Trust-Place partners with EIML Paris around the Digital Product Passport

At a time of ecological and regulatory transition in the luxury sector, the concept of the Digital Product Passport (DPP)is emerging as a strategic lever to strengthen traceability, sustainability, and post-purchase engagement.

Driven by the Luxury & Responsibility Chair, and in collaboration with Trust-Place, the leading platform for post-purchase traceability, students of the Luxury Marketing Master’s program at EIML Paris took part in an intensive one-week workshop on this theme. They designed digital passports for luxury houses, aligning with both regulatory requirements and strategic innovation.

The DPP in the Context of ESPR Regulatory Requirements

The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), which came into force on July 18, 2024, establishes a strengthened legal framework to impose responsibility requirements—such as durability, repairability, and environmental footprint—on nearly all physical goods sold within the EU. Within this framework, the Digital Product Passport (DPP)is introduced as a kind of digital identity card, recording the components and materials of a product. It stores essential information designed to support product sustainability and circularity, reinforce legal compliance, and facilitate automated customs checks.

The content of the DPP is defined by the European Commission through delegated acts tailored to each product category. The information to be included may cover: the product’s technical performance; the materials used and their origin; repair or maintenance operations; intended recycling processes; and the environmental footprint linked to the product’s life cycle.

With the introduction of the DPP, the ESPR aims to foster innovation in sustainable business models, create jobs in the repair and recycling sectors, and ensure greater transparency for both consumers and authorities.

According to the ESPR 2025–2030 work plan, approved on April 16, 2025, the textile sector—particularly clothing and footwear—has been identified as a priority for the implementation of ecodesign requirements and DPPs, with compliance expected by mid-2027.

It is within this context that the Luxury & Responsibility Chair at EIML Paris, aware of the stakes for the luxury sector, offered its Luxury Marketing Master’s students a dedicated one-week seminar on the subject.

The DPP as an Unexpected Lever for Post-Purchase Customer Engagement

Trust-Place convinced the Luxury & Responsibility Chair with its intuition: turning the DPP into a strategic tool for post-purchase engagement in the luxury and fashion industries.

The pedagogical goal of the seminar was therefore not only to understand the framework imposed by the ESPR regulation and the implementation of Digital Product Passports (DPP), but also to go beyond mere regulatory compliance. Students were encouraged to adopt a strategic approach, focused on the use value of the DPP in the post-purchase customer relationship.

In the luxury sector, a product never stands alone: it is always accompanied by an imaginary world, a story, and a promise. Post-purchase is thus a strategic moment: it is where loyalty, resale, circularity, repair, and often even emotional attachment to the brand are reinforced.

Starting from this observation, the seminar invited students to consider the DPP as:

• An enriched storytelling medium (the product’s story, the origin of noble materials, artisanal know-how),

• An active customer engagement tool (maintenance notifications, repair certificates, reminders for resale or upcycling services),

• A medium of proof in a world where counterfeiting and greenwashing undermine trust.

  
  

In other words, the idea was to envision an augmented DPP: not just a regulatory technical file, but a personalized, secure, interoperable, and connected brand space in the post-purchase journey. This approach also helped students realize that in the luxury sector, the DPP is not merely a traceability tool but a strategic vector for long-term customer dialogue—introducing the key concept of emotional sustainability.

Emotional Sustainability: A New Lens on the Luxury Industry

Emotional durability (or “emotionally durable design”) is a concept developed by researcher Jonathan Chapman to describe the ability of an object to create a lasting emotional bond with its user, going beyond its mere functional utility.

Chapman identifies five key factors that foster an emotional connection with a product:

• Narrative: a personal story linked to the object,

• Consciousness: the perception of autonomy or identity in the product,

• Attachment: the development of an emotional bond,

• Fiction: the imaginative or symbolic dimension associated with its use,

• Surface: valued aging and a unique patina over time.

