Digital Product Passport in e-commerce – why a QR code is not a product data strategy

For many years, product data in e-commerce was treated mainly as a sales element. It was supposed to help the customer find a product, compare variants, understand the most important features, add the product to the cart and make a purchasing decision. A well-described product increased conversion, improved search visibility, reduced the number of customer service inquiries and lowered the risk of returns. In many companies, it was therefore primarily a matter of marketing, merchandising, SEO or the work of the e-commerce team.

However, this way of thinking is beginning to change. Product data is no longer only a sales tool, but is becoming part of a broader informational, regulatory and operational obligation. More and more often, it must answer not only the question: “will the customer buy this product?”, but also: “is the company able to document the origin, composition, durability, repairability, environmental impact, compliance and life cycle of the product?”. In practice, this means that e-commerce is becoming one of the places where the quality of the entire product information management system will become visible.

The Digital Product Passport clearly shows the scale of this change. At first glance, it may look like another requirement related to a label, QR code or additional information page attached to a product. In reality, it is a much larger topic. It concerns data, its sources, structure, timeliness, availability, access rights, system integrations and the organization’s responsibility for what it communicates about the product on the market.

The European Commission describes the Digital Product Passport as one of the key solutions under the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation, intended to store and share relevant data on sustainability, durability and other environmental aspects of a product. The passport is intended to be available to consumers, businesses and competent public authorities in order to support informed decision-making and verification of compliance with legal obligations. 

From the perspective of trading companies, this means one thing: the Digital Product Passport should not be treated as a task to be solved at the end by generating a QR code. A QR code can be a carrier of access to information, but it is not a data strategy. If an organization does not know where product data is created, who is responsible for it, how it is updated, which systems are the source of truth and how information flows between ERP, PIM, e-commerce, suppliers, technical documentation and sales channels, the code itself will not solve the problem. It may only reveal the chaos faster.

Why the Digital Product Passport is becoming important right now

The Digital Product Passport is directly related to the EU regulatory direction, which aims to shift the market toward more durable, repairable, resource-efficient and circular products. The Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation entered into force on 18 July 2024 and extends the approach previously known mainly from energy-related products to a much broader group of goods. The European Commission indicates that ESPR is intended to enable the setting of requirements concerning, among other things, durability, reusability, repairability, energy and resource efficiency, recycled material content, carbon footprint and information requirements, including the Digital Product Passport.

This is important because we are talking about a framework regulation, not a one-off obligation concerning one product category. Detailed requirements will be introduced gradually for specific product groups. In the first working plan for 2025-2030, the European Commission identified as priorities, among others, steel and aluminium, textiles with a particular focus on clothing, furniture, tyres, mattresses and selected energy-related products.

From a business perspective, this means that companies should not wait until the last moment, when the exact requirements for their industry are clarified in delegated acts. If the Digital Product Passport will require organized, reliable product data shared in a specific way, preparation does not begin on the day the obligation enters into force. It begins much earlier – with an audit of the information, systems and processes that today are responsible for creating, updating and publishing product data.

In 2025, the European Commission was already conducting consultations on the functioning of the Digital Product Passport system, including the method of storing and managing data by service providers and the potential need for a certification system for such providers. This shows that the topic does not concern only the scope of information about the product itself, but also trust in the infrastructure, the method of data management and the security of the entire information-sharing model.

In practice, the Digital Product Passport will therefore affect many areas of the company at the same time. It will not be only a task for the compliance department. Nor will it be only a task for IT. It will require cooperation between people responsible for product, purchasing, suppliers, quality, logistics, e-commerce, data, customer service, law and technology. That is why organizations that treat it only as an additional element on the product page may very quickly discover that the problem is much deeper.

The biggest mistake: reducing the Digital Product Passport to a QR code

In many discussions about the Digital Product Passport, the association with a QR code appears very quickly. This is understandable, because the European Commission describes the passport as a scannable marker on a product that provides easy access to information about the product’s sustainability, while also supporting consumers in making choices, extending product life cycles and developing circular economy practices.

