PH joins global push for digital fashion labels

ILLUSTRATION BY RUTH MACAPAGAL

Philippine garment exporters will join the worldwide campaign to modernize clothing labels, a move that will phase out physical labels in favor of digital marks and pare down production cost.

Foreign Buyers Association of the Philippines (Fobap) president Robert Young told the Inquirer on Monday that they would sign up for the initiative of American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA) urging the world’s governments to update their domestic labeling requirements.

Young, whose trade group includes buyers and exporters of garments and hard goods, said that the AAFA was currently drafting an open letter to petition regulators to permit fully digital labels.

“The current proliferation of labelling requirements not only confuses consumers and creates uncomfortable products, but it directly contributes to textile waste since the industry is forced to produce more than 9 kilometers of label tape each year in order to comply,” AAFA said in a letter that convinced Fobap to join the movement.

AAFA is the national trade association in the United States representing apparel, footwear and other sewn products companies as well as their suppliers.

The US trade group plans to release the open letter sometime in March after garnering support from other garment trade groups and associations across the globe.

Young said they agreed with the AAFA’s stance, citing that physical clothing labels were wasteful and that doing away with these would let the garment industry save on costs.

“It’s a wastage. People barely read those. Let’s go digital,” said the president of Fobap, a trade association that exports around $1.5 billion worth of garments each year.

Young estimated that these labels cost about 15 cents each. Thus, the global garments and apparel industry could save billions of dollars each year, or possibly, more by switching to digital tags, he added.

According to American fashion and lifestyle magazine Vogue, digital labeling has been introduced as early as 2020. It noted that British luxury fashion house Burberry was the first to introduce “sustainability” labels via QR (quick response) codes back in 2020. Fashion startup Pangaia also came out with “digital passports” a year later. INQ