Tracking Sustainable Footwear from the Source

Retraced is a German start-up  that has launched with the goal of track & trace for fashion. Their mission is to provide the end-consumer with deeper insights into the fairness and sustainability standards of the fashion brands’ supply chains.

Retraced is production ready and implements its transparency solution into the supply chain of CANO, the sustainable footwear brand they founded in 2016.  Retraced is using the Oracle Blockchain Platform to provide a reliable platform to verify the materials used in the shoes. The CANO footwear company has built a brand of shoes that are both ethically sourced and uniquely fashionable.

CANO produces sustainably sourced handmade Mexican huaraches. CANO uses the Oracle Blockchain solution to promote traditional craftsmanship as well as fair and sustainable production practices.

Why Blockchain for Supply Chain?

As modern supply chains become more and more complex with multiple parties exchanging mountains of digital data, organizations are looking for solutions to streamline track and trace.  Blockchain technology helps to improve collaboration and communication between the parties involved in a supply chain and can also help to eliminate duplicate entries and third-party providers and instead provide a single, scalable record system.

At the recent Blockchain Summit in Frankfurt, the founders of retraced presented on what reliable transparency in fashion supply chains can look like using blockchain technology.  The application, according to co-founders Lukas Pünder and Philipp Mayer, offers "track-and-trace capabilities that allow each shoe to tell its own story, reveal every face behind the product that has helped bring it to market and show the origin of its raw materials. "

"We focus on suppliers, materials, classic Mexican craftsmanship and thus the individual worker," says Lukas.

Oracle Blockchain for Sustainable Shoes

The Oracle Blockchain technology enables transparent tracking of the supply chain down to the last detail. In doing so, the blockchain ensures that the collected data is uploaded and stored in the blockchain only if other participants in the value chain agree. Likewise, all data stored on  the blockchain is tamper-evident, meaning it is no longer changeable or erasable without it being evident to all parties. With blockchain,  the end consumer is provided with reliable data about their shoes  so that they can make conscious purchasing decisions.

A final benefit of using blockchain is that there are no technical limits on the amount of data that can be recorded. From the raw material supplier, to the materials uses, to the individual worker nothing in the manufacturing process is hidden from the customer. This is verifiable thanks to the hidden in the shoe NFC (near-field communication ) chips, which can be controlled via the CANO platform and directly via the app, whereby the consumer receives targeted information about the individual product.

"With the help of Oracle Blockchain solutions and Oracle expertise, retraced.co managed to stay within 12 months from project start to product launch," noted Peter Merkert, third co-founder of retraced during his presentation at Blockchain Summit in Frankfurt.

To learn more about blockchain technology, visit the Oracle Blockchain website.