  
  

Emotional durability extends the life of iconic luxury pieces by making them cherished, repaired, and passed on, weaving a true story between the object and its owner. In a context where luxury offerings risk becoming standardized, this deep attachment—nurtured by distinctive product storytelling or enriched post-purchase experiences represents a strategic lever of differentiation, while encouraging behaviors aligned with the circular economy: a loved object is less likely to be discarded, more likely to be repaired or resold, thus embracing a sustainable and responsible logic.

As part of our seminar with Trust-Place, exploring this concept allowed students to understand how the Digital Product Passport (DPP) can become a platform for storytelling, service, and customer loyalty—going far beyond the simple fulfillment of regulatory obligations.

Experts at the Heart of the Seminar to Support Students

During the seminar dedicated to the Digital Product Passport (DPP), Carole Debris from Commitment Fashionencouraged students to step back and reflect on the true purpose of what may seem to be a purely technical tool. According to her, the DPP is not simply an information carrier imposed by European regulation, but the symptom of a deeper issue affecting the entire fashion industry: overproduction, excessive consumption, and the massive environmental impact of globalized value chains. “If laws exist, it’s because there is a problem to solve,” she reminded them candidly, calling for a move beyond a mere compliance mindset.

In her view, circularity cannot be reduced to a buzzword: it requires a paradigm shift, where every brand takes responsibility for the fate of its products long after purchase. The DPP thus becomes a strategic tool capable of extending the lifespan of objects, reinforcing consumer trust, and transforming a bag, a watch, or a garment into a long-term companion, evolving and traceable over time. By connecting the requirements of the French AGEC law with those of the European ESPR regulation, Carole Debris demonstrated that innovation does not lie so much in technology itself, but in the ambition assigned to it: “A law is not necessarily sexy for a brand. But if it becomes something that enhances the customer relationship, then it changes everything.” Behind the digital passport, therefore, emerges a new relational space, where luxury reconnects with one of its original vocations: to endure, and to make things endure.

Through the contribution of Alexia Tronel, co-founder of the think tank Racine, the reflection on the DPP took on another dimension: the organizational and cultural transformation that its implementation requires within a luxury house. Far from limiting herself to a technical or regulatory reading, she emphasized that the DPP is not just a file or a trendy marketing tool, but a vector of systemic change, questioning in depth the way a brand conceives its products, its relationship with time, with customers, and with value.

For Alexia, the central question to the students was: What do we truly want to achieve with the DPP? By encouraging them to imagine open-ended functions, tailor-made user experiences, and enriched emotional journeys, she invited them to see the DPP as a living strategic material, rather than a static deliverable. This is how she introduced the idea of an “augmented DPP”: a space where transparency, sustainability, and emotional attachment weave together into a unified narrative, capable of transforming the very perception of luxury. She also reminded students that such a system can only succeed if it is embraced internally by cross-disciplinary teams product design, marketing, supply chain, legal, customer relations. Transformation, she concluded, is not technological but human. “Everything is open, everything is fluid,” she stressed, underlining that the luxury of tomorrow will not be defined by constraints, but by the creative appropriation of standards and the reinvention of customer relationships.

The contribution of the lingerie brand Adore Me (represented by Alexandra Ilié and Maxime Garin) provided a concrete perspective on what it actually means to implement a DPP within a textile company. The brand’s representatives shared the experience of a pioneering project, undertaken well before any regulatory obligation. In a North American context where DPPs are not yet required, Adore Me chose to develop its own system—not to tick a legal box, but to test a new form of transparency, fueled by the conviction that transparency fosters trust with suppliers, employees, and consumers. “It’s the human feedback that makes the company work today,” they affirmed, highlighting the importance of connections at every stage of the product cycle.

The team also stressed the organizational obstacles raised by such a project: for a long time, sustainability efforts relied on a single person, in charge of the B Corp certification process, until the creation of a dedicated Sustainability team. But the difficulty does not only stem from a lack of resources; it also comes from internal silos, between CSR, supply chain, IT, and marketing departments, which often do not speak the same language. “We often struggle to know who the right contact person is on these topics,” they admitted.

