Digital Passports will Track Items across their Full Lifecycle

The use of RFID in retail, largely to automate the process of taking in-store inventories and gaining the resulting accuracy benefits needed to support store fulfillment and buy on-line pickup in store processes, has been slowly gaining some momentum. Chains such as Macy’s, Target and Walmart have led the way here.

Now, some other apparel and related retailers are finding another path for RFID and QR bar codes in terms of support of sustainability initiatives, such as embracing the "circular economy."

Supply Chain Digest Says... Coach, for example, has a program where customers can bring back pre-owned products to any store in North America and exchange them for store credit. After that, the item gets repaired, restored, recomposed, reimagined, or recycled. What do you say? Click here to send us your comments Click here to see reader feedback

Writing on the Fast Company.com web site, Yasmin Gagne says that brands as Salvatore Ferragamo and Lululemon have recently started putting RFID tags directly into shoes and bags to track them outside the store - and potentially make buying legitimate previously-owned products easier or less risky for shoppers.

Other brands and retailers are placing scannable QR code labels that enable customers to read the code to get more information about the product and interact with the seller or brand that makes it.

In terms of a sustainable supply chain and potential adoption of circularity, Gagne notes that most retailers “have no idea what happens to goods once they leave the store. How is a garment disposed of? Does it ever get resold?”

Use of RFID tag reads at various “events” in an item’s lifecycle could address these issues – though Gagne notes that in August 2020, Victoria’s Secret had to rebut rumors that the tags in their bras allowed the company to track customer movements.

Some RFID tags can store and transmit information to resale or recycling companies, including an item’s age and where it has been sold previously, according to Gagne.

“In order to enable a circular business model transformation, we need to turn physical products into traceable assets,” Natasha Franck, founder of digital ID company Eon told Fast Company, adding that “We have been solving all barriers from the hardware - NFC tags and QR codes - to the tracking software, to the data compiling to enable brands to create on-product IDs that connects it to the company through its lifecycle.”

Franck introduces the concept of “Digital Product Passports,” that would enable tracking of environmental information of a product – and which she says will soon to be required in the European Union.

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According to Franck, the digital IDs (really just a serial number) can be use tags to quickly authenticate items as real branded merchandise, allowing companies to more easily create their own resale sites or even garment rental services.

Coach, for example, has a program where customers can bring back pre-owned products to any store in North America and exchange them for store credit. After that, the item gets repaired, restored, recomposed, reimagined, or recycled.

Widespread use of RFID in retail is coming, just slowly. But expanded use cases such as described here will certainly accelerate adoption.

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