Luxury fashion brand Alyx will be using IOTA’s open-source distributed ledger technology to track its supply chain. The partnership has already pushed IOTA’s price 52 percent up in the last 7 trading days. The project will also involve materials company Avery Dennison and supply chain EVRYTHNG where they will use the blockchain solution in collaboration with designer Matthew Williams’ fashion label Alyx.
The purpose here is to use blockchain to bring transparency in the fashion industry, allowing consumers to see whether a brand’s fashion is sustainable and ethically sourced.
DLT to trace a garment’s journey from its origin to production
The news was released on The Block, where according to the report IOTA is “launching a DLT solution to enable a more sustainable and ethically-sourced fashion industry alongside global manufacturing company Avery Dennison.” As they clarified, Alyx will use the platform to allow its customers “track the journey of the purchased item, from creation to the point of sale, with an app which reads items’ QR codes.” Like other blockchain applications we have seen recently, IOTA’s DLT will record the origins of a fabric, the time of its production and the materials used so that customers can check its authenticity and whether it has been created in a sustainable manner.
Debbie Shakespeare, senior director of sustainability and compliance at Avery Dennison, also highlighted the use of distributed ledger technology in recording and tracing the history of a garment in a way that is transparent and clear: “Our innovative solution combines our Janela platform with a new blockchain layer, providing consumers and brands with fundamental uncompromisable data. Brands and consumers can know that the information they are being shown about the garment’s creation process is 100% accurate and can be trusted implicitly. This is a watershed moment for improving brand transparency and trust.”
Alyx
Alyx is a fashion brand based in New York and created by Matthew Williams. The concept, as its website notes, is based on “high quality materials mixed with subversive culture.” Williams’s interest in innovation is here coupled with technology to make use of the latest developments in blockchain and deliver a product that is enveloped in trust and confidence. As Williams said of the luxury brand’s movement to adopt blockchain and distributed ledger technology, this is “the future for effective brand protection. By supplying product information, supply chain traceability and transparent dialogue with the consumer, the brand’s authenticity is globally secured.”
How it will be used
The app will be used by consumers who will scan the QR code of a label on the garment with their smartphone. This will allow them to view the garment’s journey and “see the trail” available online from Alyx and Evrything. IOTA’s technology will grant visibility of a product’s supply chain journey, “access to real-time data and statistics across different sales channels and consumer preferences.”
Blockchain innovation has been used by various sectors in order to instil trust and consumer confidence. From IBM Corp. and its IBM Food Trust blockchain to monitor food and trace its journey from the farm to the shop, to the World Wildlife Fund to track food and products, businesses have used blockchain to trace their products’ journeys and boost consumer confidence.
Avery Dennison and Alyx will be presenting items from the ALYX collection equipped with the blockchain solution at Copenhagen Fashion Summit on May 15 and 16, 2019. Visitors will be able to witness how the solution works and the benefits it will offer to brands and consumers.
Sources: Cointelegraph, Alyx, IOTA, The Block, Cointrust, Token Post, Evrythng