The consumer wants transparency about products. Leath3r helps brands along this path

[On the cover: shoes made with a leather under Leath3R protocol]

Sharing the transparency of their products with consumers and, thus, providing all the tools to trace the supply chain will be the mission of brands in the near future. For some, this process is already underway, thanks to the presence on the market of companies that help clarify the issue of traceability. Like the start-up Leath3r, present at the last Micam in the area called ‘Italian Start Up’, dedicated to new projects for footwear and created in collaboration with Startupbootcamp and with the support of ICE and MAECI.

Why was Leath3r born? Andrea Brandellero, Sustainability ManagerHead of Operations of the project, explains it to us. “Today it is increasingly important to know the origin of all the things we buy every day, whether they are food or everyday objects” – he says – “We are increasingly receiving information from the media and newspapers that the way many materials are made is increasingly harmful to both people and the environment. We cannot be satisfied with the classic labels that we find on a pair of shoes or on a bag where the manufacturer simply writes ‘Made in… Italy, Vietnam, China’, but we have to go deeper and ask ourselves questions such as: where was this shoe? Who produced it? Under what conditions? With which suppliers? With what damage to the environment? With harmful products or not? With what consumption of water, energy, and resources? With what living conditions for people? And many other questions. Consumers finally want to have more information about what they buy and, in turn, footwear and leather goods brands want to provide their customers with materials that have been produced with a better and measurable process”.

Andrea Brandellero

Leath3R is able to give answers to all parties involved with Digital, Measurable and Traceable information, working on 3 main areas: the planet, technology, and chemistry. The project consists in the development of a digital tool, called the Digital Product Passport, which makes it possible to provide supply chain information, via QR technology, on each individual shoe or bag in a transparent way for brands and consumers. Thanks to this tool, which traces every single shoe or bag, the consumer will be able to have, in real time and immediately, all the information on the supply chain of the products he or she will purchase with the relative environmental impact data of the suppliers involved.

Leath3R has created a protocol that every supplier will have to respect and which is based on three different areas: sustainable chemistry, technology, and the planet, with different requirements for each area, including:

– traceability of each individual product;

– digital platform with data shared in transparency; each hide is traced with a QR code;

– specific certifications of the supply chain;

– ZDHC sustainable chemistry through a road map to replace toxic chemicals;

– carbon footprint;

– water footprint;

– CO2 offsetting.

“Today in the fashion industry market there is no solution that combines all this information in a single tool” – explains Brandellero – “Thanks to this project, brands in the fashion sector will be able to give visibility to their customers along the entire production chain and consequently demonstrate that the shoes or bags they produce have specific and measurable impact data both on the process and on the product, that is shared in a transparent way”.