Tod’s is moving the Digital Product Passport out of the after-sales drawer and into the shopping page.
From 1 September, selected iconic styles in the Gommino loafer collection carry a Digital Product Passport directly on Tods.com, showing materials, production processes, manufacturing locations and company certifications while the customer is still deciding whether to buy.
The first phase was built with the traceability platform Renoon on infrastructure supplied by Aura Blockchain Consortium. Renoon calls it the start of a wider rollout across more products, more data points and deeper supply-chain levels.
The passport now appears before the purchase
Position is the whole development.
Luxury houses have used digital certificates for years to register ownership, support authentication and keep a relationship with the customer after the sale. Tod’s has run exactly that model through personalised My Gommino, with an NFC chip inside the right sole.
Scan the chip and the owner registers the shoe, claims ownership and reaches a digital certificate held on Aura’s private blockchain, along with material on the artisans, the production process and the sourcing behind that customised pair.
The new system arrives earlier in the sequence. Product information sits on selected Gommino pages before payment, instead of appearing only once the box has been opened.
An ownership tool has become part of the buying decision.
Craftsmanship is being asked to produce evidence
Luxury footwear has always explained its price through heritage, specialist labour, material quality and the reputation of the place where the object is made.
Those still matter. The customer can now ask sharper questions on top of them. Which material, exactly? Processed where? Which stage happened in Italy? Does that certification cover the company, the factory, the material or this particular shoe?
Renoon says the Gommino passport will pull data from Tod’s internal systems and its supply-chain partners, check it for consistency, then present the documents and product information inside the e-commerce page.
Depth decides whether any of it is worth reading.
A passport confirming that a shoe is made in Italy and contains leather tells an informed Tod’s customer what they already assumed. One that names production stages, material origins, repair guidance and the scope of each certification changes the purchase.
So the interface matters less than the granularity of the fields sitting behind it.
The Gommino is the right shoe to test it on
The Gommino is among the clearest objects in Tod’s visual vocabulary. Its sole carries 133 rubber pebbles, a construction that grew out of the driving shoe and became recognisable worldwide from the late 1970s.
Launching a passport on a permanent, familiar product says more than attaching one to a small experimental capsule.
A continuing model means repeated production runs, several materials, colour variations and customers coming back to replace a worn pair, which makes it possible to compare how traceability develops between seasons and variants.
Accountability comes with it. Present product-level information consistently and unexplained differences between one Gommino and the next become visible to anyone who looks.
The European rules are coming, and footwear is not settled
The European Commission opened the operational Digital Product Passport Registry and its testing environment on 20 July 2026.
The registry sits inside the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and records unique product identifiers with their metadata, while the underlying product data stays decentralised rather than living in one central European database.
Textiles and footwear are both under examination in the European programme. What a shoe category will actually have to disclose has not been fixed.
The first working plan gives textiles an indicative 2027 timetable, and a separate European study on possible footwear requirements is due by the end of 2027. Product-specific legislation will set the detail, followed by a transition period of at least 18 months for affected operators.
Read Tod’s rollout as a voluntary commercial and data decision. It is not evidence that the company is answering a final compulsory rule for Gommino loafers, because no such rule exists yet.
Blockchain can protect a record, but it cannot inspect a factory
Aura’s infrastructure protects passport records against later alteration and ties information to a specific digital identity.
Useful. Unauthorised changes get harder and the chain of product information holds together, none of which proves that the first fact entered was true.
A blockchain can preserve the claim that a material came from a named location. It cannot walk into that location, spot an undeclared subcontractor or test what the material is actually made of.
Everything therefore depends on the controls applied before information enters the passport: supplier documentation, audits, internal checks and a named person responsible for accuracy.
Brussels reasons the same way, putting primary responsibility for compiling and maintaining accurate passport information on the economic operator that places the product on the market.
What a useful Gommino passport should answer
Look past the fact that an interface exists.
- Material detail: whether the passport names the principal materials precisely or hides behind broad descriptions.
- Production geography: whether individual stages and locations appear, or only the final country of manufacture.
- Certification scope: whether a certification covers the product, the material, the site or the wider company.
- Care and repair: whether the information genuinely helps extend the life of the shoe.
- Product identity: whether the online passport later connects to the physical pair delivered.
- Lifecycle updates: whether repairs, ownership changes and other verified events can be added over time.
My Gommino already links product registration to a digital ownership certificate and a wallet card connected to Tod’s customer-service system. The online phase becomes far more valuable the day pre-purchase transparency and post-purchase ownership run as one continuous record instead of two separate ones.
Luxury.it perspective
Luxury has spent decades asking customers to trust the story of craftsmanship. A Digital Product Passport is a chance to show the structure underneath the story.
Tod’s picked the right shoe. The Gommino is permanent enough for traceability to mean something and recognisable enough that customers will notice.
The test starts on 1 September. Nobody should score it on the presence of a blockchain label. Score it on how much real product information Tod’s is willing to put next to the price.
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