PANGAIA partners with EON to launch digital product passports

PANGAIA has partnered with connected products innovator EON – leveraging its Product Cloud platform hosted by Microsoft Azure – 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 a 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. Designed to simulate the user-experience of social media platforms, the experience takes the customer on a journey from the product’s origin through to its purchase, transportation and aftercare. This includes provenance information and mapping of the dyeing, production and distribution facilities. Whilst PANGAIA already takes steps to report on its products’ impact and sustainability credentials, the digital passports will, for the first time, bring together all product-specific data into one place in a fun and engaging way for the consumer.

“It is important to us that information on where and how PANGAIA products are made is accessible and engaging. Taking cues from social media, our new digital passports are putting personalized data around traceability and sustainability at the fingertips of our customers in a fun and interactive way, so they feel empowered to make the best possible choices. As well as helping propel us forward on our own circularity journey, we believe that product digitization is fundamental to driving industry change and accelerating an Earth Positive future – one which gives back more than it takes.”
– Maria Srivastava, Chief Impact Officer, PANGAIA

The digitized product experience will enable PANGAIA to update their customers in real-time as the breadth of their impact reporting evolves. For example, carbon and water impact data could be added retrospectively to a digital passport if the results of a full life cycle assessment (LCA) were pending. Currently, PANGAIA is on track to complete LCAs on 80% of its products by 2022.

As PANGAIA is still at the start of its own circularity journey, digital passports are also helping bridge the gap until the brand can offer customers a fully circular model. As well as being a signal of authenticity, visibility around lifecycle data and aftercare guidance will encourage current and future owners to extend the life of their products and keep them in circulation at the highest value possible, for longer. By providing digital passports on the EON Product Cloud – powered by Microsoft Azure – leveraging EON’s CircularID™ Protocol, PANGAIA is also paving the way for a more circular textile industry. The CircularID™ Protocol is working to ensure that circular resale, recycling and sorting partners can access the data they need to identify, steward and manage products and materials from one product lifecycle to the next.

“Through product digitization, PANGAIA is redefining the relationship between brands, products and customers – pioneering an entirely new model for sustainable commerce and taking a mission-critical step towards realizing a fully circular business model. By turning each product into media channel and medium for ongoing customer relationships, PANGAIA is building transformational relationships with customers and their products. Simultaneously, they are laying the digital foundation to at-scale circular business model transformation through the EON Product Cloud and Network – stewarding each product through a circular lifecycle and unlocking new revenue streams through new circular business models such as resale and recycle.”
– Natasha Franck, Founder and CEO, EON

PANGAIA will debut digital passports in its Horizon t-shirt collection, launching Thursday 13 May 2021. Product landing pages will feature dedicated icons and messaging to increase consumer awareness around the product digitization and dedicated customers emails will re-target customers to encourage user adoption. Throughout 2021, PANGAIA will be rolling out digital passports in phases across current and existing product categories, with new lines being added on a bi-monthly basis.

The investment in digital passports runs in parallel with PANGAIA’s recent project to improve transparency around customers’ impact through the launch of Climate Positive product on its website. Products are identified with an icon and pop-up outlining the verified carbon offsetting schemes that will be used to offset the product’s carbon footprint at time of purchase. This is a development of the existing life cycle assessment widgets that bring to life emissions, water and pesticide savings, compared to if a customer were to buy a conventionally produced product from a different brand.