We started getting questions about Digital Product Passports from our EU clients around mid-2024. At first it was one or two brands now it's almost every conversation with a European buyer.
If you haven't looked into it yet, here's the short version: the EU's Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) will require a Digital Product Passport for textile and apparel products, likely from 2027. That passport needs to carry machine-readable data about the product's materials, origin, repairability, and environmental footprint accessible via a QR code or similar tag.
What this actually means in practice is that your supply chain data needs to be traceable and documented before the garment ships, not pieced together afterward. For brands sourcing from manufacturerswithout chain-of-custody certification, this is going to be a real problem to solve quickly.
A few things we've learned from running a DPP pilot on live production orders since February:
GOTS 7.0 is the closest existing framework to what DPP requires. If your manufacturer is already certified at this level, you're starting from a much better position than most.
The data burden falls further up the supply chain than brands expect. It's not just about your finished garment it traces back to the mill, and in some cases to the raw fiber source.
Brands that start now, even imperfectly, will be in a completely different position to those who wait for the final regulation text.
We published what we know so far from our own preparation at https://sdfltd.com/sustainability not a marketing piece, just what we've actually run into building this from scratch.
Happy to compare notes with anyone else working through this.
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