To do this, Eon has spent several years developing the Circular Product Data Protocol with partners including H&M and the Global Standards Organisation. Through this, Eon enables partner brands to become part of a broader ecosystem with a shared language and approach to product data. EU policymakers are leaning on the protocol to decide which data should be required of its incoming digital product passports. Eon is also working with the Walmart Foundation on a $1.2 million grant programme to set guidelines for what happens to digital products in textile-to-textile recycling systems.
For the vision Franck has in mind, single brand partners are not enough; it will require the entire industry to form a shared ecosystem. Several brands are now looking to Eon for digitisation, and resellers keen to access brand data have been quick to sign up, but Franck says the addition of recyclers has been slower, as products must be ID-ed at scale first.
Moving forward, brands will be able to earn from the ecosystem, says Franck, by charging partners to connect to their digital IDs. The details of this will be announced formally later this year, but one potential benefit could be doubling the profitability of each product without having to develop separate resale platforms. One of the critiques of integrated resale offerings — which have gained popularity in the last year — is that brands trying to retain the consumer in owned channels are not accounting for the multibrand mode many people prefer to shop in. Eon says its approach would allow brands to authenticate their own products, drive customers towards approved resale partners, and still generate revenue from resold items even if the sale takes place on a third-party marketplace.
One of Eon’s biggest challenges is finding the people within brands who can drive progress, especially when the work often goes across departments and there is no clear owner. For now, Eon is managing the collaboration between departments, taking stock of how different teams want to use the digital IDs and bringing those needs together into one package. “This works best in companies that already have a strong structure for cross-department collaboration,” says Franck.
The next step is convincing brand partners to apply digital IDs at scale. “This is not a capsule collection mindset,” explains Franck. “The ubiquity is what will make it so impactful.”
Key takeaway: Brands including Mulberry, Yoox Net-a-Porter and Gabriela Hearst are getting ahead of incoming EU legislation by implementing digital product IDs. By unlocking supply chain transparency and resale, it could mean more revenue from less products. The challenge for Eon is how to spur behaviour change and investment at scale, while overtaking its rivals. It is hoping high-profile brand partnerships and pre-competitive initiatives can help.
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