Would Naomi Campbell want her clothes to be digitally connected?
The idea of Digital IDs in clothing and accessories is gaining traction in some circles, with many watch brands, like Panerai, moving to digital certificates on the blockchain and EON adding tags to Chloe’s RTW.
I love the tie-ins to Web3 available with this tech, as would Ms. Naomi Campbell, I’m sure, scroll to number 4, but this feature in clothing is coming regardless of the underlying tech systems.
So, what’s the great news for consumers in all of this innovation? I see five opportunities for consumers to benefit, but also some potential hazards.
1 Added benefits to the consumer
2 A time-bound communication platform
3 Ease of resale.
4 Value distribution in resale
5 Supply chain traceability
Let's look at each a little more closely...
1. Added benefits to the consumer - aka attaching neat stuff
These digital product passports provide a way for brands to create a digital connection with a consumer, another way to stay in contact. Boss recently attached ski passes to winter outerwear as a direct value-add, Balenciaga gave hoodies and tees their own exclusive soundtrack, and Coach’s Coachtopia products’s IDs provide access to repair-and-restore services.
Further “out there,” 9dcc, the first luxury web3 fashion brand, used IYK* ’s NFC chips to power a social/loyalty program where people with a 9dcc x Jeff Staple baseball cap could have them “signed” via a smartphone tap. That signature is forever tied to the NFT, providing both a souvenir and a social graph as the information on the blockchain is public.
Authenticity is also in play here, but I think we will need to see how NFC, QR codes, and other technologies bridge the physical and digital.
2. A time-bound communication platform - you are (or are not) the sum of the items you own
From a brand’s perspective, if all goods were logged onto the blockchain and attached to their buyers, you’d be building the most incredible consumer CRM on earth- endless, public, and searchable.
But maybe you don’t want to be connected forever? Using digital IDs, that connection might be based on a specific item that you hold. Once you pass it on, could your relationship with the CRM end? This scenario seems unlikely given the value of customer data, but it’s something I’ll be thinking about within the value proposition of digital IDs: how does a CRM based on items you own/hold look different than one based on past purchases?
3.Ease of resale. Help me find cool stuff on The RealReal
If a digital ID comes with the original imagery, there’s a huge bonus both to buyers and sellers. We all know that the wrinkling and weird mannequins of the Real Real often make it hard to shop for clothes that have seen some wear, hiding many amazing gems. The other resale benefits, like appropriately categorizing and describing an item, e.g., wool vs cashmere, black vs. navy, seem beneficial up to a point. The benefit here might be accrued to the platform selling the good, whose algorithms depend on that data, ultimately trickling down to the consumer. For designer items, being able to tag the proper season/collection and designer versus brand will be an Amazon addition to search functionality. Finding Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton on there is HARD! But of course, this tech primarily applies to new garments, which means it will be a few years before this makes that thrill of the hunt that much easier.
4. Value distribution in resale- Let value contributors benefit. One of the tenets of Web3’s creator economy is that the creator should get paid when a work is re-sold since it’s still their intellectual property and creation. Artists often cannot benefit from their success at auction since the piece is owned by someone else.
One fantastic use case I can think of was inspired by @dora maar and their muses, who sell their curated closet turnover. If a piece has been traded a few times, and the first owner provides more value to that chain of ownership, say if Naomi Campbell was gifted the bag after a runway show, sold it at auction, and then the buyer wants to sell it again, attaching Naomi’s name to it adds value and a digital ID could pass back a portion of that sale to Ms. Campbell.
The other option is that the brand could capture some of that value. I heard this in a BofF podcast with Eon, one of the big tech players in this space, where, if I recall, they were talking about jeans, and this struck me as silly. The brand is in a straight commercial partnership and shouldn’t accrue value, but perhaps for young designers, who are more artists than brands, there’s room for this.
5. Supply chain traceability - Give consumers a way to track their garments' history.
The EU has mandated Digital Product Passports for batteries with other goods coming soon, so this utility is more of a slam dunk, but the option for consumers to have an easier way to trace the provenance and cost to the earth of the materials that invade their daily lives seems like a valuable proposition.
I look forward to the innovations in this space and the benefits consumers can accrue. I’m also eagerly watching the blockchain versus non-blockchain debate on digital product passport. Blockchain is public, immutable (e.g., can’t be amended), and transactions are recorded. For authenticity, this is valuable and probably vital. For many of their other use cases, will QR codes and simple NFC chips suffice? Stay tuned!