First DPP-ready textile library goes live

Brands and retailers that are currently preparing for the EU’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) regulation can start by sourcing verified, compliance-ready textiles directly from a structured, supplier-level data library, which went live on 21st May.

The library is the brainchild of World Collective who connects brands with next-generation materials and suppliers. It is built and maintained by the global sourcing infrastructure in partnership with Kinset, a digital product passport infrastructure company providing the DPP technology for the pilot.

“The regulation is still being defined. The industry has been waiting to find out what the rules will say before acting. What's live today is what stops being optional. Brands sourcing here will not be scrambling when the deadline lands, the compliance work has already been done at the supplier level. That changes what brands can do in the next twelve months,” comments Jeanine Ballone, co-founder and CEO of World Collective, in a statement.

What information is provided?

The starting size of nine verified materials from three suppliers — Climatex Industrial Co., Ltd. (Bangladesh), Maritaş (Turkey) and SKD Fine Décor (India) — is intentional as organic growth is envisioned: “The architecture is built to scale; the library is growing into it: material by material, supplier by supplier,” emphasises the statement. Each material is third-party tested, certified and structured to DPP standards. Additional suppliers are currently being verified, and new materials will be added on a rolling basis.

On each fabric information page, one finds details such as composition and construction, finish and performance, compliance and testing and handling and recommendations, including level of completion for each item. The traceability section has information from Tier 4 (raw material origin) to Tier 2 (production level) via Tier 3 (yarn production). Information about the environmental footprint about each fabric is also provided. Helpful would be more information about each supplier, but that may be added at a later stage.

What is novel about the approach?

Brands and retailers that are in the process of complying with DDP regulations usually move backwards, tracing their way back from the finished product. This is tedious and relies on supplier cooperation. By choosing a fabric from the textile library, brands and retailers are assured that it is pre-verified. In addition, data is structured in the format the DPP is converging on. “The compliance burden moves out of the brand's back office and into the supply chain itself, where the data actually originates,” states World Collective.

Another advantage is that the same supplier-level data that powers the DPP also feeds every other major piece of incoming regulation: Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR), the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD, the Green Claims Directive. “A textile that is DPP-ready is, by definition, ready for the regulatory architecture that follows it. What the library demonstrates, beyond the catalog itself, is that the compliance future of fashion is being built at the supplier layer. The agents that recognise it now will lead the market shift,” sums up the organisation.

The library has been built to adapt to specific requirements quickly, keeping in mind that the DPP regulation is still being finalised. Thus, data fields can be extended, formats can be aligned, and new attributes can be layered on top of an architecture that already holds the foundational truth about each material.

The DPP-Ready Textile Library is live and open to brands at world-collective.com/collections/dpp-ready.