CEO van Renoon over uitdagingen en voordelen

It is the operational issues, rather than the requirements, that cause bottlenecks in DPP implementation. Who internally owns this data? What budget do the costs fall under? Which suppliers should be connected first? And within what period? These are some of the questions DPP provider Renoon faced.

The company started as a sustainable fashion app for consumers. Now it specializes in end-to-end DPP infrastructure and traceability for the fashion industry. Product management, traceability and compliance were previously treated as three separate areas by the fashion industry. However, Renoon sees itself as a total solution for the delivery of the DPP. It combines regulatory expertise, supplier onboarding, data infrastructure and implementation in one process.

The company works with fashion brands of different sizes throughout Europe. As a result, the challenges during implementation are also very diverse. For large fashion companies, the challenges are mainly related to governance. For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), operational capacity can be a problem. FashionUnited spoke with Iris Skrami, co-founder and CEO of Renoon. The conversation focused on how brands can get started, what the data challenges and blind spots are, and how data sharing works most efficiently.

Can you explain the different challenges depending on company size?

For larger companies, EU regulations raise questions about ownership and cross-functional coordination. There is also the question of where DPP fits within broader digital transformation programs. In these organizations, the first step is typically a business case and an internal alignment process, not technology implementation.

Smaller companies have smaller teams and resources are spread among fewer people. Therefore, the idea of ​​a multi-year transformation program is not realistic. What Renoon typically sets up with these brands is a phased roadmap: where to start, which suppliers to prioritize, and what implementation might look like in year one versus year three. The brands that are making the fastest progress are not necessarily investing more. They make early decisions about ownership, supplier involvement and data strategy.

How does data drive implementation?

One of the most consistent findings in Renoon’s work is that brands overestimate the amount of missing data. At the same time, they underestimate how fragmented the data they do have is. Product information is contained in PLM systems (product life cycle, ed.); operational data is located on ERP platforms (enterprise resource planning, ed.). Supplier certifications, traceability data and environmental data are managed through a separate layer of processes, spreadsheets and partner portals. The information exists, but is not connected in a way that is verifiable, scalable, or structured for a product-level passport. In other words, the data is there, but the infrastructure and interoperability are lacking. So the real question is often how existing systems, supplier networks and compliance requirements can communicate with each other within one framework.

What were some of the early challenges and what are the challenges now?

In the beginning, the challenge was legitimacy. We asked brands to invest time and resources in something that felt speculative. A regulation that had not yet been enforced, a data infrastructure that did not yet exist on a large scale, and a type of provider for which the market did not yet have a clear name. Gaining early partnerships meant convincing people to act before the majority did.

Now the challenge is reversed. Consciousness is no longer the bottleneck. What we continue to see is that fashion brands understand the requirements, but have not yet resolved the internal questions that need to be answered first: who is the owner, what budget covers the costs, which suppliers are prioritized and when. The friction in decision-making has shifted from “should we do this” to “how do we actually start doing this.” That sounds like progress, and it is, but it introduces a different kind of complexity. We are often just as much a coordination partner as a technical partner.

What was the biggest data “blind spot” you discovered when mapping multi-tiered supply chains?

The assumption that missing data means that the data does not exist. In almost every implementation we’ve done, brands overestimate how much data they’re missing and underestimate how fragmented the data they already have is. Product information is located in PLM systems. Operational data is stored on ERP platforms. Certifications, environmental data and traceability documentation are spread across spreadsheets, supplier portals and email chains. The data exists, but is not connected in a way that is verifiable or structured for a product-level passport.

“The biggest data blind spot is the assumption that missing data means the data doesn’t exist.”

The real blind spot is in the second and third layers of the chain. Brands generally have a reasonable understanding of their direct manufacturers. But the materials, the dyes, the chemical inputs; they come from suppliers that their suppliers purchase from. That’s where the real unknowns are, and that’s where the DPP will ultimately require most of its work.

How do you deal with suppliers who are reluctant to share proprietary information about their facilities or chemical inputs?

With a lot of patience and a clear distinction between what the DPP actually requires and what brands sometimes ask. Suppliers often protect competitively sensitive information: the specific processes, formulas or purchasing relationships that distinguish them. That’s legit. DPP compliance does not require their prescription, but verifiable characteristics. These can usually be structured in such a way that proprietary details remain protected, while still producing a compliant and credible passport.

Part of our job is helping brands have better conversations with their suppliers. We do not frame this as an audit, but as a shared infrastructure problem. Suppliers who understand that the DPP will happen no matter what and that early preparation positions them as a partner of choice act differently than those who feel they are being scrutinized.

At what point in the production process is the digital carrier (QR code) actually assigned: at the fiber stage or once the garment is finished?

In practice, this varies per application and product complexity. The most common approach we see is carrier allocation at the final product stage, usually during final production or before shipping. That is the point at which a stable, unique product identity can be reliably established. Earlier allocation creates challenges for continuity of traceability: a batch of fibers or a roll of fabric does not correspond one-to-one to a finished SKU [stock keeping unit, red.]certainly not with cutting and sewing processes with varying yields.

That said, for brands that prioritize deep material traceability, where the origin of a specific batch of fibers is important to the DPP claim, we do work with upstream data links that are retroactively linked to the passport. The QR code on the garment refers to a passport that can contain data collected at multiple previous points in the chain, even if the wearer itself is only applied at the end.

How do you and your customers ensure that the digital ID remains ‘alive’ and readable after years of washing or intensive use?

This is partly a question about physical sustainability and partly a question about data architecture, and both are important. On the physical side, the carrier technology itself, whether it is a woven label, a heat transfer or an embedded chip, must be specified for the expected life cycle of the product. A QR code on a paper hang tag serves a different purpose than a code woven into a laundry label or encoded in an NFC chip. For products with a long or intensive use cycle, the discussion about the specifications is part of the implementation scoping.

On the data side, the more important question is what happens to the underlying passport infrastructure over time. The physical medium is only as useful as the endpoint to which it points. Renoon builds DPP infrastructure with data persistence and URL stability as non-negotiable requirements. A scan in five years should result in a valid, current record, not a broken link. That’s less glamorous than the QR code itself, but it’s where most DPP implementations will quietly fail if they don’t take it into account from the start.

Finally, what motivated you to move away from a consumer-facing app and towards a platform specialized in Digital Product Passports and supply chain traceability?

The honest answer is that the consumer app has taught us something we couldn’t have learned any other way: consumers want transparency, but brands determine whether it is there. You can build the best product discovery experience, but it reaches a ceiling when the underlying data is missing. We kept hitting the same wall. It was not a demand problem, but a more structural problem. The information brands have about their own products is fragmented, unverified, and not designed to be shared at the product level. At some point it became clear that the more important problem had to be solved upstream. The DPP regulations gave that work a deadline, but the infrastructure gap we were bridging existed long before the regulations.

The interview was conducted in writing.