Digital Product Passport questions, answered plainly

Wetrack is software that helps a fashion brand turn the product information it already has into a Digital Product Passport it can publish and defend. You import your catalogue, see for each product what data is ready and what is missing, attach certificates to the claims you make, run a Life Cycle Assessment with an open method, and publish a branded passport page with a QR code. It is built for independent and mid-sized brands that sell in the EU and do not have a compliance team. Prices are public and there is a free plan.

The passport is the visible output. Most of the work, and most of the value, is underneath it: knowing which information matters for your products, finding it across your catalogue and suppliers, and proving the claims you publish. Wetrack is built around that work. The passport is what you get at the end, and it stays useful when the rules move because the record behind it is structured and yours.

We do not do supplier risk audits, multi-tier due diligence programmes or physical labels. If you need those, an enterprise traceability platform is a better fit, and we say so.

The EU has now formalised the core technical standards and launched the central DPP Registry. The exact mandatory passport content and compliance date for fashion are still being defined through the textile-specific ESPR rules. Wetrack is aligning its identifiers, QR and NFC carriers, data hosting and interoperability architecture with the newly published standards.

In practice that means: your passports already live at a permanent, resolvable URL, can exist at product, batch and unit level, and the data behind them is structured so it can be exported or submitted later. What we do not do is promise that a passport published today is "compliant" with textile rules that are not written yet. Nobody can. See the guide on the compliance deadline for the dated timeline.

Collect and structure the data, because that is the slow part. The textile delegated act is expected in Q3 to Q4 2027, with at least 18 months before it applies, so the earliest application is around the first half of 2029. That sounds far away. But composition by product, supplier and facility per production stage, certificates with expiry dates, weights and care information take months to gather when suppliers answer slowly. Starting with one collection now gives you a base you can update when the act names the exact fields.

The free compliance check shows you, for one product, what you already have and what is missing. It is free and it is a good way to see how much work you actually face.

No. Wetrack sits next to the systems you already run. The Shopify connection is read-only: it imports titles, images, variants and descriptions and never writes anything back to your store. Your product pages, theme and SEO are untouched. Showing the passport on your site is your choice, through a link or the widget.

If you use another system, the REST API lets you create and update products and trigger publications from it. We do not sell named ERP or PLM connectors, so if you need one you or your integrator build it against the API.

Nothing breaks and nothing is invented. Each product shows a readiness percentage and the list of fields that are still empty. You can publish a passport with gaps, and the passport simply does not show what it does not know. When a claim has no certificate behind it, the passport says "self-declared" next to it. During the paid pilot, we help prepare the supplier questions needed to close those gaps. An assisted request workflow inside Wetrack is planned, not available today.

A claim needs proof or it is labelled. If you say a product is GOTS or OEKO-TEX certified, Wetrack asks for the certificate file, its number and expiry date. With a valid file the passport shows the claim as verified. Without one the passport still shows the claim, marked "self-declared". Expired certificates flip back to self-declared until you upload a new one.

We do this because the EU rules on generic environmental claims apply from 27 September 2026, and because a customer who scans a passport should be able to tell the difference between "we have the paper" and "we say so". No other tool we know of labels this so plainly. It also protects you: nothing on your passport is upgraded beyond what you can show.

You do. Products, materials, suppliers, certificates and passports are yours. You can export them at any time, and Wetrack builds on the ODSAS open standard for passport data so what you export is readable outside Wetrack. Published passport URLs stay online for the duration of your plan. If you leave, you take your records with you. We do not sell data, and we do not use your product data for anything except running your account.

Yes, and we recommend it. Import as much of your catalogue as you like on the Free plan, then publish up to 5 passports, which is enough to see the whole path from import to a live QR code. Starter covers 25 published passports, roughly a first collection. If you would rather have someone alongside you, book a demo and we will walk your first collection through the same path together.

Every plan includes email support and written guides. Growth adds chat and priority support, Scale adds dedicated onboarding. If you want hands-on help from the start, book a demo and we will map out your first collection together.

