Product labels and passports

The label lasts fifteen years. The page behind it shouldn't.

The EU is putting QR codes on physical goods: battery passports from February 2027, then textiles, electronics and tyres. The code is affixed once. Everything behind it has to keep being right, and provable.

The worked example

One GTIN, three markets, one recall.

The printed URL is a GS1 Digital Link: go.yourbrand.com/01/09506000134352/10/LOT7. The product's identity and the lot are in the ink; where it points is yours to change.

Scanned in GermanyThe German product pageA rule for a country. A Belgian scanning in French gets the French one: a rule for a language.

A retailer's scanner asksThe logistics dataA rule for a link type. The same code answers a consumer, a retailer, a recycler and a regulator differently, as the standard expects.

Lot 7 is recalledThe recall page, for lot 7 onlyOne rule naming the lot. Every other lot is untouched; nothing was reprinted.

A regulator asks what it said in MarchThe recordEvery change to what the code answered, with when and why, exportable with a checksum.

OtherwiseThe fallbackWhere a scan lands if nothing above applies. It can't be blank, because the label can't be recalled.

What changes for you

Three things you stop doing.

Reprinting for a market

One SKU, one label, three languages: rules for country and language, not three print runs.

Recalling everything to recall one lot

The lot is in the printed URL. A recall is a rule that names it, and a print run can be paused on its own without touching the others.

Reconstructing history for an audit

The record of what each code answered is written as it changes, kept for the life of the code, and exportable with a SHA-256 checksum.

The standard

A conformant resolver, on your domain.

On a custom domain LinkShift answers GS1 Digital Link paths the way ISO/IEC 18975 describes: the product code, a lot and a serial in the path; linkType for who's asking; linkType=linkset for everything the resolver knows about the product; a 400 for a malformed identifier and a 404 for an unknown one. Plain slugs still work beside it for everything that isn't a product.

The hostname is yours, so the codes are yours: if we ever go away, one DNS record and every label keeps working. The whole workspace downloads as a file any web server can serve.