Digital commerce has expanded faster than the systems used to verify product compliance and supply chain relationships. Supchara, a proposed Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), is intended to support a more structured, reliable, and scalable approach to exchanging product safety and compliance signals among trusted participants.
The purpose of the Supchara PBC structure would be to balance commercial sustainability with the broader public good associated with product safety and compliance visibility. It would help to assure, by corporate charter, a minimal membership cost approach that maximizes adoption and thus maximizes positive consumer impact rather than profit.
A working group of stakeholders across the product safety ecosystem, including brands, retailers, ecommerce platforms, testing laboratories, consumer safety advocates, product safety consultants, and regulatory policy experts has been formed.
The working group is exploring the viability of a scalable supply chain mapping solution.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) has implemented a new requirement for electronically filing product safety data when regulated imported products arrive at U.S. ports. This data set involves independent laboratory testing to CPSC regulatory requirements. Confirmation of the existence of the data set at the point of retail, whether in-store or on ecommerce platforms, can substantially reduce consumer risk.
While all forms of supply chain compliance could ultimately be supported by a Public Benefit Corporation, the early Supchara focus is leveraging CPSC electronic product safety data filing.
With brand-level compliance data in Supchara, that data could be readily shared with retailers and ecommerce platforms (with permission from the brand) through an automated data feed.
Brand, retailer, and ecommerce platforms would see immediate value in this direct mapping of their business relationships; these relationships would form the foundation of Supchara at launch.
When the online seller is not the brand, establishing supply chain traceability from the seller to the brand involves the greater challenge addressed below.
When you are at an intersection and the light turns green, the cross-traffic red light is regulatory. Law applies. You most likely look both ways before entering the intersection. Distracted or under-the-influence drivers may approach the intersection, also subject to laws.
The federal government can’t assure you’re safe entering an intersection on a green light. You add trust with your own observations.
Many supply chain mapping efforts failed due to the ideal that an end-to-end supply chain green light must have absolute trust... that every move within the supply chain was documented with integrity. Imagine if stoplights were never brought into existence for lack of absolute trust.
Product compliance data traced to the brand is the green light. Additional trust looking both ways at the intersection is Supchara.
At the core of the challenge is establishing trust in the commercial relationships among brands, factories, distributors, sellers, ecommerce platforms, retailers, carriers, and other stakeholders while protecting supply chain proprietary information.
Once a product leaves the direct control of the brand, the complexity of supply chains can blur traceability to consumer access through retail channels. Traceability is essential to creating trust in product compliance, and the protection of proprietary supply chain relationships is essential to brands and other supply chain participants having trust in Supchara.
The working group is exploring methods to enhance traceability but with scalable methods that allow immediate adoption by supply chain members, with the recognition that product compliance trust will scale over time as members build their base of proprietary connections within Supchara.
Trust would also be enhanced with third party laboratory testing, in-factory product inspection, and factory audit report data directly uploaded to Supchara by those service providers.
Supchara would leverage the broad adoption of GS1 standards in place today.
The Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is a globally unique product identifier. It forms the basis of retail UPC and EAN barcodes.
The Global Location Number (GLN) is a globally unique physical location identifier that can be applied to all supply chain members.
The Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) is an identifier assigned to logistics units such as pallets or cartons and acts like a "license plate" for a product shipment.
While GS1 has all of the components in place for full supply chain mapping, Supchara would assess GS1 data even when full mapping... from the brand to the point of retail... has not yet been achieved. Greater supply chain use of GS1 standards would generate greater trust regardless of end-to-end connectivity of each product shipment.
If one supply chain member does not adopt full GS1 standards, the chain breaks. This is why so many traceability efforts stall despite excellent standards.
With the inability to expect all supply chain members to rapidly adopt all GS1 standards, Supchara allows immediate consumer, brand, retailer, and ecommerce platform benefit from GS1 data while supply chain members increase GS1 adoption over time.
Supchara would provide traceability data to ecommerce platforms to support listing decisions and prioritization of compliance team follow-up activity with sellers.
Early traceability data would be based upon GS1 standard location data (GLN's) and would answer the following questions: Does the seller have a GLN? Does the seller have a connection to the GLN of their supplier? Do GLN connections exist through the full supply chain back to the brand?
The next level of traceability connections would be based upon GS1 standard product identifiers (GTIN's), answering the same GLN questions above but at the GTIN level.
The final level of traceability connections would be based upon GS1 standard product movement data within the supply chain (SSCC's) where all product movement records from the brand to the seller would be recorded.
This data would be supplemented by 3rd party service provider data related to lab testing, product inspection, and factory audits, helping to validate the authenticity of supply chain members.
While GS1 standard identifiers can be used to help brand protection, they are not consistently used and can also be mis-used by bad actors. Counterfeiters will often use the brand's UPC on their own products, posing a significant risk to brand reputation as well as revenue. By establishing methods to increase Chain of Custody trust within Supchara, brands and consumers can be better protected.
Using an invitation model, Facebook achieved over 1 million users in less than 1 year. Often referred to as the "Facebook Effect", the invitation model can be applied to Supchara membership to achieve rapid scale as members invite their upstream and downstream business partners to join.
The success of broadly adopted supply chain traceability will depend upon rapid scalability through membership that actively brings new members on board.
With brand protection at the top of the supply chain, business continuity protection within the supply chain, listing protection for legitimate ecommerce sellers, and liability protection for retailers, a motivation for membership to rapidly invite other members is anticipated.
AI would play a key role in establishing trust levels.
AI analysis of the data in Supchara would be performed on a continual basis, determining membership trust scores based upon the number of connections, GTIN data, GLN data, and SSCC data. AI would also analyze publicly available recall data and information provided to Supchara by consumer advocates and consumer protection organizations.
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