Making the Digital Product Passport matter with Kintobe

Kintobe is a Copenhagen-based lifestyle brand built on one simple idea: carry kindness. Buying better, wasting less and meeting each other with an open heart. It shows in long-lasting, functional bags made from certified recycled materials, and in everything around them, from the Kindness Club, which the team calls “our little lab for growing kindness”, to the small kindness reminders hidden in every product.

For Kintobe, kindness also means being open about how a product is made. That is why the brand chose to give its customers a Digital Product Passport (DPP), long before legislation asked for it.

Transparency by design

Every Kintobe product carries a QR code in its care label that leads to its own passport, with information about the materials, the suppliers and the certifications behind it. For the brand, it was never about compliance. It was about giving customers the chance to understand what they buy.

“We already collect product and supplier data. Our early DPP makes this information accessible,” says Julia Veres, Design & Production Manager at Kintobe.

Built on structured product data

A passport is only as strong as the data behind it. At Kintobe, that data lives in Delogue, where product information, components and certifications come together around each style.

The work happens in close collaboration with suppliers, who have full access to the product data in Delogue and contribute their information directly. That way, what customers see in the passport and on the care label comes from the same source the team and its suppliers work from every day.

It is part of a wider commitment to transparency at Kintobe, where knowing who makes the products and keeping them in use for longer go hand in hand.

Ready for what is coming

With the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the DPP will become a requirement for textiles in the coming years. Kintobe is already well on its way. With its product data structured and in one place, the brand can build on the foundation it already has as the requirements take shape.

“What matters is that product data is collected at the source and kept up to date,” says Serina Slot, ESG & Communication Advisor at Delogue. “That is where Kintobe is doing a great job.”

Bringing the next generation into the conversation

Having a DPP is one thing. Making customers want to open it is another. So Kintobe and Delogue brought that question to London College of Fashion’s, Fashion Business School.

In a one-day workshop on where technology and ESG meet, MBA and MA Fashion Design Management students were introduced to the ESPR, the DPP and Kintobe’s own story. Then came the brief: make the DPP something customers actually want to open. The teams developed and pitched their concepts to Serina Slot from Delogue and Julia Veres from Kintobe.

“We challenged the students to think beyond compliance and explore what would motivate customers to scan our DPP, and what would make the experience valuable once they did,” says Julia Veres. “It was inspiring to see how creatively they approached the brief while considering Kintobe’s identity, values and customers.”

The ideas were as varied as the teams behind them. One team imagined a launch event at Kintobe’s Copenhagen store under the Kindness Club, introducing customers to the passport, followed by a DPP-related trivia quiz. To answer the three questions, customers explore the passport of their own bag, with fun facts about Kintobe’s sustainability work along the way and a discount on a future purchase as a thank you.

Another team turned the passport into a story that keeps growing: a map that follows each bag from where it was made to the places its owner takes it, from the streets of London to the rainforests of Costa Rica. A third made the passport easier to discover, with an NFC-enabled label on the outside of the bag, a discreet invitation to “tap into your bag’s story” with a phone.

For the students, it was a chance to work on a real brand’s challenge, with the legislation that will shape their careers. For Delogue, it is part of a commitment to sharing knowledge with the people who will lead the industry next.

Carrying kindness forward

For Kintobe, the DPP is not a box to tick, but one more way to carry kindness. With its product data in one place in Delogue, the brand is ready for what is coming, and free to keep exploring how the Digital Product Passport can bring customers even closer to the products and the people behind them.