Digital Product Passports: Turning Compliance to Consumer Value

With the introduction of the brand new EU sustainability laws on Digital Product Passports (DPPs) underway, understanding and prioritising the buyer’s standpoint is important for style retailers.

In July 2024, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Merchandise Regulation (ESPR) turned regulation in Europe, mandating the implementation of Digital Product Passports (DPP). However what’s a Digital Product Passport? Primarily, it’s a digital document containing crucial details about a product’s lifecycle. By 2027, all style objects coming into the EU market would require a Digital Product Passport, detailing supplies, manufacturing, provide chain, environmental influence and end-of-life directions.

Clothes, footwear and textiles type a part of the primary wave for implementation, with different merchandise like furnishings, mattresses, detergents and cosmetics to observe, based mostly on recycling potential.

Sustainability, nonetheless, is just not entrance of thoughts for shoppers when shopping for style, as ongoing value pressures have moved their focus in direction of worth. As a part of this shift, shoppers have adopted extra conscientious procuring behaviours resembling shopping for fewer however higher high quality objects and contributing to round style traits by reselling their style objects. Whereas environmental considerations don’t primarily drive these behaviours, they do lay the foundations for the ideas behind the profitable adoption of Digital Product Passports (DPPs).

DPPs for style might want to embody quite a few datapoints. In addition to the manufacturing course of and environmental footprint, EU Digital Product Passports may also require a sturdiness rating and hyperlink to round companies. For retailers, designing efficient Digital Product Passports will contain a high-quality steadiness between offering complete info with out overwhelming shoppers.

A latest survey by Mintel requested shoppers to consider the knowledge on clothes labels and what would affect whether or not or not they purchased the merchandise.

The outcomes present that Britons are greater than twice as prone to care concerning the sturdiness of a clothes merchandise and learn how to take care of it, quite than its environmental influence.

One main expertise enterprise working on this house is Fabacus. It’s engaged on DPPs with the principle clothes retailers within the UK, together with Tesco. It has created a sturdiness gage in brilliant colors that appears to emulate the meals labelling visitors mild system with particulars on a garment’s color fastness and shrinkage.

We’re seeing extra style manufacturers begin to pilot DPPs which might be internally going through first, permitting them to check totally different eventualities earlier than scaling them up. This proactive strategy is preferable to ready for the finalised EU Digital Product Passport laws standards to be launched on the finish of 2025.

Womenswear model No one’s Baby, which was one of many early adopters when it trialled DPPs on its denim assortment, drove engagement by providing clients who scanned the QR code a present together with cash to spend on a procuring spree.

Retailers might want to discover methods to incentivise clients to scan QR codes to entry DPPs. Providing reductions and invites to particular occasions may be a technique of encouraging individuals to click on on them and to point out they’ll add worth to a purchase order, displaying the true world software of Digital Product Passports.

“What is admittedly highly effective about DPPs is the business facet,” says Jamie Beck, VP Sustainability and Compliance at Fabacus. He explains which you can construct a retailer’s loyalty programme into the QR code of the DPP and hyperlink all of it up with a number of choices. You possibly can then ask clients to overview the product or the procuring expertise and supply them tailor-made reductions, promotions or presents resembling a sustainable weekend away. This can incentivise them to scan it. Additional forward, you too can use it to order your measurement in the event that they don’t have it in inventory or to match costs of comparable objects.

Because the introduction of DPPs will coincide with the decommissioning of the barcode and their alternative with QR codes globally, it has the potential to alter the best way shoppers work together with merchandise.

A key buy driver for girls when trying on the info on clothes labels is learn how to take care of an merchandise. It is a crucial alternative for DPPs to supply further worth to customers.

As retailers might select to point out a personalised public view of their DPP tailored to their buyer base, detailed info on learn how to wash and take care of garments to make them last more ought to catch the attention of womenswear manufacturers. This info is also signposted in swing tags and social media campaigns.

Given that ladies are extra doubtless than males to look to cut back power use at house to chop prices (client-access solely), providing tips about learn how to take care of the garment, while minimising power and water utilization, will help to extend model loyalty.

There may be additionally scope to present a care equipment or complimentary alteration service for some merchandise to drive buyer engagement with the Digital Product Passports.

Youthful shoppers, significantly Gen Z, present a lot increased ranges of curiosity in shopping for garments with info on the label about end-of-life, in comparison with the common shopper.

Rising numbers of Gen Zs contribute to round style traits and promote garments they not put on and are consciously buying objects from manufacturers that resell properly, as they more and more make worth judgements on the long-term worth (LTV) of merchandise.

As Digital Product Passports might want to embody particulars of end-of-life choices, manufacturers can leverage this to have interaction with youthful audiences and streamline the resale course of.

Moreover, DPPs may also allow corporations to keep up contact with clients and supply them round aftersales choices resembling repairs. This opens up alternatives to monetise your complete product lifecycle, whereas strengthening the emotional connection individuals have with their clothes by way of upcycling and personalisation companies.

Outdoorwear model Bergans of Norway took a novel strategy when trialling Digital Product Passports with Trimco, and selected to deal with their round companies, permitting clients to seamlessly restore and lease their merchandise through a QR code.

Individuals from increased earnings households usually tend to prioritise the environmental and social influence when making buying choices. In addition they worth transparency and are extra pushed to purchase an merchandise of clothes if it has info on the label about the place the merchandise was made.

Amid an increase in dupes, Digital Product Passports will assist shoppers simply confirm the product’s authenticity. By merely scanning the label, shoppers can entry detailed details about your complete manufacturing course of. This can assist construct belief in a model. The extra advantages of getting the digital identification of a product, each for aftercare companies and resale, might discourage shoppers from shopping for counterfeit objects.

For instance, British footwear model Loake determined to roll out DPPs throughout its whole vary in August 2024 to advertise the craftsmanship that defines their model.

The deal with better transparency for style will help develop curiosity in merchandise made within the UK and improve their visibility all through the buyer buying journey.

Enhancing furnishings’s authenticity

Two furnishings retailers, DFS and Ligne Roset, who’re at reverse ends of the worth spectrum, are trialling DPPs forward of their implementation for textiles, which indicators the rising significance of Digital Product Passports throughout varied sectors.

DFS launched its pilot in February 2025. The outcomes will present a blueprint for the way DPPs may be tailor-made to the furnishings sector. In the meantime, the premium furnishings model Ligne Roset, is seeking to improve authenticity by creating a novel product identifier for its Togo loveseat that can make it verifiable by way of a cell app, which once more, combats the rise in counterfeits.

DPPs are going to have an effect on the wonder business too. Our newest understanding is that cosmetics are seventh in line for DPP compliance and my colleague Vivienne Rudd, a senior magnificence specialist in Mintel’s Consulting division, says that the wonder business should be ready to push the button by 2027 on the earliest or, extra doubtless, 2030 on the newest.

Rudd says that DPPs will assist to construct confidence in sustainable magnificence, however it’s vital that the knowledge is evident and readily accessible. In spite of everything, solely 15% of UK magnificence shoppers say they’re very assured that they know what a sustainable magnificence product is, and 49% prioritise comfort over sustainability when selecting their magnificence merchandise.

There are already numerous magnificence manufacturers that already present exemplary ranges of transparency, however just one, Ulé which gives shoppers with post-purchase DPPs. There may be clearly plenty of work to be executed in a comparatively brief time frame.

Please contact Mintel Consulting for extra info on how we will help with: