Fashion supply chain has always been accused of not being transparent, traceable and sustainable… However, today’s consumers have pushed fashion brands and retailers to behave more sensibly and to become accountable for the end-products that they are bringing to them. Today, the brands will certainly be asked and questioned if they are producing garments or sourcing raw material ethically and sustainably.
Thanks to the advent of technology that’s helping brands and retailers as well as manufacturers keep track of their supply chains. Here are six solution providers for traceability that are making fashion supply chain a better place to work and also the brands and retailers that are using these technologies for best outcomes…
FibreTrace’s technology tracing fibres and its origin…
An Australian traceability technology start-up, founded in 2018, FibreTrace has already made strong footprints in the fashion supply chain. The firm provides a technology that embeds luminescent pigments onto fibres at the spinning mill in order to make a textile that is fully traceable at every stage of its lifecycle.
The pigments are indestructible and built into fibre so that even if the fabric is recycled, its origins can still be traced using a handheld or inline scanner that reads the pigment. Information about the fibre is stored in a secure blockchain database in real-time at each stage of the production line. It’s not just cotton that is becoming more traceable, FibreTrace technology can be applied to responsible viscose and recycled polyester. The company is currently conducting its trial on wool, leather and bast fibres like hemp and flax.
The idea emerged when FibreTrace’s Co-founders – husband-wife duo – Danielle Statham and David once decided to track the cotton they farmed to make sure their fibres weren’t being mixed with lower quality fibres when they sent it to the spinning mills. In 2021 itself, FibreTrace received a European patent for its ‘Photon Marker System in Fibre Material’ that gives brands full transparency and traceability of their textiles. It’s worth mentioning here that the European patent follows the US patent of the technology, which was awarded to FibreTrace back in April 2019.
In the words of Shannon Mercer, CEO of FibreTrace, the technology gives consumers the clearest picture of the garment’s supply chain and its social and environmental impact all because now consumers want the ability to make informed choices when it comes to their purchases.
FibreTrace has already worked with an Aussie brand Nobody Denim to create a capsule collection of completely traceable garments. The end-consumers were able to scan the Nobody Denim swing tickets and follow the journey of the garments, giving them complete transparency into the supply chain. The company has recently received European patent for its technology and it will boost its efforts to collaborate with more fashion retailers and brands in time to come.
EON’s CircularID helps boost circular fashion concept with more transparency…
EON, a leading traceability tech platform founded in 2015 in New York, is all about strengthening the circular economy, connecting brands, customers and the industry using technology that integrates with NFC (near-field communication) tags or QR codes to assign a garment with a CircularID. This ID contains information about the garment’s original price, material composition, dye processes and other key features, which would help recycling companies better understand what to do with the garment, allow brands to refurbish old clothes and assist in the authentication of luxury products for resale.
EON’s tech also allows brands to create a hub of information for consumers, too. PANGAIA, in 2021, partnered with EON leveraging its Product Cloud Platform to power ‘digital passports’ for its products, in a move that will help accelerate greater transparency, traceability and circularity in the industry and inspire responsible consumer choices. Powered by the QR code and cloud-hosted digital twin, the digital passports bring to life each garment’s unique journey and offer customers access to product-level impact reporting in a more interactive way. The digital passports, which are printed directly onto PANGAIA care labels, unlock a bespoke digital experience when scanned by a customer’s phone.
TextileGenesis develops ‘Fibercoins’ to view supply chain traceability
TextileGenesis – a Hong Kong-based blockchain tech company for apparel and textile industry – focuses on creating transparency from fibre-to-retail and authenticity of sustainable textiles. The technology is especially curated to fit the need of apparel industry through Fibercoins. These Fibercoins create the ability to trace and manage the textile products across the apparel supply chain by creating a digital twin of the sustainable fibres at the point of origin. These are blockchain-based digital tokens to digitise physical volume of sustainable materials and are not based on any crypto-currency (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) to restrict any legal and financial risk for the businesses.
The retailers and brands get access to the platform to view supply chain traceability. Each business across the textile value chain can create account on TG platform and start conducting transactions with the downstream customer. The solution can be either integrated within the existing brand apps or retailers can even opt for TextileGenesis transparency mobile app. The customers are required to scan the barcodes to view the garment history and relevant sustainability certifications.
It’s worth noting here that the technology of TextileGenesis has received several awards for its innovation including the Global Change Awards from H&M foundation (often called Nobel Prize in Fashion), and Fashion For Good’s South Asia Innovation Programme.
The apparel giant from India that has gone for improving traceability and enhancing process visibility in its supply chain is Arvind that, in 2021, joined hands with Textile Genesis. The platform provided by Textile Genesis requires stakeholders/participants at each stage of the supply chain to input production data which establishes oversight into proceedings.
As the manufacturer, Arvind issues a digital ‘fibercoin’ (that creates the ability to trace and manage the textile products across the apparel supply chain by creating a digital twin of the sustainable fibres – per kg of fibre at the origin (in ginneries for cotton and production plants for man-made cellulosic fibres, etc.) to the buyer, which mirrors the transaction of a physical good in the supply chain which means these fibercoins will be virtually visible to all brands as well as their customers.
