Seamless Source

A Digital Product Passport could decide whether a garment gets a second life or ends up in landfill.

Last week, our founder Chathura Sudharshan joined a brilliant panel hosted by CDI COLLECTIVE. CIC with Tamily Cookson and Nottingham Trent University, alongside Jen Bell, Berni Raeside-Bell, FCIM, and Erica Horne.

One question stayed with us afterwards:

Everyone celebrates the front end of fashion innovation virtual try-ons, smarter design tools, shiny new DPPs.

But what about the billions of garments that already exist?

The pieces sitting in wardrobes, storage facilities, resale piles, and warehouses moving towards landfill faster than we can recycle them.

That’s where a properly structured Digital Product Passport actually proves its value.

Used as a compliance checkbox, a DPP is just a label with a link.

Built properly, it becomes a living product record that travels with a garment throughout its lifecycle:

fibre composition, origin, care instructions, repair history, resale data, recycling pathways.

And that data is what makes circularity possible at scale:

→ AI sorting systems can identify fibre blends in milliseconds

→ resale and community swap platforms can authenticate and value unlabelled garments

→ recyclers can route textiles into fibre to fibre recovery instead of downcycling

Circularity rarely fails because of a lack of ambition.

It fails because of a lack of usable data.

The passport is the data.

One product. One record. Every stage of the journey.

What would change if every garment you owned could tell you exactly what it’s made from and what should happen to it next?

Last week, we had the opportunity to be part of the RiSC+ Network Fashion & Textiles Collaboration Event in Nottingham and honestly, it was one of those events that leaves you feeling genuinely optimistic about where the industry is heading.

What stood out most was the openness of the conversations. Industry leaders, academics, and innovators are coming together to talk honestly about the challenges we’re all facing around transparency, traceability, responsible sourcing, and circularity in fashion.

These topics are no longer future discussions or “nice to have” ideas. They are becoming essential for building a more resilient and future-ready supply chain, especially with Digital Product Passports (DPP) approaching fast.

For us at Seamless Source, it was incredibly valuable to exchange ideas, hear different perspectives, and explore how collaboration between industry and academia can create real, practical solutions.

We truly believe the best progress happens when people come together to solve bigger challenges collectively.

We’re especially excited about the potential to collaborate with brilliant universities across the UK on future projects focused on supply chain transparency and product circularity.

A huge thank you to RiSC+ Network and everyone we had the chance to speak with throughout the event. The energy, ideas, and willingness to collaborate were genuinely inspiring. 🙌

Looking forward to what comes next.

Chris Weiniger Gerrard Fisher Jothi Kanayalal Mohammed Patel Zoe Sussmeyer Lynn Oxborrow Katherine Townsend Chathura Sudharshan Kim Hua Tan Irina Neaga Zoe Sussmeyer Dr Hilde Heim

Another great edition of the The Health & Safety Event wrapped up.

Our founder, Chathura Sudharshan, was there speaking with PPE businesses and having some really valuable conversations.

It was interesting to see how different teams are starting to approach Digital Product Passports and product data management, each at a different stage, but all moving in the same direction.

A lot of interest around how a single system can bring everything together product data, certifications, and supply chain instead of managing it across multiple tools.

The next edition will be in 2027, a critical year as DPP comes into play.

It will be interesting to see how things evolve from here.

There’s a bigger shift happening in the EU right now.

For years, businesses operating under strict standards have been competing with products that don’t follow the same rules.

Lower prices.
Fewer checks.
Less accountability.

That gap is starting to close.

What’s coming next is stronger enforcement, more transparency, and a push towards traceability across industries.

This isn’t just policy.
It’s a structural change in how the market operates.

The question is:
How ready are businesses for that shift?

📚 Sources (for those who want to go deeper)

European Parliament - Motion for a resolution on protecting EU companies, jobs and products against unfair competition (B10-0185/2026)

DPP is not something you “add later.”

There’s still this thinking:

“We’ll deal with Digital Product Passports when the time comes.”

But here’s the reality.

DPP is coming. Whether you prioritise it now or not.

2027 isn’t far away.

And it’s not a feature you can switch on.

It’s the result of:

structured data
connected systems
full traceability

If your data today is:

scattered
incomplete
manually managed

You can’t just “add DPP.”

Because DPP doesn’t create structure.

It exposes whether you already have it.

That’s the part many teams are starting to realise.

This isn’t just a compliance task.

The companies getting ahead aren’t waiting for the deadline.
They’re fixing the foundation now.

Because once 2027 hits,

it’s not about planning anymore.

It’s about whether you’re ready or not.

If DPP was required tomorrow, how ready would you be?

We’ve seen a pattern across PPE businesses implementing a Product Information Management (PIM).

At first, it works exactly as expected.

Product names, descriptions, images all structured in one place.

A clear step up from spreadsheets and scattered files.

But over time, something starts to happen.

Questions come up:

Where is the latest EN388 test result❓
Is this certification still valid❓
Which version of the document is correct❓

And the answers aren’t always inside the system.

Because most PIM systems are built to manage product information.

Not to manage:

Certification validity
Compliance requirements
Technical standards
Product level traceability

So teams adapt.

They check compliance manually.
They store critical data outside the system.
They fix issues after information is already published.

At that point, the system is still there.

But it’s no longer where decisions happen.

This is where the gap becomes clear.

Not a lack of tools.

But systems that don’t fully understand the product they’re managing.

When the system is built around PPE:

Certifications are linked directly to products
Invalid data doesn’t get through
Compliance becomes part of the workflow, not a separate task

That’s when operations start to change.

We’ve been building towards this with a PPE Operating System, designed around how PPE products actually work day to day.

We’ll be at the Health & Safety Event on April 28 - 30.

If you’re around, feel free to drop a comment, happy to show how this works in practice.

The PPE industry is going through a major shift.

From increasing compliance requirements to the upcoming 2027 Digital Product Passport regulations, the way product and supply chain data is managed is starting to change rapidly.

What used to be handled across spreadsheets, emails, and disconnected systems is now becoming a structured, traceable, and auditable requirement.
That’s exactly why events like The Health & Safety Event matter.

They bring together manufacturers, distributors, and industry leaders to discuss what’s next from compliance and safety standards to how businesses can adapt to these changes in a practical way.

At Seamless Source, we’ve been working closely with PPE businesses facing these challenges firsthand.

A common theme we see:

👉 Product data is scattered
👉 Certifications are managed separately
👉 Teams are duplicating work across systems
👉 And with Digital Product Passports becoming a legal requirement, this complexity only increases.

That’s why we’ve built a PPE Operating System designed specifically to bring product data, compliance, and DPP into one connected system.

We’ll be at NEC Birmingham from 28–30 April, sharing how PPE businesses can start preparing for what’s coming and what a more structured, system-driven approach looks like in practice.

If you’re attending, it would be great to connect.

Always open to a conversation about where the industry is heading and how businesses can stay ahead of it.