The problem is that a QR code is only an access point. It does not answer the question of whether the data is correct, up to date, complete and consistent. It does not say who owns the information, what the approval process looks like, which system it comes from, whether it complies with the requirements for a given product category, whether it can be shared with different groups of recipients and whether it can be updated without manually rewriting information between systems.

If a company thinks about the Digital Product Passport only as generating a label, it starts from the end. It is like reducing an e-commerce implementation to designing the homepage, while ignoring the entire process of order handling, payments, inventory levels, ERP integration and catalogue management. In both cases, the visible element is only an interface. Whether it works properly depends on the quality of the architecture underneath.

The Digital Product Passport should be understood as a digital information layer of the product. This layer must have its sources, data model, access rules, update processes and publication method. A QR code can lead to this layer, but it does not replace it. If an organization does not have structured product data, the passport will not become proof of transparency. It will become another channel where inconsistencies are visible to the customer, business partner, regulator or competitor.

This is particularly important in e-commerce, because the online store is often the place where information from many systems converges. ERP may be responsible for logistics data, indexes, prices and inventory levels. PIM may store descriptions, attributes, materials, images, translations and technical data. The e-commerce system presents the offer to the customer and handles the purchasing process. External supplier systems may contain certificates, instructions, material data, information about the origin of components or compliance documents. If these sources are not connected into a logical process, the Digital Product Passport will require manual work, exceptions and constant firefighting.

Product data is no longer an addition to sales

In classic e-commerce, product data was often developed with conversion in mind. The description was supposed to convince the customer. Images were supposed to show the product in an attractive way. Parameters were supposed to help with filtering. Attributes were supposed to support the search engine. Translations were supposed to enable sales in other markets. All of this remains important, but the Digital Product Passport shifts the meaning of product data toward responsibility and evidentiary value.

Product data will have to answer questions that were not always important from the perspective of a classic store. Where does the product or its components come from? What materials was it made of? How can it be repaired? How should it be disposed of? Which documents confirm compliance? Which information should be publicly available, and which only to specific entities? Which data is mandatory, which recommended, and which can provide additional value to the customer?

It is worth noting that in 2026 the Joint Research Centre published a methodology for defining data requirements for the Digital Product Passport under the ESPR. The document points to the need for semantic definition and prioritization of information in the passport, as well as distinguishing between essential, strongly recommended and voluntary elements, while taking into account value, effort and feasibility in real market practices.

This is a very important signal for companies. The Digital Product Passport will not consist of freely publishing several pieces of information about the product. It will require a thoughtful data model. And a data model is not created in the final step of implementation. It is created when the company knows what information is needed, where it obtains it from, how it validates it, how often it updates it, who approves it and how it shares it with different recipients.

For e-commerce, this means the need to change perspective. Product data can no longer be treated as “content to be completed before the product is published”. It becomes an operational, regulatory and strategic asset. Without it, it will be difficult not only to sell, but also to prove compliance, build trust, develop international sales and participate in increasingly demanding value chains.

Where companies most often make mistakes

The most common mistake is that organizations assume product data already exists because the products are being sold in the store. In practice, there is a huge difference between “we have product data” and “we have product data ready for the Digital Product Passport”.

A company may have product descriptions, images and basic parameters, but not have complete information about materials, compliance documents, repairability, components, environmental data or product origin. It may have this data in PDF documents, but not in a structure that can be automatically processed. It may have it at the supplier, but without a process for updating it. It may have it in ERP, but not in PIM. It may have it in PIM, but not publish it in e-commerce. It may also publish it in e-commerce, but without clear version control and responsibility for accuracy.

