New pockets of the international licensing industry came together last week to begin brand new conversations around the direction of travel for industry transparency in the lead up to the introduction of the Digital Product Passport.
Products of Change played host to a series of roundtables sessions over the course of the three-day Licensing Expo in Las Vegas last week, including a special US Sports session, a session devoted to the subject of scope 3 emissions, and an agenda-setting discussion around transparency that brought the industry’s service providers to the table.
Dependable Solutions, Octane 5, Flowhaven, and Fabacus each took their place at the table where they were joined by a collection of some of the industry’s most forward-thinking and pioneering brand owners and licensees. The collection included the Natural History Museum, LEGO, Disney, the health and beauty specialist LUSH, and others.
The idea of the session was to set a tone and direction of travel for industry conversation around Transparency and data collection, spurred by the incoming introduction of the Digital Product Passport in the next couple of years.
“If you’ve been following the myriad white papers, directives, regulations, and standards from legislative and regulatory bodies since 2019, you’ll be aware of the emerging requirements for some companies to report their scope 3 carbon emissions and for manufacturers to ensure an extended set of product data be captured digitally in what has become known as a Digital Product Passport,” said Jonathan Baker, CCO at Fabacus, a company now pioneering a global product identification standard for the licensing industry.
“The emphasis for the provision of the Digital Product Passport will fall to the ultimate manufacturer of those products – the licensee. In turn, licensors that fulfil certain criteria will have to declare their scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions.”
With such change coming for licensors, licensees, manufacturers, and retailers, data and technology will have a vital role to play in steering coming legislation.
Timo Olkkola, co-founder of Flowhaven, said: “Brands now aim to b more transparent and sustainable in their licensing business and helping licensors and agencies capture and understand their data is at the core of what service providers do in licensing.
“Having clean and well-structured data is key to creating and managing sustainable licensing partnerships. Increasingly, brand owners are shifting focus from pure royalty recoupment calculations to ‘value licensing’, where royalties, monetary value, and marketing effect are combined to create the full value of the licensing deal.
“Agreeing on rule sets with your partners regarding materials, certifications, values, and expected results will be key and POC has a great agreement format for this to share with members.”
