I think we are reaching an inflection point. The most forward-looking brands are no longer asking whether they need digital product passports; they are asking how to use them to create better products, more transparent customer experiences and new circular business models. That is where the real opportunity lies, beyond compliance and into shaping the industry’s future,” concludes Srivastava.

Tom Tailor

At Hamburg-based fashion brand Tom Tailor, starting the implementation process had two main objectives: to achieve transparency across the supply chain, down to the raw material level, and to ensure compliance with the Due Diligence Act and other upcoming regulations. It took only three months to onboard 80 Tier 1 and 160 Tier 2 suppliers; today, this number is at 100 percent.

“It was about genuine collaboration—engaging with our suppliers at eye level and fostering a spirit of partnership. By approaching them with gratitude and recognising their role in helping us to meet these standards, rather than applying pressure, we achieved a more effective and supportive working relationship,” recounts Juliane Nowakowski, head of sustainability & corporate responsibility at Tom Tailor, in an online post.

The tracing journey started with a pilot in early 2023, where the brand selected three purchase orders (POs) per sourcing country, across nine countries, resulting in around 27 to 30 orders to trace. Following the successful pilot, Tom Tailor decided to fully integrate the tracing process for every product, starting from January 2024. Since April 2024, the company has implemented Retraced’s QR codes on every product’s wash care label, detailing each product’s journey.  

“Since we started tracing on purchase order level in early 2024, we have already traced 17 percent of more than 5000 POs to the raw material level and a further 13 percent to yarn level. Tracing for these POs is still ongoing,” reports Nowakowski.

Insights from Retraced

Many of the brands mentioned above went on their DPP journey together with Retraced, an AI-first platform for sourcing, product compliance, and supplier lifecycle collaboration. FashionUnited spoke with Lukas Puender, co-founder and CEO of Retraced, to find out more about the challenges that the company and brands usually face, data gaps and how to close them.

What prompted Retraced to focus on the DPP early on, even before it became mandatory?

Retraced actually arose from a completely different problem. The story begins with Cano, a shoe brand with which Philipp Mayer and I wanted to bring Mexican huaraches to Germany. Production took place under fair conditions, and the leather was vegetable-tanned. But how do you communicate that credibly? We wanted our customers to be able to scan the shoe to digitally see who made it, how it was manufactured and where the materials came from.

But there was no suitable solution available. So we built it ourselves, which laid the foundation for Retraced. That was in 2018, years before the DPP was even a topic of discussion in Brussels. Our starting point, therefore, was not compliance but the conviction that consumers have the right to know what they are buying, and that brands that can demonstrate this have a real advantage. The digital product passport was therefore, from the very beginning, an instrument of proactive transparency for us.

What challenges did you face initially, and what challenges exist now?

Initially, we had to do a lot of explaining: How can a brand communicate transparency to consumers? How does that pay off economically? Back then, for many, it was still just a “nice to have.”

Today, regulation has settled that discussion. The challenge is different: How do you build reliable data across four or five supply chain tiers? Many brands know their Tier 1 suppliers well. What happens along the chain, at spinning mills, dye factories and raw material suppliers, is often still a black box. That is precisely where the real work lies. And the larger the brand, the more complex the supplier network becomes, and the more a transparency solution needs to be scalable and efficient.

What data gap have you discovered when mapping multi-tiered supply chains?

Tier 1 suppliers, the direct manufacturing companies, are generally well documented. The problem starts at Tier 2, with weaving mills, spinning mills and dye factories. Most brands audit their Tier 1 suppliers, but many risks, such as environmental violations or poor working conditions, are hidden further down the chain and often only surface late.

The underlying structural problem is that each stage of the supply chain has its own formats, its own certification schemes, its own way of documenting—or not documenting—data. Proprietary formats and silos make it difficult to combine or compare data across schemes, actors, and regions. There is no common data model for multi-certification scenarios in multi-tiered supply chains. We are building precisely this common infrastructure. With over 30,000 suppliers in our network, we are already well on our way to achieving this.

How do you motivate suppliers and customers who are hesitant to disclose information about their production facilities or other relevant data?

Hesitation almost always has a specific reason. Suppliers often fear that transparency makes them vulnerable to competitors, auditors or brands that might then exert price pressure. This cannot be solved with a fancy onboarding brochure. What truly helps is building trust before requesting data. This means clarifying who has access, what happens to the data and what does not. It also means starting with suppliers who are already open, so others can see that transparency is not a trap.

Our argument is pragmatic: Once data is cleanly entered into Retraced, it does not need to be reprocessed for every new brand. Suppliers exchange verified product and material data once, stay synchronised with buyer requirements and reduce repetitive tasks through a single collaborative system. This is not about doing the brand a favour; it saves the supplier time and resources.

For the brands themselves, the motivation is usually a mix of pressure and calculation. Regulation is coming anyway, as the DPP will become mandatory in 2030. Those who start now build the data foundation step by step. Those who wait will only create stress for themselves.

At what point in the manufacturing process is the digital identifier (QR code) actually assigned?

This depends on the product type and the maturity of the supply chain, but the clear recommendation is: as late as possible in the process, and at the item level. A decision must be made as to whether to identify products at the item, batch, or model level, and how this ID will appear on the product, ideally as a 2D barcode such as a QR code, which can coexist alongside existing retail barcodes.

Assigning the QR code at the fiber processing level makes little technical sense because too many production variables remain undefined. A more realistic approach is to assign the ID after the garment is finished, either on the hanger or in the label, at a point when the product ID is stable and can be linked to all stored supply chain data.

How can brands ensure that the digital ID remains legible even after years of washing or heavy use?

The DPP makes product data accessible via a digital carrier, and QR codes, NFC chips, or RFID are all fundamentally possible. QR codes are currently considered the de facto standard for the DPP because any smartphone can read them without a special app. RFID is better suited as a supplementary carrier for logistics, not as a primary access point for consumers. NFC chips are an interesting interim solution, more robust than printed codes, but more expensive per unit.

Crucially, however, the durability of these data carriers over multiple usage cycles is an open standardisation issue that legislation has not yet resolved. So we don't yet know exactly what the EU will ultimately mandate. What we do know is that the actual data is not contained in the code, but in the underlying data system. The carrier is merely the key. This means that even if a QR code fades after years or a label needs to be replaced, the product passport remains intact. The challenge is physical, not digital. We work closely with label manufacturers on this, as they have more experience in this area than we do.

Regarding certified materials, how does the new module help with the automated management of transaction certificates?

Let's take GOTS-certified cotton as an example. The Scope Certificate confirms that a factory is certified. The Transaction Certificate confirms that the specific shipment actually comes from this certified factory. Both are needed to credibly substantiate a material claim. Currently, this is usually done via email, as a PDF, stored somewhere in a folder, and if an auditor asks, the search begins. In the Retraced platform, all documents are automatically retrieved from the suppliers.

The Retraced platform automatically collects all documents from suppliers. Scope Certificates from production facilities and their corresponding transaction certificates are then stored in one central location, complete with expiration alerts when a certification is about to expire. The transaction certificates are also directly matched and linked to the product deliveries. If a transaction certificate doesn't match the delivery, the system issues a warning. While this may sound straightforward, in practice it saves an enormous amount of time—in our experience, around 90 percent of the work. For many brands, this equates to several weeks of manual effort. This solution closes precisely the gap that fuels many greenwashing accusations today.

All interviews were conducted in written format.