Digital Product Passport for Fashion: What SMEs Need to Know
What is the EU Digital Product Passport (DPP)?
The Digital Product Passport is a new EU regulation that requires every textile product sold in the European Union to carry a high-quality, digital record of its origin, material composition, and environmental impact. Think of it as a digital identity card for clothes.
The goal is simple: transparency. The EU wants to ensure that by 2030, products are durable, repairable, and recyclable. To achieve this, consumers and recyclers need access to data that has historically been hidden in spreadsheets and factory records.
Timeline: When does it start?
The regulation is part of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). While the framework is already active, the specific requirements for apparel and textiles are expected to be finalised in 2024, with enforcement beginning as early as 2027.
For apparel SMEs, this isn't as far away as it sounds. Building the data infrastructure to capture this information takes time.
What data needs to be collected?
While the exact final list of attributes is still being defined, several key categories are certain:
Material composition: Detailed fibre breakdown, percentages, and blend information for every component of the garment.
Supply chain traceability: Origin of raw materials, spinning, weaving/knitting, dyeing, and assembly locations. Tier 1 through Tier 4 supplier identification.
Environmental impact: Carbon footprint data, water usage, chemical compliance (REACH, ZDHC), and sustainability certifications.
Care and durability: Washing instructions, expected product lifespan, repairability information.
Compliance documentation: Declaration of conformity, test reports, and certification references.
Unique product identifier: A globally unique ID linked to the physical product via QR code or RFID tag.
For small and mid-sized brands, the challenge is not the concept — it is the operational reality of collecting, structuring, and maintaining this data across every SKU, every season.
How will it work in practice?
Every garment will arrive at the store with a data carrier — likely a QR code, NFC chip, or RFID tag. When scanned, it will link directly to a digital passport hosted in a secure, decentralized registry. This data must be accessible to everyone in the value chain, from raw material providers to end consumers.
The Challenge for SMEs
For large corporations with massive compliance departments, the DPP is a logistical headache they have the resources to solve. For fashion SMEs, the challenge is different.
Most SMEs manage their data across scattered spreadsheets, PDF tech packs, and WhatsApp threads with factories. To comply with the DPP, this data must be structured, verified, and ready to export. Manually compiling this data at the end of a season for every single style is not just difficult — it's effectively impossible.
Five steps to prepare now
Regardless of which PLM system you use (or plan to adopt), these steps will put you in a strong position:
Map your supply chain: Identify suppliers at every tier — from raw material to finished garment.
Standardise your material data: Move from free-text descriptions to structured fields.
Engage suppliers early: Your suppliers will need to provide data you have never asked for before.
Choose systems with DPP in mind: If you are evaluating PLM or product data tools, make DPP readiness a selection criterion.
Start with pilot products: Do not try to make every SKU DPP-ready at once. Pick a handful of styles, build the complete data chain, and learn from the process.
GDPR meets DPP: data as a competitive advantage
For brands operating in the EU, data governance is already part of the landscape. GDPR established the principle that managing data responsibly is a business requirement, not an option. DPP extends this principle to product data.
Brands that treat DPP compliance as a burden will spend money on it defensively. Brands that treat it as an investment in transparency and trust will find that the same data supports better supplier negotiations and stronger consumer confidence.
How Atellio is built for DPP readiness
Atellio is a mobile-first PLM and SCM platform for apparel SMEs, designed with EU DPP compliance as a core architectural requirement — not an afterthought.
Every material registered in Atellio captures composition, certifications, and supplier origin in structured fields that map directly to DPP data requirements. Supply chain traceability from raw material through production is built into the data model.
When the textile delegated act is finalised, brands using Atellio will be able to generate DPP-compliant output from data they have already collected as a natural byproduct of their product development workflow.
We are currently onboarding a small group of early-access brands to shape the product. No pricing pressure, no commitment.