FREE GUIDE · 2026 EDITION
Your Digital Product Passport Starter Kit
The timeline, the standards, and how to get ready. A free, practical guide for apparel, textile, and footwear brands, from the team behind TRCE.
Mid-2028
EU Digital Product Passport becomes mandatory for textiles and apparel
Source: EU ESPR
WHY THIS GUIDE
The rules are landing. The plans are not.
19%
Of brands have full value chain visibility today
Source: Supply Chain Brain
$190B
Global resale fashion market
Source: GlobalData 2024
The Digital Product Passport moved from "coming soon" to "being built" this year. The registry has a live date, the standards are publishing, and the textile deadline is taking shape. Yet most brands still do not have a clear, current plan, because the guidance is scattered, and half of what is written about the timeline is wrong.
We pulled everything a fashion, textile, or footwear brand needs into one practical guide. It is the plan we would build, in the order we would build it.
WHAT'S INSIDE
Everything you need to build a realistic DPP plan.
The timeline, corrected. The deadline most brands get wrong, and the dates that are actually locked in.
QR vs NFC vs RAIN RFID. A side-by-side comparison, so you choose the right carrier the first time.
A readiness checklist. Questions you can take straight into your next planning meeting.
A five-level maturity model. Pinpoint exactly where your brand stands today, and the one step that unlocks everything above it.
What "DPP-compliant" actually means. The standards behind the passport, in plain language.
The most future-proof decision you will make. And why it is not choosing a tag.
The business case. Five ways a DPP pays you back, well beyond avoiding penalties.
If you own compliance, sustainability, product, operations, or e-commerce at an apparel, textile, or footwear brand, this guide is for you. Whether you are starting from no serialization or already have item-level data, it meets you where you are and shows the next step.
WHO IT'S FOR
Written for the people who have to make DPP real
FROM AN OFFICIAL CIRPASS-2 PARTNER
A guide from the team helping write the standards
r-pac CNCT is an official CIRPASS-2 partner, one of a small number of industry partners shaping the EU's Digital Product Passport standards, not just reacting to them. That means this guide reflects where the rules are actually heading, not guesswork. It is the same expertise behind TRCE, our traceability and compliance platform, and the digital IDs we manufacture into products at source for brands in 45+ countries.
REAL-WORLD IMPACT
See what a real DPP looks like
Moose Knuckles built an end-to-end Digital Product Passport with r-pac CNCT and traceability partner Retraced: one tag delivering compliance-ready data for the business and a premium experience for the customer, unveiled at the Global Fashion Summit in Copenhagen. The guide breaks down how programs like this come together.
The DPP clock is running. Get the guide.
Everything you need to build your plan, in one free PDF. The timeline, the standards, the carriers, and a readiness checklist for your team.
PART OF TRCE
Compliance is step one. TRCE is the platform.
This guide comes from the team behind TRCE, which turns DPP compliance into traceability, authentication, and a 1:1 consumer channel, all on the same digital ID your supply chain already uses.