Why the DPP conversation always gets stuck
Someone in the business asks about Digital Product Passports. Usually the sustainability lead, sometimes a buyer, occasionally the founder after an event.
The conversation runs back and forth over a few weekly meetings. What is a DPP, do we need to be on top of this, who owns it here? Then it stops, and it stops in the same place every time. Nobody can say what the brand would actually put in one.
That's where we keep finding these projects. Parked, because the next step needs an answer nobody in the room can give.
What a product passport needs from you
Strip the regulation out for a second. A Digital Product Passport asks 4 questions about a single garment.
Which product is this? What's it made of, and how much of each material? Who made it and where? Sometimes, which purchase order it arrived on?
Then it asks you to answer those 4 questions for every style in the range, on demand.
Most brands we speak to can't. The style has one name in the range plan, another on the tech pack and a third on the order. Composition sits in a costing sheet somebody built way back. The version everyone's working from lives in a random drive folder.
None of that stops you trading. All of it stops you making a verified claim about where a product came from.
We call that the Dark Stack, and it's why the conversation stalls. A Digital Product Passport is a data problem wearing a compliance costume.
The pressure that's already here
Buyers at premium department stores have started asking brands for supply chain credentials at the buying stage. No regulation compels them. Their own customers ask, so they ask you.
That's a commercial conversation happening this season. The brands who can produce a credible answer in the meeting are winning those relationships.
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