You give us your website and a work email. We read one product page, look for what a passport would need (composition, origin, care, certifications, facilities), estimate a footprint with Ecobalyse where the data allows it, and within a few minutes you get two things: a preview passport built from that public data, marked as estimated, and a dated readiness report that lists what applies to your products in the EU, what was found and what is missing. Both are yours to keep. It is one product, so it is a sample of the work, not the whole job.

Wetrack is built by Polychrome Sàrl in Carouge, Switzerland, founded by Vincent Ghilione. It is a small company, and that shows in good ways (you talk to the person who builds the product) and in ways we are open about (we publish what ships, not a roadmap of promises). The sister product, Weloop, adds branded resale and trade-in to a Shopify store. A Wetrack passport can link to those services today; deeper product and lifecycle-data integration is planned, not live.

The EU has now formalised the core technical standards and launched the central DPP Registry. The exact mandatory passport content and compliance date for fashion are still being defined through the textile-specific ESPR rules. Wetrack is aligning its identifiers, QR and NFC carriers, data hosting and interoperability architecture with the newly published standards.

In practice that means: your passports already live at a permanent, resolvable URL, can exist at product, batch and unit level, and the data behind them is structured so it can be exported or submitted later. What we do not do is promise that a passport published today is "compliant" with textile rules that are not written yet. Nobody can. See the guide on the compliance deadline for the dated timeline.

Collect and structure the data, because that is the slow part. The textile delegated act is expected in Q3 to Q4 2027, with at least 18 months before it applies, so the earliest application is around the first half of 2029. That sounds far away. But composition by product, supplier and facility per production stage, certificates with expiry dates, weights and care information take months to gather when suppliers answer slowly. Starting with one collection now gives you a base you can update when the act names the exact fields.

The free compliance check shows you, for one product, what you already have and what is missing. It is free and it is a good way to see how much work you actually face.

Two different things. GS1 Digital Link is a URL structure that puts a product's GTIN in a web address, so one scan can resolve to a passport. Wetrack's public passport URLs use that pattern (you can see it in the sample passport), and each URL is permanent once printed. ODSAS is an open standard for the passport data itself. We build on it so the record behind your passport is portable and readable by other systems, not locked to ours.

One caveat we insist on: a GS1-style URL does not by itself prove conformity with the six European DPP standards published in July 2026. Identifiers and carriers still have to be checked against EN 18219 and EN 18220 separately, and that is part of the alignment work we do on our side.

The platform. When the EU publishes a new standard, a delegated act or a data field, we update the data model, the readiness rules and the passport templates, and that is included in your subscription. Your existing records stay in place and the readiness view tells you what new gaps have appeared. What we cannot promise is that a passport published today will remain legally sufficient under rules that do not exist yet. When a change requires new information from you or your suppliers, someone still has to collect it. We make that visible; we do not make it disappear.

The EU has now formalised the core technical standards and launched the central DPP Registry. The exact mandatory passport content and compliance date for fashion are still being defined through the textile-specific ESPR rules. Wetrack is aligning its identifiers, QR and NFC carriers, data hosting and interoperability architecture with the newly published standards.

In practice that means: your passports already live at a permanent, resolvable URL, can exist at product, batch and unit level, and the data behind them is structured so it can be exported or submitted later. What we do not do is promise that a passport published today is "compliant" with textile rules that are not written yet. Nobody can. See the guide on the compliance deadline for the dated timeline.

Collect and structure the data, because that is the slow part. The textile delegated act is expected in Q3 to Q4 2027, with at least 18 months before it applies, so the earliest application is around the first half of 2029. That sounds far away. But composition by product, supplier and facility per production stage, certificates with expiry dates, weights and care information take months to gather when suppliers answer slowly. Starting with one collection now gives you a base you can update when the act names the exact fields.

The free compliance check shows you, for one product, what you already have and what is missing. It is free and it is a good way to see how much work you actually face.

No. Wetrack sits next to the systems you already run. The Shopify connection is read-only: it imports titles, images, variants and descriptions and never writes anything back to your store. Your product pages, theme and SEO are untouched. Showing the passport on your site is your choice, through a link or the widget.

