Approved by curator
Added: Oct 01, 2020
Last edited: Aug 13, 2021
Lablaco is a digital platform that uses blockchain to provide traceability of second-hand clothes. Through a web platform and mobile app, it allows brands to tokenise their products at different levels of the supply chain. From this approach, consumers can identify what actions retailers are taking to be more sustainable. One of the startup's apps is SPIN, which allows consumers to tokenise products, identifying, for example, that the clothes purchased once belonged to a favourite influencer. In this context, from this app it is possible to apply the circular model of sharing, lending, swapping and trade, which allows consumers to become active buyers in the supply chain, following the destination given to a garment, until it reaches the end of life, communicating the retailers so that some sustainable attitude is taken about it, such as recycling.
Although it is not the final answer, transparency is a key resource for the circular economy. Considering the fashion industry, transparency must be obtained from end to end, so that all phases of a garment's life are known and traceable, identifying and measuring the level and progress of sustainability at each stage of the chain, as well as offering the consumer clear information about the purchased product. Without transparency and traceability across the entire chain, consumers, brands and other suppliers cannot have the necessary knowledge about where and how clothes are being produced, in what working conditions, and what their final destination is. However, to achieve the required level of transparency and traceability, it is necessary to use digital technologies, which make it possible to offer scalable, flexible and real-time tracking and data transparency.
Lablaco intends, through the use of the blockchain, to create an environment of end-to-end transparency, where all phases of a clothing item's life are known and traceable, from the production of raw materials to the consumer chain, avoiding, including the circulation of counterfeit parts.
Lablaco uses blockchain in its circular fashion platform, allowing consumers to register their digital ownership of their garments. In this context, clothing starts to have a story in the timeline, which can never be changed. This feature allows the consumer to be guaranteed end-to-end transparency about the product purchased, from production onwards, identifying who was the manufacturer, the brand, the retailer, as well as the first and secondary consumers. Through the SPIN platform, consumers can register and tokenise their clothes, and from there they can exchange, share, swap or trade their clothes so that everything is digitally tracked. Additionally, consumers can also scan other clothes using a QR code or an NFC chip, simply and quickly, obtaining all the information transparently.
Through traceable digital ownership, Lablaco makes it possible to offer a new circular business model, which offers transparency and traceability to consumers of second-hand products. In this context, the platform allows integration and facilitates the relationship between brands, retailers, designers, influencers and consumers in a single framework, in which everyone is confident about the purchased product.
Since it was created in 2016, the startup has already had two projects in the context of transparency and traceability: the SPIN app, for tracking digital property through circular models, and LPLUS, which allows the traceability of data from the origin of a product, allowing to identify its authenticity, environmental impact, and consumer property in the product journey.
circular fashion
secondhand
Data
circular business models
Traceability
transparency