Alyx taps blockchain tech for supply chain pilot

Alyx - the fashion brand founded by Lady Gaga creative director and Kanye West collaborator Matthew Williams - has launched a blockchain-powered supply chain transparency pilot programme in partnership with Iota, Avery Dennison and Evrythng.

Vogue Business reports that some Alyx product hang tags will feature a scannable QR code that showcases the entire supply chain history of the piece it’s attached to. Alyx’s suppliers enter the information, and Evrythng stores and uploads the data to the ledger while Avery Dennison makes tags with digital IDs for each garment. Nine Alyx pieces are included in the pilot, but Williams would ultimately like to include all his products.

Alyx says that the barrier to entry was relatively low as it is “only four years old and produces 80% of its products in Italy with suppliers who take transparency seriously”. The next step, meanwhile, might be automating the process so it can be scaled.

“The key is identifying the right nodes of the supply chain from where to pull data and then determining how to most efficiently extract that data,” says Michael Colarossi, Avery Dennison’s Vice President of Apparel Innovation, Product Line Management and Sustainability, adding that future integration could mean extracting data directly from manufacturing systems.