If you use another system, the REST API lets you create and update products and trigger publications from it. We do not sell named ERP or PLM connectors, so if you need one you or your integrator build it against the API.

From Shopify we import product names, descriptions, images, variants, SKUs and prices when present. That is usually enough to start, and rarely enough to publish.

What shops almost never know is what a passport needs: composition as structured materials with shares, country per production stage (spinning, fabric, dyeing, assembly), the facilities involved, product weight, care and end-of-life information, and the certificates behind any claim. Wetrack shows those gaps per product, helps organise reusable resources and suggests the best product matches for you to review.

Nothing breaks and nothing is invented. Each product shows a readiness percentage and the list of fields that are still empty. You can publish a passport with gaps, and the passport simply does not show what it does not know. When a claim has no certificate behind it, the passport says "self-declared" next to it. During the paid pilot, we help prepare the supplier questions needed to close those gaps. An assisted request workflow inside Wetrack is planned, not available today.

A claim needs proof or it is labelled. If you say a product is GOTS or OEKO-TEX certified, Wetrack asks for the certificate file, its number and expiry date. With a valid file the passport shows the claim as verified. Without one the passport still shows the claim, marked "self-declared". Expired certificates flip back to self-declared until you upload a new one.

We do this because the EU rules on generic environmental claims apply from 27 September 2026, and because a customer who scans a passport should be able to tell the difference between "we have the paper" and "we say so". No other tool we know of labels this so plainly. It also protects you: nothing on your passport is upgraded beyond what you can show.

You do. Products, materials, suppliers, certificates and passports are yours. You can export them at any time, and Wetrack builds on the ODSAS open standard for passport data so what you export is readable outside Wetrack. Published passport URLs stay online for the duration of your plan. If you leave, you take your records with you. We do not sell data, and we do not use your product data for anything except running your account.

Two different things. GS1 Digital Link is a URL structure that puts a product's GTIN in a web address, so one scan can resolve to a passport. Wetrack's public passport URLs use that pattern (you can see it in the sample passport), and each URL is permanent once printed. ODSAS is an open standard for the passport data itself. We build on it so the record behind your passport is portable and readable by other systems, not locked to ours.

One caveat we insist on: a GS1-style URL does not by itself prove conformity with the six European DPP standards published in July 2026. Identifiers and carriers still have to be checked against EN 18219 and EN 18220 separately, and that is part of the alignment work we do on our side.

The platform. When the EU publishes a new standard, a delegated act or a data field, we update the data model, the readiness rules and the passport templates, and that is included in your subscription. Your existing records stay in place and the readiness view tells you what new gaps have appeared. What we cannot promise is that a passport published today will remain legally sufficient under rules that do not exist yet. When a change requires new information from you or your suppliers, someone still has to collect it. We make that visible; we do not make it disappear.

You give us your website and a work email. We read one product page, look for what a passport would need (composition, origin, care, certifications, facilities), estimate a footprint with Ecobalyse where the data allows it, and within a few minutes you get two things: a preview passport built from that public data, marked as estimated, and a dated readiness report that lists what applies to your products in the EU, what was found and what is missing. Both are yours to keep. It is one product, so it is a sample of the work, not the whole job.

For a useful first passport: product name, a GTIN if you have one, material composition, care instructions, country of manufacture and a statement on substances of concern. To add the environmental profile you also need product weight, the product category, the fabric process type and the countries for each production stage (spinning, fabric production, dyeing, assembly). Most brands publish a first passport within an hour of importing, then improve it as supplier answers come in.

We do not publish a Wetrack field list as "the mandatory textile dataset", because the EU has not defined it yet. The readiness view separates what current rules ask for from what the textile DPP is expected to ask for.

Wetrack uses AI inside specific onboarding and product-data steps. It helps find and categorise existing information, checks the brand's reusable resource library and proposes the materials, care instructions, certificates or suppliers that appear to match an imported product. You review, change or reject each proposal. It is not a chatbot, and it does not publish information on its own.