The second mistake is the lack of a data owner. In many companies, product data is distributed between category management, purchasing, marketing, e-commerce, suppliers, logistics and the technical department. Each team owns part of the information, but no one is responsible for the whole. Such a model may work with a simple product catalogue, but it begins to collapse when the company must provide information in a regulatory-required, repeatable and verifiable way.

The third mistake is treating DPP as a compliance project detached from e-commerce. Meanwhile, in practice, e-commerce will be one of the places where the customer, partner or supervisory authority will look for product information. If the sales platform is not connected to the systems in which data is created and updated, the team will be forced to manually transfer information, create workarounds and maintain subsequent versions of the same data.

The fourth mistake is the lack of thinking about scaling. Generating a passport for a dozen test products may be relatively simple. The problem begins when a company has several thousand SKUs, many variants, suppliers from different countries, several language versions, different sales channels and frequent changes in the offer. Then the Digital Product Passport stops being a documentation task and becomes an architectural challenge.

Digital Product Passport as a test of e-commerce architecture maturity

From our perspective, the Digital Product Passport will be one of the best tests of e-commerce architecture maturity. Not because every online store will immediately have to publish full passports for the entire assortment. Rather because DPP will very quickly show whether the company has control over product information.

If an organization has a consistent data model, a well-implemented PIM, a well-thought-out integration with ERP, organized roles, a clear approval workflow and an e-commerce platform ready to present different ranges of data to different groups of recipients, preparation for the Digital Product Passport will be the next stage of development. Still demanding, but logical and possible to plan.

However, if product data is scattered, attributes are filled in manually, documents are stored in many places, integrations work only partially and the e-commerce platform is treated as the final publication point rather than part of a larger data ecosystem, DPP may become an expensive repair project.

That is why the Digital Product Passport is not only a topic for manufacturing companies. It also concerns distributors, importers, retailers and companies conducting international sales. Even if part of the data comes from the manufacturer, the company selling the product on the market still needs to know how to receive this data, store it, link it to the correct product, present it and update it in its channels.

In B2B e-commerce, the importance of this topic may be even greater. Business customers increasingly require not only price and availability, but also technical documentation, certificates, environmental information, compliance data, terms of use, logistics documents and audit trails. The Digital Product Passport may therefore become not only a regulatory obligation, but also an element of B2B customer service quality.

PIM as the center of control over product information

In many companies, the natural center for managing data for the Digital Product Passport will be PIM, or Product Information Management. This does not mean, however, that implementing PIM automatically solves the problem. PIM is a tool that can organize product data, but only if the company knows what data model it wants to build, which attributes are important, what the workflow looks like and which systems are responsible for specific pieces of information.

PIM should serve as the place where product data is structured, completed, translated, validated and prepared for publication in various channels. In the context of the Digital Product Passport, its importance grows because some information will serve not only sales presentation, but also compliance, transparency and further use of the product in the circular economy.

A well-designed PIM model can help the company distinguish between marketing, technical, regulatory, logistics, environmental and service data. It can also determine which information is mandatory for a given category, which requires approval, which must be translated, which is retrieved from ERP and which is provided by manufacturers or suppliers. Without this approach, the Digital Product Passport will require manual collection of information for each product, which becomes practically impossible at a larger scale.

However, PIM implementation should be connected with the architecture of the entire e-commerce system. Data cannot stop in one system. It must flow to the sales platform, marketplace channels, documentation, customer service systems, mobile applications, B2B portals and, in the future, also to DPP layers. That is why the most important question is not: “do we have PIM?”, but: “is PIM well integrated with the rest of the ecosystem and does it truly serve as a source of organized product information?”.

Integrations will decide whether DPP works in practice

The Digital Product Passport will very quickly reveal which companies have organized integrations and which still operate on manual processes. If product data is created in one place, logistics data in another, pricing data in a third, technical documentation in a fourth, and the online store presents only a fragment of this information, then preparing a product passport requires connecting these elements into one coherent process.

