Digital Product Passports Are Coming: What Bulk Retail Leaders Need to Do Now (and Why RFID Makes It Easier)l

What a Digital Product Passport is, in plain language

Strip away the regulatory language and a Digital Product Passport is a persistent, machine-readable record that travels with a product through its entire life. It is not a document in the traditional sense, not a certificate that sits in a folder or a label printed at dispatch. It is a live dataset, accessible via a 2D barcode or RFID tag on the physical item, that holds structured information about what the product is made of, where its components originated, how it was manufactured, and what should happen to it at the end of its useful life.

The key distinction from existing product data practices is that the DPP must be item-level, not model-level. A product specification sheet describes a category of sofa. A Digital Product Passport describes this sofa – the specific unit, with its specific batch of fabric, its specific frame components sourced from a specific supplier, assembled at a specific facility on a specific date. That level of granularity is what makes DPP both powerful and demanding: it is powerful because it enables genuine traceability and accountability across the supply chain; it is demanding because most retailers’ current data architectures were not designed with item-level identity in mind.

Why bulky categories are particularly affected

Furniture and large-format retail faces DPP requirements with a particular set of complications that do not apply to, say, a single-component garment or a packaged consumer good. A sofa is not one product – it is an assembly of frame materials (typically hardwood, engineered wood, or metal), upholstery fabrics and foams, fixings, and feet, each of which may have come from a different supplier, a different country of origin, and a different tier of the supply chain. A garden structure may combine treated timber, galvanised steel, and injection-moulded plastic components. A wardrobe flat-pack includes panels, rails, fittings, and fixings sourced from multiple inputs.

The DPP requirement does not just ask ‘what is this product made of?’ at a high level. It asks for data that supports repairability – can a consumer replace a specific component? It asks for recycling information – which materials in this product are recyclable, and through which channels? It asks for provenance – where did the timber come from, and can that be verified? For categories where the bill of materials is complex and multi-tiered, answering those questions with confidence requires data that flows reliably from supplier to manufacturer to retailer to consumer, which is precisely where most current supply chain data architectures fall short.

The operational reality: item identity, data capture, and lifecycle events

The operational challenge of DPP is not primarily a technology problem, it is a data discipline problem. The technology to capture, store, and serve the required information already exists and is proven at scale. The harder question is whether the processes, the supplier relationships, and the internal data governance are in place to generate information that is accurate, consistent, and complete enough to populate a DPP with confidence.

Item-level identity is the foundation. Every unit must carry a unique identifier, not a shared model number, but a serial identifier that distinguishes this unit from every other unit of the same product. That identifier must be present from the point of manufacture or import, and it must remain consistent and readable through warehousing, delivery, consumer use, and eventual return or disposal. The lifecycle events that the DPP must record: manufacture, quality check, despatch, delivery, repair, return, recycling, are all anchored to that identifier. Without reliable item-level identity, the event record is incomplete, and the passport is not trustworthy.

For most bulk retailers, the honest assessment is that item-level identity currently exists in some parts of the operation and not others. High-value SKUs may be individually serialised. Lower-value components in a kit are often not. The DPP requirement will change that calculus, because a passport that covers the sofa frame but not the cushion inserts or the leg fixings is not a complete record of the product. Getting to full item-level coverage across a complex product range is not trivial, but it is achievable with a phased approach that prioritises by risk, value, and regulatory timeline.

The risk of doing nothing: supplier data gaps, manual admin, and compliance exposure

The organisations that will struggle most with DPP are not those that lack technology, they are those that have accumulated years of workarounds: product data held in spreadsheets, supplier certificates stored as PDFs in shared drives, provenance information that exists as a verbal assurance rather than a verifiable record. The DPP does not accept workarounds. It requires structured, machine-readable data that can be interrogated by regulators, auditors, and consumers. If the data does not exist in that form, the compliance gap is not a software problem that can be solved quickly – it is a data collection problem that takes time to address at the supplier level.

The commercial risk sits alongside the compliance risk. As DPP becomes established in the market, consumer-facing access to product data, via a QR code scan in-store or at home, will become a differentiating factor. Retailers who cannot provide it will face questions from sustainability-conscious consumers and from major retail partners who will increasingly require DPP-ready supply chains as a condition of listing. The retailers who treat DPP purely as a compliance exercise will find themselves meeting the minimum while their competitors are using the same infrastructure to build trust and loyalty. 

RFID’s role: reliable identity and automated event capture across the lifecycle

RFID is not the only way to link a physical product to its digital passport – 2D barcodes and QR codes are also valid and widely used – but for bulk retail, it is the most operationally practical solution at scale. The reason is straightforward: RFID does not require line of sight, reads multiple items simultaneously, and generates event data automatically at each point of handling. For a category where items are large, often arrive in multiple cartons, and pass through warehouse portals, vehicles, and home delivery environments, the ability to capture identity and movement data without manual scanning at each stage is a significant operational advantage.

In the context of DPP, RFID does two things that are difficult to replicate with other identification methods. First, it enables automated lifecycle event capture: every time a tagged item passes a reader – at a warehouse portal, a loading dock, a delivery confirmation point, a returns intake – the event is recorded without requiring a manual action from the handler. Each of those events becomes part of the product’s DPP record, building the lifecycle history that regulators and consumers will be able to access. Second, RFID supports component-level tagging in a way that barcode scanning does not practically allow at the speeds and volumes that bulk retail operates at. A sofa that arrives in three cartons can have each carton, and potentially each major sub-assembly within it, individually tagged; so the DPP record is genuinely granular rather than a top-level summary.