For textile products Wetrack uses Ecobalyse, the public environmental calculation method developed by the French authorities. Product weight, category, materials, process types and country per stage produce a carbon footprint in kg CO₂e, a PEF-style score and a durability coefficient, with the breakdown by life-cycle stage. For leather goods we use a PEF-based model built from published leather LCA data. The method and the inputs are shown on the passport.

Accuracy follows your inputs. A calculation from a guessed weight and a default country is a rough estimate, and the passport should say so. Wetrack flags estimated inputs and lets you replace them as real data arrives. If you already work with an LCA consultant, keep them; the point here is a credible, open, per-product number without a consultant for every SKU.

When you publish, Wetrack generates a QR code as an SVG, so it prints sharp at any size on a hang tag, care label or packaging. It points to the passport's permanent public URL. You can generate one code for the product model, one per batch, or one per unit on Growth and above. The URL printed on a code never changes; if you update the passport, the same code shows the new version. Software only: no special labels or hardware supplier required, use whatever labels you already print.

Every passport carries your brand name and logo and follows a clean layout that reads well on a phone. From Growth you can set colours, choose which sections appear and in which order, and from Scale you can white-label the whole thing. The goal is a page that looks like part of your brand and not a government form, while keeping the structure the same for every product so a customer, a retailer or an auditor finds the same things in the same place.

The same permanent passport can remain useful after checkout. An owner can return to it for care and repair instructions, material and origin information, evidence behind claims, and any take-back, resale or recycling routes the brand chooses to publish. Because the QR code keeps the same address, the brand can update that guidance without replacing the label.

Wetrack does not currently provide owner registration, loyalty, automated resale, ownership transfer or CRM features. The value today is a useful, updateable product page that stays with the product.

Public passports can be shown in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish from the Starter plan; the Free plan publishes in English. The Wetrack app itself is in English today, with French and German planned. Automatic translation of your own product texts is on the roadmap and not shipped, so today you enter translated descriptions yourself where you want them.

Yes. The REST API under /api/v1 uses brand-scoped bearer tokens and covers reading and writing products, materials and suppliers, triggering LCA calculations and publishing passports, at 600 requests per hour per token. It is included from the Growth plan. The Shopify app is included on every plan. Webhooks and custom limits are available on Scale.

Only what you choose. Some information is meant to be public in a passport, such as the country of manufacture. Facility names, addresses and documents can be kept private and used only for readiness and audit purposes. On each product you decide what the public page shows beyond the minimum. Preview passports built by the free readiness check show facility details because they are built from public data; passports in your account default to keeping them private.

You add the production locations behind each stage: who spins, weaves or knits, dyes and assembles. When a location exists on Open Supply Hub, Wetrack stores its OS ID as an open, reusable reference. When it does not, the location stays private to your account unless you choose to submit it. Open Supply Hub reviews new submissions before assigning an OS ID.

An OS ID identifies a location. It is not a rating, an audit or proof that the location made a particular product. Missing stages still show as gaps. During the paid pilot, we work with brands to find and request those answers. Supplier outreach inside Wetrack is planned.

No. Wetrack sits next to the systems you already run. The Shopify connection is read-only: it imports titles, images, variants and descriptions and never writes anything back to your store. Your product pages, theme and SEO are untouched. Showing the passport on your site is your choice, through a link or the widget.

If you use another system, the REST API lets you create and update products and trigger publications from it. We do not sell named ERP or PLM connectors, so if you need one you or your integrator build it against the API.

From Shopify we import product names, descriptions, images, variants, SKUs and prices when present. That is usually enough to start, and rarely enough to publish.

What shops almost never know is what a passport needs: composition as structured materials with shares, country per production stage (spinning, fabric, dyeing, assembly), the facilities involved, product weight, care and end-of-life information, and the certificates behind any claim. Wetrack shows those gaps per product, helps organise reusable resources and suggests the best product matches for you to review.

Yes. The REST API under /api/v1 uses brand-scoped bearer tokens and covers reading and writing products, materials and suppliers, triggering LCA calculations and publishing passports, at 600 requests per hour per token. It is included from the Growth plan. The Shopify app is included on every plan. Webhooks and custom limits are available on Scale.