It is not only about data synchronization itself. It is also about its meaning. The same product must be clearly identified in ERP, PIM, e-commerce, the warehouse system, supplier documentation and a potential DPP layer. If one system uses the manufacturer’s index, another uses an internal number, a third uses an EAN and a fourth uses a separate variant identifier, the company must have a mechanism that allows this information to be connected and kept consistent.

The same applies to updates. If the material composition, user manual, compliance document, repairability information or product status changes, this change should go through a controlled process and reach all places where the product is presented or documented. Otherwise, the company creates multiple versions of the truth, and the Digital Product Passport ceases to be a reliable source of information.

This is where it becomes clear why the architecture-first approach is so important. If the e-commerce platform has been designed as part of a larger data ecosystem, integrations can support the development of new requirements. If, however, the store has been developed over the years as a collection of customizations, exceptions and manual workarounds, every new information obligation becomes another maintenance cost.

Why Shopware can support this direction well

Shopware is a platform that fits well with the idea of e-commerce as part of a broader ecosystem of data and channels. This does not mean that Shopware independently “solves” the Digital Product Passport topic, because DPP requires organizational decisions, a data model, integrations and responsibility on the company’s side. It does mean, however, that a well-designed architecture based on Shopware can provide a solid foundation for developing such a model.

In the context of product data, the ability to extend the information structure is important. Shopware documentation indicates that custom fields allow additional data fields to be added to entities such as products, customers or orders, as well as store information beyond the platform’s standard attributes.This can be important in projects where the company needs to support additional product attributes, technical data, industry-specific information or special fields used in integrations.

The approach to sales channels and data sharing is also important. Shopware makes it possible to develop different sales channels, and the developer documentation indicates the possibility of extending sales channel entities and providing additional data through the Store API. In practice, this matters for companies that do not want to treat e-commerce as a single storefront, but as a central environment supporting different channels, markets, languages and data presentation scenarios.

For B2B companies, the ability to map business rules may also be important. Shopware Rule Builder makes it possible to use rules in areas such as the availability of payment methods, delivery methods, promotions, discounts, advanced prices or the visibility of products and categories. Shopware also describes the possibility of implementing more complex B2B requirements, including price, delivery cost or content individualization using Rule Builder.

All this does not mean that the Digital Product Passport should be “added” to Shopware as a single feature. A much better approach is to treat Shopware as an element of architecture that connects product data, sales processes, integrations, publication channels and business logic. In such a model, DPP can become another layer of information sharing, rather than a separate, manually maintained project outside the platform.

What the Digital Product Passport means for B2B and B2C companies

In B2C, the Digital Product Passport may primarily influence the way product value is communicated. A customer who scans a code and gains access to information about origin, durability, repairability or the correct handling of the product after the end of its use may make more informed decisions. For brands that truly care about quality, transparency and responsibility, this may be an opportunity to strengthen trust.

At the same time, DPP will require greater discipline. It will not be enough to declare that a product is “sustainable”, “eco-friendly” or “better for the environment”. Companies will increasingly have to provide specific data and documents. This means that product marketing will have to be more strongly connected with actual information available in systems.

In B2B, the Digital Product Passport may have even more operational significance. Business customers often need data not only for the purchasing decision, but also for their own documentation obligations, audits, ESG reporting, quality processes, tenders or further resale. If a supplier can efficiently provide organized product data, it can make the customer’s work easier and increase its attractiveness as a trading partner.

This means that DPP may become an element of competitive advantage. A company that has organized data, efficient integrations and a platform capable of presenting information in various channels can respond to market requirements faster. A company that compiles data manually every time will bear higher service costs, react more slowly to changes and more often risk errors.

How to prepare the organization for the Digital Product Passport

The most sensible preparation for the Digital Product Passport does not begin with choosing a tool for generating passports. It begins with the question of whether the company has control over product information. In practice, the first stage should consist of data mapping: what information about the product do we have, where is it stored, who provides it, who updates it, who approves it and where is it published?

