Supplier data for passports

The data for a passport sits in spec sheets and PDFs at the factory that sewed the run and at the mill that made the fabric, and the fastest way to get it is to ask each of them only for the data they hold. Send three sheets, one to yourself, one to the maker, one to the mill, each already filled with your own data, and let each party answer only the questions that are theirs.

Field holders

A passport is one record, but the facts in it come from three companies. Your catalogue holds the product's identity, the customs fields and the decisions about repair and end of life. The maker holds everything specific to that production run. The mill holds the composition, the recycled content and the chemical declarations, with the certificates that prove them.

A maker asked for a fibre percentage will usually copy the mill's label; a mill asked for a manufacturing date has no way of knowing it. Collection stalls here, so the sheet names who provides each field and each party sees which questions are its own. Every field group is laid out in Passport contents.

Your own sheet first

Start with your own data, because it pre-fills the sheets your suppliers receive. The name and model, the eight-digit HS code, whether CE or UKCA marking applies and any dangerous goods class live in your catalogue or with your customs broker. So do the public repair and disposal instructions, the repairability score, how long spare parts stay available and where, the recyclability grade from A to D, and the features that let the product be taken apart.

Two fields may not be in your catalogue yet. The cradle-to-gate carbon footprint per unit needs a stated method (WBCSD PACT, PEFCR or ISO 14067) and a note of how much of the figure was measured from suppliers rather than taken from industry averages. And at company level the passport asks for unsold units destroyed in the year, the reasons, and units sent to charity or recycling. Since 19 July 2026, large companies may no longer destroy unsold apparel, clothing accessories and footwear under ESPR and must disclose unsold inventory volumes, so that number is one you have to hold anyway.

The maker's sheet

Because your static data arrives already filled, the maker only confirms the details specific to this run: the manufacturing date, the batch, the facility and the country of origin, and the product safety certificates where the category needs them. Where a specification document already exists, we propose the values from it and a person at the factory confirms rather than types.

There is one piece of proof only the maker can supply. If the product carries a recycled content claim under GRS, every facility in the chain has to be certified, not only the mill, so the maker's own scope certificate belongs on its sheet. A maker that cannot produce one turns the claim into a gap, however good the mill's paperwork looks.

The mill's sheet

The materials group is the hardest part of any passport and nearly all of it sits with the mill. It covers every material or fibre with its percentage by mass, summing to 100; recycled and biobased content; a durability metric where one has been tested; and the chemical declaration, meaning any REACH substance of very high concern at or above 0.1 per cent by weight, with the SCIP dossier reference where one exists. The mill is also where the measured share of your carbon figure comes from.

The certificates are the part that comes back short most often. A recycled content claim needs a GRS or RCS scope certificate plus a transaction certificate for each lot. The scope certificate proves the mill is allowed to handle recycled material, and nothing about your shipment. The transaction certificate for the lot is the document to ask for by name, and it is the one that tends to be missing.

Ask for the transaction certificate by name. The scope certificate is the one they will send you anyway.

Answer states

Not every field comes back filled, and the sheet records which ones. A field comes back in one of five states: provided, with the value and the document behind it; partial (a value with no proof or proof with no value, a composition that does not sum to 100, a recycled claim with a scope certificate only); in conflict, when the spec sheet and the certificate disagree; missing, because the holder does not have it or will not share it yet; or not applicable, which should also be recorded in writing.

The first round shows you where the gaps are. Partial and in conflict need a phone call. Missing tells you which supplier relationship to work on first, before the obligation reaches your category.

The collection

The obligation arrives sector by sector, and the data takes longer to assemble than the software takes to publish it. Your suppliers do not adopt our software to answer you. They keep their own systems and answer a sheet that is already part filled, and the completed file comes back to you and is loaded once, without anyone retyping it.

The passports those fields attach to already exist. Most are minted automatically as products and orders flow in from your store, so the supplier data you collect lands on a record that is already there; a passport is created by hand, or imported in a batch from a CSV template, only for the exceptions. Passports are included in every plan, Free included, with a monthly allowance; batch passports have their own allowance from Starter up, and on paid plans extras past the allowance are billed per passport.