For years, the fashion industry has relied on sewn-in labels, hang tags, and printed barcodes to carry product information. These methods work, but they have well-known limitations. Labels get cut out. Hang tags are removed at point of sale. Barcodes fade with washing. None of them are particularly elegant, and none of them survive the full lifecycle of a garment.
Goodwin RFID, a China-based manufacturer specialising in embedded NFC solutions, has developed a concept that takes a different approach entirely. Instead of attaching a tag to a garment, the company has embedded an NFC chip directly inside the zipper hardware. The tag itself is a 5x5mm flexible printed circuit (FPC) component built around an NTAG213 chip operating at 13.56MHz. It sits inside the zipper pull, completely hidden from view. From the outside, it looks and functions like any standard metal zipper.
The size matters here. At just 5x5mm, the FPC tag is small enough to fit within the mechanical structure of a zipper pull without adding bulk, weight, or visual clutter. That allows it to be permanently integrated during manufacturing rather than applied after the fact. It cannot be removed without destroying the hardware itself, which makes it considerably harder to tamper with or counterfeit compared to stick-on labels or printed QR codes.
For the consumer, interaction is straightforward. A smartphone tap on the zipper pull triggers a near-field communication read, pulling up product information, authentication status, or any digital content the brand chooses to link. The close-range nature of NFC (typically a few centimetres) means the interaction is deliberate and private, not something that can be scanned from across a room.
Where this gets particularly interesting is in the context of Digital Product Passports. The European Union’s DPP regulations will require certain product categories to carry machine-readable digital identifiers that link to sustainability, material composition, and supply chain data. For fashion brands, finding a way to carry that identifier permanently and invisibly within the product has been a challenge. A label can be removed. A QR code can wear off. But a chip embedded inside a zipper pull is built into the product’s own hardware – it stays with the garment for its entire life, from production line to resale to recycling.
Goodwin RFID’s concept also hints at broader possibilities. If an NFC chip can be embedded inside a zipper, the same approach could work for buttons, rivets, snap fasteners, and other standard garment hardware. The company’s presentation materials reference smart buttons and embedded textile tags for items like socks, shoes, and hats. The underlying idea is that permanent hardware components could serve as long-term digital identity points, giving every garment a built-in connection to its digital record without changing how it looks or feels.
This is still a concept rather than a mass-market product, and there are practical questions around read reliability through different metals, cost at scale, and compatibility with existing garment manufacturing workflows. But the direction is clear. As DPP compliance timelines approach and brands look for authentication solutions that do not compromise design, invisible NFC integration in garment hardware could move from novelty to necessity.