InfiniChains’ Credible Dashboard drastically turns their purchase order (PO) into a lens
Founded by Parth Patil, Ravi Agrawal and Jitesh Shetty, InfiniChains is a start-up that provides traceability solution, led by blockchain technology, to various industries including fashion.
The traceability dashboard ‘Credible’ of InfiniChains for the brands allows them to visualise the supply chain for sourced products, check claims associated with them and inspect the origin of the raw materials. Credible is said to be a next generation technology platform built from the ground up for fashion brands that drastically turns their purchase order (PO) into a lens! A lens that gives brands deep insights into the traceability of the material and upstream processes all the way to the seed, and all this happens through technology that uses blockchain and AI models to enable automation and collaboration across upstream suppliers.
Though InfiniChains charges the fashion brands an annual licensing fee for the use of its platform that is proportional with the volume of products they are tracking on its system, there’s no cost to use the system for the suppliers and vendors of the brands, and they get their own dashboards and login from where they can submit data for the supply chain stages they are responsible for and also get visibility into their upstream supply chain.
The company was one of the first to enter the Indian apparel industry in collaboration with leading garment maker Pratibha Syntex to eliminate challenges in their textile supply chain.
In the successful pilot project, every garment had a tag with a QR code, which could be scanned through an app and the entire journey of the garment from farmer to the end product was visible. One could donate directly to the farmer through a payment gateway or else the donation could be given for a cause like plantation, women’s education, etc.
TrusTrace’s SaaS model assists companies trace entire product journey…
Incepted in Sweden, TrusTrace is originally founded by Indians – Shameek Ghosh, Hrishikesh Rajan, Madhava Venkatesh and Saravanan Parisutham – to make fashion supply chain more informed and transparent for retailers, brands and the consumers. Through SaaS model, TrusTrace enables companies trace the entire product journey from fibre to garment to fibre – maximising impact while keeping everyone in the know. This includes production facilities, product certifications and product sustainability labels and footprint computation across garment manufacturers, fabric manufacturers, wet processing units, spinners, fibre manufacturers and beyond.
Recently, to extend its efforts in traceability especially to ensure ESG, TrusTrace formed a coalition of industry players – Higg, the Open Apparel Registry (OAR), Circle.Fashion, Renoonand Haelixa – to introduce a traceability ecosystem that aims at launching holistic solutions to the fashion industry’s biggest challenges, and this will happen as the development of a powerful integrated solution through seamless data integration and knowledge exchange has been planned.
The first phase of the newly formed traceability ecosystem launched with sustainability insights platform Higg and global apparel open-source database the Open Apparel Registry and will facilitate the integration of TrusTrace and Higg data sharing. According to TrusTrace, this will help its clients understand the social and environmental impact of their supplier facilities and their products by accessing their data from Higg on TrusTrace. The integration will also help users understand the materials’ footprints in a single location and analyse supply chain and material combinations. The customers will also be able to access the Higg Facility Environmental Module (FEM) and Facility Social and Labor Module (FSLM) FLSM against their supplier facility profiles on TrusTrace to provide them with a single view of all the sustainability information for a facility.
French sporting goods retailer Decathlon is said to achieve greater control over their sustainability chains in order to ensure 100 per cent confidence in product sustainability claims. The TrusTrace platform was used for lot level traceability of various materials – across tiers and business units. A simplified user interface for suppliers and brands enabled Decathlon to onboard suppliers remotely – across three continents in less than six months. The platform has been adopted by various business units (ranging from textiles to bikes) and has enabled the tracing of 30 per cent of the total volume for certain business units within 12 months of roll-out. The platform is expected to enable 100 per cent traceability for said business units by 2022.
Lyfcycle QR code lets customers know how a garment is made…
Lyfcycle, a UK-based developer of solutions for sustainable clothing, strongly believes traceability and transparency come hand in hand with sustainable apparel that goes beyond being just B2B development but more for consumers. Every Lyfcycle made garment has a unique QR code that when scanned, via the Lyfcycle mobile app, gives consumers an insight into where and how their clothes were made.
The app is designed to open a door to the ‘Lyfcycle’ of a garment before it reaches the end customer’s hands. This includes sharing what ingredients make up a product, the processes that go into creating recycled materials and visibility of the company’s core supply chain. It’s also a tool for informing consumers about their choices when it comes to garment after care and post-consumer recycling. With these solutions, brands and retailers seem to get an opportunity to engage with their consumers and can share with them the positive changes that they are making within their supply chain.
The company further reports that its solution for traceability and transparency is a purpose-built platform to track and trace textile waste. The Lyfcycle web platform is accessible to its partner brands and suppliers and enables them to monitor the recycling of textile waste from production. Easy access to certificates and accreditations boosts confidence and transparency in the supply chain.