Any Shopify plan. Install from the Shopify App Store or connect from your Wetrack account. Installation gives Wetrack read-only access to import products with variants and re-sync when your catalogue changes; it does not edit or rebuild your store. Variants that share the same product data belong to one product passport. The storefront widget is a separately enabled, visible element on your product page, and you choose whether to use it. Every published passport keeps its own permanent link and QR code either way.

Yes, and we recommend it. Import as much of your catalogue as you like on the Free plan, then publish up to 5 passports, which is enough to see the whole path from import to a live QR code. Starter covers 25 published passports, roughly a first collection. If you would rather have someone alongside you, book a demo and we will walk your first collection through the same path together.

The platform. When the EU publishes a new standard, a delegated act or a data field, we update the data model, the readiness rules and the passport templates, and that is included in your subscription. Your existing records stay in place and the readiness view tells you what new gaps have appeared. What we cannot promise is that a passport published today will remain legally sufficient under rules that do not exist yet. When a change requires new information from you or your suppliers, someone still has to collect it. We make that visible; we do not make it disappear.

Every plan includes email support and written guides. Growth adds chat and priority support, Scale adds dedicated onboarding. If you want hands-on help from the start, book a demo and we will map out your first collection together.

Every passport carries your brand name and logo and follows a clean layout that reads well on a phone. From Growth you can set colours, choose which sections appear and in which order, and from Scale you can white-label the whole thing. The goal is a page that looks like part of your brand and not a government form, while keeping the structure the same for every product so a customer, a retailer or an auditor finds the same things in the same place.

Public passports can be shown in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish from the Starter plan; the Free plan publishes in English. The Wetrack app itself is in English today, with French and German planned. Automatic translation of your own product texts is on the roadmap and not shipped, so today you enter translated descriptions yourself where you want them.

Published passports, and nothing else. Importing products, preparing them and keeping them as drafts is unlimited on every plan, so you can bring in your whole catalogue and work on it before you publish anything. Each plan says how many passports you can publish in total: 5 on Free, 25 on Starter, 150 on Growth and 500 on Scale. It is a total, not a monthly allowance, so nothing resets and nothing expires. Editing a passport you already published, or re-publishing it after a change, is free and does not count again.

No. Import your whole Shopify catalogue, add products by hand or through the API, and prepare as many of them as you want. Products, materials, suppliers and certificates are not limited by your plan. The only number that matters is how many passports you publish, so you can do all the preparation work on the Free plan and decide later how far you want to publish.

No, and most brands do not start that way. You choose which products get a published passport, and pick the plan that covers that number. A first collection usually fits inside Starter, and you can move up when you are ready to cover more of the catalogue. The products you have not published stay in Wetrack as drafts, ready when you need them.

No. A passport gets a permanent identifier and a public address the moment it is published, and that link and its QR code have to keep resolving for the life of the product, including after resale. So a published passport stays published, and each publication takes one place on your plan for good. That is why we suggest publishing your first products deliberately, and keeping everything else as drafts until you are sure. Preparation is unlimited, so there is no cost to taking your time.

Yes. Upgrade, downgrade or cancel from your account. Upgrades apply immediately with prorated billing and raise the number of passports you can publish; downgrades and cancellations apply at the end of the current period. Passports you have already published stay online for the duration of your plan, and your data can be exported before you leave.

Published passports stay online for the duration of your plan. Before you leave, you can export your products, materials, suppliers, certificates and passport data, and because Wetrack builds on the ODSAS open standard it is readable outside Wetrack. If you need your passport addresses to keep resolving after you stop paying, tell us before you cancel and we will look at it with you.

You can build a passport page. What is expensive to build and keep is the rest: a structured data model that follows the EU standards as they land, readiness rules per product, evidence handling with expiry, an LCA integration, permanent URLs and QR generation at product, batch and unit level, and someone watching the regulation. Most brands find that a year of Wetrack costs less than a few developer days, and that the developer days never stop.

Cards through Stripe, SEPA direct debit for European customers, and invoice with bank transfer on Scale. Prices are in euros and exclude VAT, which is added where it applies based on your billing country. Yearly billing costs the same as ten months.