How Provenance Is Revolutionsing Supply Chain Transparency

Behind every great wellness product there’s a great story, but beyond the clever marketing how much do consumers really know about the brands they’re buying into?

Uncovering the stories, journeys and impact behind brands and products, Provenance enables consumers to make informed purchases by providing them with a platform to learn more about where products come from. While, for businesses, the cutting-edge technology helps to create meaningful relationships with customers, on a much deeper level.

With an official launch slated for June, Provenance has already attracted over 500 brands including Pact Coffee and Impossible, owned by Lily Cole. Here, founder Jessi Baker talks about the groundbreaking software, which she argues will revolutionise supply chain transparency.

On filling a void….

I always felt like the information consumers were being fed about products was so one-dimensional, particularly when shopping online. There’s so much emphasis placed on brands that it’s sometimes quite abstract and to me that was crazy.

I felt like there should be a method to find out a more about a product and the company behind it, so while studying a PhD in computer science I looked specifically at supply chain transparency and how new types of technology could be used to facilitate consumers learning more about where their products come from and who made them, in order to bring that information to the point of sale.

On navigating Provenance…

Essentially Provenance is just a software service. Companies can sign up and create an account to provide consumers with more information about their business, sharing things like where they’re based and who the founders are.

Crafting a story around how a company’s products are created rather than just dumping a load of information on consumers, we try to make each story as trustworthy as possible by ensuring that it’s a collaborative process.

Lots of different people can contribute to any given story, giving it a more crowd-sourced opinion as opposed to a single viewpoint, but we also include lots of supporting data.

We use different data feeds from things like the company’s health, which means a consumer can tell if it’s an independent company or not, to a brand’s social media accounts, enabling companies to craft an open story around how their products are created.

Additionally, we’re doing a lot of work when it comes to tracking individual items, which will give the consumer access to information about every single product journey.

On early adopters….

Smaller brands have definitely been more pioneering on the stability front, and seem to really love us because we provide them with an extra string to their bow, however some of the big brands we’ve spoken to have been more apprehensive.

I think transparency isn’t the most welcoming marketing movement for a lot of larger brands which has been a challenge, but startups and pioneers are all for it and for us that’s the most important thing.

There are millions of small brands all over the world and Provenance allows them to share their stories with each other.

On Challenging the retail industry…

I hope Provenance will make more retailers question the current status of their supply chain. At the moment brands are being built by advertising agencies that are completely removed from the creation of the product they are advertising, but I believe consumers are more interested in the real stories.

Who are the people that work for the company, who are the directors? With Provenance that type of information is a central part of the message and marketing, and that gives brands a reason to reassess their supply chain and re-evaluate how they create the things they do.

Currently most industries focus all of their attention on advertising and sales through the use of the fantasy worlds that they create. I want to challenge this and see companies focus on genuine stories in order to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

On creating a movement…

I think the demand for transparency in general is only going to increase over the coming years and I think there are a lot of companies that are already being more voluntarily open.

All we’re trying to do is make it easier and cheaper for companies to do that, so I hope that we’ll be a catalyst for making it more normal.

It’s a bit of a movement and I think more businesses are realising that people don’t want to buy into businesses that are doing bad things.

It’s going to take a lot of companies coming together and a lot regulations to really make this the norm, but the dream is to attract more small commercial business that want some transparency and to be the easiest way for them to do that.

On fostering collaboration….

For now, getting the software out there is our number one priority, but we’re also working hard to create a lot more features.

We want the platform to include aspects like social and environmental impact reporting and for the software to become much more integrated.

We want to make Provenance as collaborative as possible, allowing companies to share their information with anyone they want, however they want. Every great product that’s made by a company that is trying to do something good comes with information about who made it, where and with what materials, and if we can help communicate that then we’ve achieved something.