The second stage is gap analysis. The company should check which data is missing, which data is unstructured, which exists only in documents, which depends on suppliers, which requires translations and which has no owner within the organization. This is often the most difficult moment, because it shows that the DPP problem is not a problem of the future. It is a consequence of today’s way of managing products.

The third stage is deciding on the data model. The organization should define which attributes are needed for particular product categories, how they will be classified, how they will be validated and which systems will be responsible for them. In many cases, this means the need to organize or implement PIM, change the way of working with suppliers, build new approval processes and connect product data with the e-commerce platform.

The fourth stage is integrations. The Digital Product Passport should not be a separate repository into which someone manually copies data. It should use the existing information architecture, and if such architecture does not exist, building it should become part of preparation for the new requirements. In practice, this means integrating ERP, PIM, e-commerce, documentation systems, supplier systems and publication channels.

The fifth stage is governance. The company must know which data can be public, which is available only to specific recipients, which requires approval, who is responsible for the timeliness of information and what the update process looks like after a change in the product, supplier or documentation. When consulting the functioning of the DPP system, the European Commission drew attention, among other things, to data storage, data management by service providers and the potential certification of such providers, which shows that governance will be one of the important elements of the entire model.

The role of CREHLER: from regulatory obligation to organized data architecture

At CREHLER, we look at the Digital Product Passport not as a single obligation to be ticked off, but as a signal of a larger change in e-commerce. The market will increasingly reward companies that have control over product data, can integrate systems, manage information in a repeatable way and are ready to quickly adapt the platform to new requirements.

That is why in e-commerce projects we do not focus only on the layer visible to the customer. We also analyze where data is created, how it flows through the organization, which systems serve as sources of truth, what the product information update process looks like and whether the platform architecture allows further channels and information obligations to be developed without a sudden increase in costs.

In the case of companies operating on Shopware, it is crucial to properly design the role of the platform in the entire ecosystem. Shopware can be the place for presentation and sales handling, but it should be connected with PIM, ERP, warehouse systems, documentation systems and tools used by suppliers. Only then does the e-commerce platform cease to be the final place of data publication and become part of an organized process of managing sales and product information.

This is particularly important for companies developing B2B, cross-border sales or those with an extensive product catalogue. The larger the scale, the less room there is for manual processes. The more markets there are, the greater the importance of control over translations, local requirements, sales channels and data versions. The more complex the offer, the greater the need for a stable product information model.

The Digital Product Passport can therefore be treated as a regulatory obligation that the company tries to meet with minimal effort. It can also become an impulse to organize data, processes and e-commerce architecture in a way that brings value far beyond compliance itself. From our perspective, it is this second approach that will have the greatest business significance.

Companies that organize data earlier will have an advantage

The Digital Product Passport is not just another element of EU regulation. It is part of a broader trend in which the product becomes a carrier of data, and e-commerce must be able to handle, present and maintain this data in line with business processes. In a world where the importance of transparency, regulation, sustainable development, B2B self-service, automation and international sales is growing, control over product information becomes one of the foundations of scaling.

Companies that organize their data today will be better prepared not only for the Digital Product Passport. They will also be better prepared for developing sales in multiple markets, integrating with marketplaces, automating the catalogue, implementing PIM, personalizing the offer, serving B2B customers, reporting and meeting future regulatory requirements. The same foundations that are needed for DPP are needed for modern e-commerce in general.

It is therefore worth stopping thinking about the Digital Product Passport as a QR code that will have to be added to a product someday. A much more accurate question is: does our company today have a product data architecture that allows product information to be shared safely, consistently and scalably with different recipients, channels and systems?

If the answer is not obvious, the best moment to prepare is now. Not by implementing another tool, but by starting a conversation about data, processes, integrations and architecture. At CREHLER, we help companies design and develop scalable e-commerce platforms based on Shopware, which not only support current sales, but also prepare organizations for the next requirements of the market, regulations and digital transformation.