Care label, QR and RFID

A passport is opened by a code, and where the code sits on the product decides whether it gets scanned. For clothing, the care label is the obvious place. The care label is created when the piece is made, stays with it through the wardrobe, resale, repair and recycling, and is where a customer already looks for the fibre content and the washing symbols.

The care label as carrier

The care label is permanent, and nothing new has to be made for it. A passport care label prints a GS1 Digital Link, a web address that carries the item's identity, alongside the fibre content, the washing symbols and the country of origin the label already carries. Your existing label supplier keeps making it, with new artwork. A hang tag or a sticker added later does not count as a permanently attached carrier under the rules; the carrier has to be printed, engraved or embedded, and not removable, and the care label was already that.

The identity in the code

The GTIN is licensed to your brand by your GS1 member organisation, one per SKU, and we never generate one. Next Horizon allocates serial numbers on your GTIN under a written delegation with an agreed allocation rule, so the serials on your care labels never collide with any issued by another party on your behalf. One GTIN plus one serial makes one item, and GTIN, SGTIN or batch explains when a batch is enough instead. The same code can serve the till: GS1's Sunrise 2027 programme asks retail scanners to read a QR carrying the GTIN inside a Digital Link, with the EAN barcode kept alongside until the retailer is ready.

The customer already turns the garment over to read the label. The passport only has to be there when they do.

Placement and scanning

Where the code sits on the piece comes first, because a label folded into a seam cannot be scanned. Its printed size and the quiet zone around it matter, because a code squeezed between the washing symbols loses its margin. So does which way it faces once the product is folded or rolled, because a T-shirt in a polybag is scanned through the bag at the warehouse, not on a hanger. We work through these per product with the label supplier before the first run, and a second, carton-level code can resolve to every passport inside the box, so a whole carton is received in one scan.

QR and RFID

A QR code needs line of sight, so it suits a phone or a scan window. An RFID tag reads through the carton, which suits the dock and the stockroom. Paired on the same item and tied to the same serialised identity, they serve everyone from one record: the customer scans the QR to the passport page, the warehouse reads the RFID to locate and count stock, and on return the scan opens the item's own record rather than a generic product page. The packaging carries its own marking for sorting and composition, linked to the item inside.

The customer's scan

A scan opens the item's own page: confirmation that it is genuine, its custody state and batch, the care instructions in their language, the materials, and whatever else you chose to show, never the price or the purchase order. The scan writes nothing to the record and collects nothing about the person scanning. After the sale the same code is how a return is matched to the exact item, how a repair is written to its history, and how a recall reaches the affected pieces rather than a whole season.