How WorldPulse Works
WorldPulse turns the product and supplier data you already hold into Digital Product Passports — scannable records that carry a product’s materials, origin, evidence and care information, and keep carrying it after the sale.
The approach is deliberately incremental. You start with the data you have, publish something usable, and improve the structure underneath it over time rather than waiting for a complete dataset that never quite arrives.
The four phases
Every engagement follows the same shape, whether it ends at a single pilot line or a full catalogue rollout.
Consultation
Scope a pilot against what you actually make and actually have.
The first conversation is about constraints, not features. What products do you make, which markets do you sell into, and which compliance requirements are already firm versus still forming? Just as importantly: what data do you hold today, where does it live, and who owns it internally?
That produces a scoped pilot — usually a single product line with a defined field set. Scoping tightly at this stage is what keeps the first launch measured in weeks rather than quarters.
Data mapping
Work from your existing exports rather than rebuilding upstream first.
Product and supplier data rarely arrives clean. It comes as CSV exports, supplier lists, spreadsheets maintained by one person, PDFs of certifications, and fields held in systems that were never designed to talk to each other. We map what you have into a consistent structure and flag the gaps explicitly rather than quietly leaving them blank.
This is deliberately not a data infrastructure project. Rebuilding your systems before publishing anything is the most common way DPP programmes stall, and it is avoidable — the structure can improve underneath a passport that is already live.
Passport design
One record, different views for customers, recyclers and auditors.
A passport template defines what the record holds and who sees which part of it. Customers typically get provenance, materials, care guidance and the story behind the product. Compliance and recycling audiences get the detailed material breakdown, facility information and supporting evidence.
You decide where that line sits. Many brands publish high-level transparency while keeping supplier identities and commercial detail internal, and the passport supports tiers of visibility rather than forcing an all-or-nothing choice.
Pilot and scale
Prove the workflow on a small set, then repeat it.
A pilot validates three things at once: the data model holds up against real products, the supplier workflow survives contact with real suppliers, and the scan experience works in the place customers will actually use it.
Once those hold, expansion becomes an operational task rather than an open question. Rollout happens in waves — by product line, by category, or by whichever deadline lands first — with the field set already settled.
What goes into a passport
Requirements vary by product category, and the EU rollout adds fields group by group. These are the areas that recur across almost every passport, and the ones worth structuring first.
Identity
Product ID or SKU, product name, batch or serial where relevant. The identifier is what makes the record verifiable rather than decorative.
Materials and composition
Fibre or material breakdown, recycled content, chemical and additive information where a category requires it.
Origin and production
Country of origin, manufacturing facility, processing steps, and the supplier tiers you are able to evidence.
Care, repair and end of life
Care instructions, repairability information, spare parts, disassembly guidance and disposal or recycling routes.
Evidence
Certifications, audits, lab tests, restricted substances documentation and compliance statements — attached as records rather than asserted as marketing copy.
Lifecycle updates
Repairs, component replacements, ownership changes and recalls, recorded against a scan destination that does not change.
QR, NFC and the scan itself
QR is the fastest way to start. It costs nothing to produce, works on every phone without an app, and can go on a swing tag, a care label, packaging or a care card. For most pilots it is the right answer.
NFC becomes worth adding when you want a higher-end physical experience, stronger anti-tamper behaviour, or tighter control over authentication — a tag embedded in the product is considerably harder to copy onto a counterfeit than a printed code.
Neither eliminates counterfeiting on its own. What they do is tie a product’s identity to a record you control, which raises the cost of faking it and gives you somewhere to act when scan patterns look wrong — the same identifier appearing repeatedly across distant regions, for instance.
What you need to bring
Less than most teams expect. A first passport can be built from a product ID or SKU, a product name, a materials list, a country of origin and factory or facility information. If you have supplier lists, certifications and test reports, those come next rather than first.
Internally, the useful setup is one accountable owner with a small working group around them. Supply chain generally holds the truth about suppliers and materials, compliance holds the requirements, IT supports integration, and brand owns what the customer sees on scan. Programmes run by committee tend to move slowly; programmes with no named owner tend not to move at all.