Using a combination of IoT and blockchain technologies, consumers can get full insight into the transparency and provenance of the clothing they buy. EVRYTHNG, the IoT platform that activates every consumer product to make it intelligent, interactive and trackable on the web, and OriginTrail, an open-source blockchain protocol for trusted data exchange, are continuing their already successful partnership aimed at bringing a new generation of internet technologies to innovative global brands. Most recently, the two companies partnered with Avery Dennison and fashion brand, 1017 ALYX 9SM, to create clothing that is born digital — allowing brands to connect with their customers directly via a QR code.

OriginTrail and EVRYTHNG partnered up in 2018 with the goal of connecting smart products with the OriginTrail protocol. The first concept implementation was made using EVRYTHNG’s signature Barry the Bear, a toy bear equipped with RFID and NFC chips, as well as a QR code tag, to allow end-to-end supply chain traceability and product authentication. The project gained traction when it was presented as a blockchain-based anti-counterfeiting solution at the European Commission in Brussels.

Since then, the OriginTrail protocol has become part of EVRYTHNG’s Blockchain Integration Hub, a solution that makes it easy for consumer product brands to rapidly test and scale IoT applications to deliver traceability, transparency, authenticity and reward tokens to customers through distributed ledger technology (DLT). This newest project, which can be described as a track-to-the-rack proof-of-concept, is an extension of Avery Dennison’s Janela™ platform, powered by EVRYTHNG, which allows consumers and brands alike to see an item’s journey from creation to sale, understand exactly where the product has come from and prove its provenance. The project brings blockchain-based supply chain visibility and authenticity to the apparel industry and was first unveiled at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit in May 2019 for the 1017 ALYX 9SM clothing brand.

Connecting Smart Products with the Blockchain

This project utilizes EVRYTHNG’s platform which allows consumer product brands to build direct relationships with their customers. The platform can be integrated with a company’s CRM and marketing systems. In the backend, the EVRYTHNG Reactor powers the logic of interactions that consumers make with the standardized data carriers on the products (be it QR codes, RFID tags or others) allowing the systems attached to react, capture and respond to such interactions.

By scanning a label with their smartphone, consumers can view the garment’s journey and track it all the way from the factory to the point-of-sale. This enables fashion brands to enhance their physical products with digital services, such as product provenance, registration, rewards and direct e-commerce, allowing them to better engage with their consumers and grow customer lifetime value.

For this project, the OriginTrail protocol is used for trusted data sharing, ensuring scalable access to the blockchain and data immutability. It is currently implemented as a proof of concept, utilizing a test OriginTrail network, with the main OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN) implementation coming up for the commercial implementations of the project.

“In this PoC, we had the chance to experiment with OriginTrail’s unique incentivised replication system offering a scalable mechanism for sharing supply chain data in a resilient, scalable and cost effective way. After this initial PoC on OriginTrail’s test network, we look forward to larger deployments of supply chain data sharing on the main OriginTrail Decentralized Network (ODN)” said Dominique Guinard, Founder & CTO of EVRYTHNG.

“This project is an important step towards the full integration of the EVRYTHNG Platform with the OriginTrail Decentralised Network (ODN). The ODN adds a data integrity layer to such projects and enables scalable and cost-efficient decentralized data exchange based on the blockchain. It makes sure that no single entity can change data once it enters the system, as copies of data are always stored on a network without a central authority. This also makes the solution inherently more secure and resilient” explained Tomaz Levak, Founder & Managing Director of OriginTrail.

OriginTrail and EVRYTHNG will continue to work on implementations of the OriginTrail protocol, utilising the OriginTrail Decentralised Network’s mainnet for connecting smart products with the blockchain.