Coriel’s corielTHINGS platform is designed precisely for this use case: managing product identity and traceability data in a structured, standards-led way that aligns with GS1 identifiers and EPCIS 2.0 event data, the two technical foundations that underpin compliant DPP implementation. For retailers beginning their DPP readiness programme, it provides a practical starting point that avoids the need to build bespoke infrastructure from scratch.

Practical readiness plan: data model, suppliers, tagging strategy, and systems alignment

DPP readiness for bulk retailers is best approached as a four-strand programme running in parallel rather than a linear sequence of steps. The strands are interconnected, and progress on one creates the conditions for progress on the others, but each needs its own owner and its own timeline.

The first strand is the data model: defining precisely what information the DPP must contain for each product category, mapped against the ESPR requirements that apply to that category and the timeline by which they apply. This is not a technology task, it is a cross-functional exercise involving product, compliance, procurement, and IT. The output is a clear specification of what data is needed, what currently exists, and where the gaps are.

The second strand is supplier engagement. The data that populates a DPP does not originate in the retailer’s systems, it originates with the manufacturers and component suppliers who produce the goods. Retailers who have not yet had structured conversations with their supply base about data provision, format standards, and traceability capabilities need to begin those conversations now. Suppliers who are unprepared will become a bottleneck, and in categories with long lead times and complex sourcing, the timeline to resolve supplier data gaps is measured in months, not weeks.

The third strand is the tagging strategy: deciding which products and components will be RFID-tagged, which will carry 2D codes, and at what point in the supply chain the identifier is applied. For most bulk retailers, the pragmatic answer is to start RFID tagging at the point of inbound goods receipt for high-value SKUs, and work back towards the supplier over time as the programme matures. The fourth strand is systems alignment: ensuring that the WMS, OMS, TMS, and any ERP systems that touch the product record are capable of passing DPP-relevant event data into the central repository in a format that meets GS1 and EPCIS 2.0 standards.

How DPP can become a commercial advantage

The retailers who will extract the most value from Digital Product Passport infrastructure are those who build it with commercial opportunity in mind from the outset, not just compliance. The DPP is, at its core, a structured data asset linked to every product unit the business sells. Used intelligently, it becomes the foundation for several commercial capabilities that do not currently exist in most bulk retail operations.

Consumer trust is the most immediate. A customer who can scan a QR code on a sofa in a showroom and access verified information about the timber’s origin, the fabric’s composition, and the product’s repairability has a fundamentally different relationship with that product than one who receives a paper care label and a warranty card. In a market where sustainability claims are increasingly scrutinised, verifiable product data is a more powerful signal than marketing copy.

The DPP also creates the data infrastructure for resale and refurbishment programmes, which are growing in commercial relevance across the furniture sector. A second-hand sofa with a verifiable provenance record – original purchase date, service history, material composition, commands a higher price and is easier to sell than one without. Retailers who operate or partner with recommerce platforms will find that DPP data becomes a direct input to valuation and consumer confidence in the secondary market. Returns processing benefits similarly: a returns intake point with RFID readers can identify an item instantly, retrieve its full history, and route it to the appropriate destination – refurbishment, resale, or recycling – without manual assessment.

Executive checklist: what to ask your teams and vendors this quarter

Before you read on, grab the checklist.

We have distilled the ten questions every bulk retail leader should be asking this quarter into a free, downloadable one-page PDF. Whether you are sharing it with your operations team, taking it into a supplier conversation, or using it to frame an internal review, it gives you a practical starting point for your DPP readiness assessment without wading through the full detail. Download the Digital Product Passport Readiness Checklist here.

Use the following questions to assess your organisation’s current DPP readiness and identify where to focus first:

• Do we have a clear view of which product categories will be in scope for ESPR-mandated DPP, and by when?
• Can we identify every product unit individually – not just by model or SKU, but by serial item identity, across our full range?
• Do we know which materials and components are in each of our products, at a level of detail that would satisfy a DPP data requirement?
• Have we had structured conversations with our key suppliers about their ability to provide verified material and provenance data in a structured format?
• Do our WMS, OMS, and TMS systems currently capture lifecycle events: receipt, despatch, delivery, return in a way that could feed a DPP record?
• Is our current RFID or barcode tagging strategy operating at the item level, or are we still tracking at carton or pallet level for most of our range?
• Have we identified a standards-aligned data repository, one that supports GS1 identifiers and EPCIS 2.0, as the destination for our DPP event data?
• Do we have a cross-functional owner for DPP readiness, or is it currently sitting unowned between compliance, IT, and operations?
• Have we assessed whether our current approach to returns and end-of-life creates any data that would contribute to a DPP lifecycle record?
• Are we aware of the commercial opportunities – resale, refurbishment, consumer trust, that DPP infrastructure could enable, beyond regulatory compliance?

Download the pdf checklist.

The organisations that will be best placed when DPP mandates arrive in bulk retail are not necessarily the largest or the most technically sophisticated, they are the ones that start asking these questions now and begin building the data foundations while there is still time to do it properly. RFID is the most reliable way to generate the item-level event data that DPP requires at the volumes and operational speeds that bulk retail demands. The technology is proven, the standards are established, and the commercial case is compelling. The only question is when, not whether.