This is precisely where the strategic potential of the DPP lies: in its ability to become a transversal project, linking traceability data to post-purchase relationship issues—and therefore to consumer expectations. Through their testimony, the Adore Me team demonstrated that the DPP remains a collective field of experimentation, in which every company whatever its stage of maturity has the opportunity to evolve its practices.

Trust-Place, a Key Partner of the Seminar

As a partner of the seminar, Trust-Place has established itself as one of the pioneers of digital traceability and Digital Product Passports (DPPs) in the worlds of luxury, fashion, and lifestyle. Founded in France, the company has developed a secure platform that enables brands to generate a unique digital twin for each physical product—activated via a QR code or an NFC chip and to associate it with content, services, certificates of authenticity, or even a full usage history.

In practice, the Trust-Place solution makes it possible to activate authenticity certificates in the second-hand market, track a repair history, offer post-purchase personalization services, or create a long-term digital relationship between the brand and the client—sometimes months or even years after the initial purchase. What makes Trust-Place distinctive is its ability to transform a technological framework into a storytelling and service-driven tool, fully controlled by the brand while ensuring compliance with emerging regulatory requirements such as those defined by the ESPR regulation.

During his presentation, Elly Lelloum, Marketing Director at Trust-Place, offered a resolutely strategic interpretation of the Digital Product Passport. Rather than presenting it as a response to regulatory compliance, he positioned it as an emerging relational medium, capable of reconciling transparency, engagement, and differentiation. According to him, the DPP only creates value if it is embraced as an opportunity to activate a new customer relationship cycle, extending far beyond the purchase itself.

He emphasized the need to move away from a static view of the product and instead envision a lifecycle trajectory where each stage (purchase, care, repair, resale, etc.) can become a touchpoint, a moment of dialogue, and a space of value. “Luxury is one of the few sectors where time itself is a promise. The DPP can become its living proof.”

By highlighting features already implemented by several luxury houses, he showed that the DPP can not only authenticate a product but also open a secure post-purchase channel, where the brand can share exclusive content, offer tailored experiences, encourage responsible practices, or simply maintain an active connection with its clients.

Yet, this vision implies a shift in culture: “The DPP is not an IT tool. It is a brand project.” Through his intervention, Elly Lelloum reminded participants that luxury brands cannot afford to merely endure regulation; today, they have the opportunity to redefine their long-term value proposition, making the DPP a lever for engagement, loyalty, and intelligent circularity.

EIML Paris Students’ Response

Throughout the week, the Luxury Marketing Master’s students at EIML Paris were given an ambitious mission: to transform a regulatory obligation into a desirable, immersive solution consistent with the codes of the luxury universe. The challenge was not simply to understand the legal framework or the technical constraints of the ESPR regulation, but to take ownership of the topic and turn it into a lever for brand content, post-purchase loyalty, and emotional storytelling.

Starting from an iconic product chosen from the fields of fashion, leather goods, jewelry, or furniture, each group was tasked with designing an enhanced customer experience, presented through a digital prototype created on Canva or Figma. This prototype had to include a new name for the passport, a brand-coherent interface, editorial and audiovisual content, and a strong strategic proposition.

More than a simple creative exercise, the goal was to imagine a “premium” DPP not perceived as just another tech gadget, but as an extension of the brand promise, capable of strengthening the emotional bond between the product and its owner, while opening up concrete perspectives in terms of circularity, customer engagement, and the promotion of craftsmanship.

At the end of the week, each team defended its vision before a jury of professionals.

Congratulations to the winning groups, rewarded by the Trust-Place team! 🎉

Interested in the topic? Want to learn more? Feel free to contact us:

• Luxury & Responsibility Chair – EIML Paris - Anne-Laure CHANSEL – achansel@reseau-ges.fr

• Trust-Place- Elly LELLOUM – elelloum@trust-place.com