Renoon CEO says Digital Product Passports need phased rollout support

The promise of the digital product passport sounds neat enough: one digital record that can move product information between brands, suppliers, regulators and shoppers. In practice, Renoon CEO Iris Skrami says the hard part is not the QR code at all, but the organisational change underneath it. The brands that move first will not simply be the ones with the most compliant paperwork, but the ones that can assign data ownership, fund the rollout, bring suppliers along and stage the work in phases.

The passport is a policy tool, not a design flourish

The European Union has already set the legal stage. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation entered into force on 18 July 2024, and it is the framework through which digital product passports will be introduced by delegated and implementing acts. The European Commission says the passport will electronically register, process and share product information among supply-chain businesses, authorities and consumers, which makes it as much a data architecture project as a sustainability one.

That matters because textiles are not being treated as a side case. The Commission’s 2022 EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles says textiles have, on average, the fourth highest environmental and climate impact in the EU after food, housing and mobility. The sector is under pressure to deliver a cleaner, more traceable system while the rules are still being written.

Why implementation is harder than compliance

Skrami’s view is that the biggest bottlenecks are operational. Data ownership is the first problem: someone has to decide who collects, validates and updates product information, and who carries the risk when the data is incomplete or inconsistent. Budget allocation is next, because passport projects are not free add-ons; they require systems work, staff time and supplier support.

Supplier onboarding is where many pilot projects slow down. Fashion supply chains are fragmented, and even the most ambitious brand cannot create usable passports without mills, factories, trim suppliers and logistics partners feeding in reliable information. Phased implementation is the final piece, and perhaps the most important. A controlled rollout lets teams test data flows, fix weak links and build internal habits before the passport becomes a live compliance burden.

Why larger brands and smaller labels face different hurdles

The pressure is not identical across the market. Larger brands tend to struggle with governance, because they have more departments, more product lines and more systems that need to be aligned before a single passport can work cleanly. A brand with global sourcing and layered approval structures may have access to resources, but that does not automatically create clarity about who owns which field of data.

Smaller companies face a different problem: they need a practical roadmap, not a thick compliance checklist. For them, the challenge is less about designing a sprawling data architecture and more about understanding which product attributes matter first, how to gather them efficiently and how to build toward the full requirement without derailing day-to-day operations. The most useful support is not abstract policy language, but a sequence that turns regulation into manageable work.

What the sector is trying to prove

The case for the passport is strongest when it is tied to traceability and circularity rather than branding. A 2024 European Parliament study says a textile digital product passport could improve traceability, circularity and transparency for producers, supply-chain tiers, regulatory authorities, sorters, recyclers and consumers. That is a wide ecosystem, and it hints at why the passport has become such a central piece of the sustainability conversation.

The European Parliament has also set a high-level destination for 2030: textiles on the EU market should be durable, recyclable, largely made of recycled fibres, free of hazardous substances and produced in an environmentally friendly way while respecting social rights. In that context, the passport is not just a reporting mechanism. It is one of the tools meant to make those expectations visible, enforceable and easier to measure across a garment’s life.

The industry is already moving from theory to systems work

The Commission says preparatory work for textiles has already begun under the ESPR, and that the passports will be developed in open dialogue with stakeholders. That signal has pushed the sector from abstract anticipation into practical readiness mode. Brands are now being asked to think about product data flows, internal governance and supplier relationships long before the full system is switched on.

There is also a clear timeline pressure. The European Commission ran a public consultation on digital product passport service providers from 8 April 2025 to 1 July 2025, which suggests that the technical and governance rules are still being shaped even as the sector prepares. FashionUnited has reported that textile products were expected to be among the first sectors affected, with passports for textiles anticipated in the near term. That combination of policy movement and short runway is exactly why brands cannot wait for final perfection before starting.

What brands need in place before rollout

A workable rollout does not begin with software procurement. It begins with internal decisions about accountability and scope. The brands best positioned to move quickly will be the ones that can answer a few blunt questions early:

• Who owns the product data across design, sourcing and compliance?
• Which suppliers are ready to onboard first, and which need more support?
• What budget is protected for systems, training and data clean-up?
• Which product categories will pilot first, and how will lessons be reused?

This is where phased implementation becomes a business strategy, not a compromise. A pilot can be useful only if it teaches the organisation how to standardise data, manage exceptions and expand without collapsing under its own complexity. Otherwise, it becomes performative compliance, a polished demonstration that never scales.

Standards, surveillance and the level playing field

The industry bodies around Brussels are pushing the passport in slightly different directions, but the underlying goal is consistent: make the market more legible. EURATEX says the apparel passport should strengthen market surveillance, with authorities verifying information from all operators to ensure a level playing field for EU producers and foreign exporters. That emphasis on verification is important, because a passport is only as credible as the data behind it.

GS1, meanwhile, describes the passport as a mandatory data structure that will simplify digital access to sustainability and circularity data. It has already launched work on standardising approaches for apparel ahead of the sector’s delegated act. That kind of infrastructure thinking is where the next phase of fashion sustainability will be decided: not in slogans, but in fields, formats and shared definitions.

The real test for digital product passports is whether they become a living system or just another requirement brands file away. The companies that treat rollout as an organisational redesign, not a box-ticking exercise, will be the ones that turn policy pressure into usable infrastructure.