EVRYTHNG, the Product Cloud managing digital identities for the world’s consumer products, today announced it has partnered with EM MICROELECTRONIC, the ultra-low-power semiconductor company of the Swatch Group and an RFID industry pioneer for more than 30 years. Together, the two companies are helping global brands achieve end-to-end product traceability through the supply chain from the sourcing of raw materials to post-purchase recycling or recommerce.

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Why does supply chain traceability matter?
COVID-19 brought the need for and/or lack of supply chain visibility to the forefront. Never has there been a greater need for end-to-end traceability of individual product items. Consumer brands’ need visibility both upstream and downstream in the value chain. While consumers are demanding greater transparency, authenticity and personalized experiences. According to researchers at the MIT Sloan School of Management, consumers may be willing to pay 2% to 10% more for products from companies that provide greater supply chain transparency. Discerning consumers are seeking information on product ingredients and materials, where products come from, and the conditions in which they were produced.

Partnering to Knock-down Supply Chain Barriers
EVRYTHNG and EM MICROELECTRONIC have partnered to make this end-to-end product traceability a reality for consumer brands. Consumer brands can now simply and cost effectively bring every product item to life at the time of manufacture, allowing both the brand and the consumer to track a product’s journey through the supply chain to retail and ultimately recycling or recommerce.

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“Over 4-trillion consumer products are made, shipped and retailed globally every year. Yet, end-to-end traceability of each item through its lifecycle journey is, for the vast majority of goods, a black hole of insight. This is why our partnership with EM MICROELECTRONIC is so industry-shifting,” said Niall Murphy, CEO and Co-founder, EVRYTHNG. “End-to-end visibility and transparency across the supply chain can only be achieved through interoperability and data sharing between disparate systems. The integration of our technologies facilitates this interoperability at scale providing full visibility to both brands and consumers.”

One Tag, Multiple Applications
For the first time, brands can use one on-product tag to address all possible applications through the life cycle of a product. The EVRYTHNG – EM MICROELECTRONIC collaboration combines the power of the EVRYTHNG Product Cloud® with EM’s award-winning* em|echo-V dual-frequency tags and GS1 Digital Link. The EM em|echo-V tags marry RFID technology for manufacturing and supply chain applications with NFC technology for consumer scanning via a mobile phone. Combining these innovative technologies with the GS1 Digital Link standard means products can be digitally activated at mass scale.

“Item-level product traceability is the ultimate truth in today’s supply chain. Not only do today’s consumers demand it, but end-to-end supply chain transparency is critical to achieving both global sustainability goals and halting the rapid rise in counterfeits. Two different issues solved by the same technology innovation,” said Pierre Muller, RFID Business Unit Leader, EM MICROELECTRONIC. “Our partnership with EVRYTHNG allows us to provide our customers with end-to-end visibility, capturing valuable data in the EVRYTHNG Product Cloud® at every point in the product’s supply chain journey.”

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