1. What Product Mapping helps you achieve
Your customer needs to know which suppliers and facility processes are behind each of their products, to build Digital Product Passports, meet product regulations and calculate environmental impact. Collaborative Product Mapping (CPM) is where you share that, product by product:
Map it once, right on your customer’s product. Add the suppliers and processes behind a product directly on your customer’s map, instead of sending emails and spreadsheets.
Reuse what you’ve already mapped. If a product’s supply chain is the same as one you’ve mapped before, paste the earlier map instead of entering every supplier again.
Share the work with your suppliers. Invite your own suppliers to add the tiers they know, so you don’t have to collect the whole chain yourself.
Match your customer’s level of detail. Map a whole style, or a single variant or SKU when your customer asks for it.
No documents needed. Product mapping shows who makes what. It doesn’t ask for certificates or order documents.
2. How Product Mapping connects to your Retraced profile
Collaborative Product Mapping builds on your network: the suppliers you map must be connected to you in Retraced, with the facility processes listed in their profiles. It adds what your network alone can’t show: which of those suppliers make one specific product. Supply chain mapping shows who you work with overall; product mapping shows who makes this product; Order Tracing shows who made one specific order, with documents to prove it.
Every product you map also adds to your foundation in Retraced. Each map you build can be pasted into future requests, and the components you create for mapping stay in your library, ready to use again.
3. How to do it
Before you start: connect your suppliers. The suppliers you map come from your Retraced network. You can also add them while mapping, but connecting your suppliers first makes mapping faster.
🎥 [Video: Collaborative Product Mapping] Prefer to watch? This video covers every step below, from accepting a request to submitting your map for review.
Accept the request. Open it from the email, the in-platform notification, or Collaborative Product Mapping in the left-hand menu. Read your customer’s message and click Start Collaborating.
Note: You may get several requests for the same style: your customer can ask for a separate map for each variant or SKU when they’re made differently, for example when two colorways are dyed at different mills. Map each request as its own product.
Map your suppliers. Click + on a node and choose Map supplier. Select the supplier, or click + Connect company to connect a company already on Retraced or create a new one, the same way as building your network.
Choose the facility process they contribute to this supply chain. You can also link the styles or components they supply: pick one you’ve created, or create a new one right there.
Click Add Company, and repeat for each supplier. The same supplier can appear more than once, for example in two branches of the same product.
Invite your own suppliers (optional). Click + on a supplier you added and choose Invite to Collaborate, add a message and send it. They’re notified by email and in the platform, and can map their own tier.
Submit for review. Open View Task to reread your customer’s message and check the task details, then submit. Your customer approves the map or asks for changes. LINK ARTICLE
Reuse a map you’ve built before. If the supply chain is the same as an earlier product, click + on the node and choose Paste product map: every supplier upstream of that node is added in one step. LINK ARTICLE
4. Where your information is used
Your map becomes your customer’s product data. Once your customer approves it, your map is the supply chain behind their Digital Product Passports, and supports their work on product regulations and environmental calculations. When your customer marks the map as done, it’s locked and ready for use.
Your suppliers fill in their own part. The suppliers you invite add the tiers they know, so you see the full chain behind your product without collecting it all yourself.
5. Keep it up to date
A product map only helps your customer while it matches how the product is actually made. If a supplier or facility process changes before your customer approves the map, update it before you submit. If your customer asks for changes, update the map and submit it again. (Worth to see whether to add a step-by-step guide them through editing process)
Once your customer marks a map as done, it’s locked. If something changes after that, contact your customer so they can reopen it. If you can’t edit a map, someone on your team may already have submitted it for review; your customer has to change its status from their side.
6. What to do next
Keep your facility processes accurate. The processes in your suppliers’ profiles are what you select when mapping, so keeping your compliance profile current makes every map faster.
Add the proof behind the map. If your customer needs documents for a specific order, they’ll send you an Order Tracing request, where you link your orders and upload documents → [Order Tracing article link]