The Manchester Fashion Institute has developed a powerful digital platform to help UK fashion and textile businesses stay compliant, competitive, and future-ready.
FASHTRAX, created by the Institute’s Textiles Transparency Team (MFITT) at Manchester Metropolitan University, puts easy-to-follow regulatory guidance at businesses’ fingertips, allowing them to stay ahead of rapidly evolving legal standards, including the upcoming EU Digital Product Passport (DPP).
At the heart of the platform is the Compliance Navigator, an intelligent diagnostic tool offering tailored advice based on company size, product type, and supply chain footprint.
“FASHTRAX is designed to simplify compliance in a complex world,” said project co-lead Julie Hodson. “With regulation coming from all angles, particularly around sustainability and transparency, small and medium-sized businesses often don’t have the resources to keep up. This platform changes that, offering clear, actionable insights and tools.”
Funded by InterAct, a Made Smarter Innovation programme, and supported by organisations including the UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT), the platform connects academia, industry, and tech providers to deliver practical solutions to real-world challenges. It maps over 100 pieces of regulation to 40+ eco-standards and uses data from the UKRI-funded LEGI-STANDARDS database project.
Professor Jillian MacBryde of the University of Strathclyde, co-director of InterAct, said: “FASHTRAX is a perfect example of how social science research can power innovation and competitiveness. It’s helping the UK fashion industry build resilience and sustainability, while preparing for digital transformation.”
Currently in development, the Compliance Navigator will be piloted by 20 industry partners this summer, with a full launch anticipated by the end of 2025. Early adopters will receive a personalised report outlining the specific regulations affecting their operations, along with recommended tools and resources to meet compliance requirements.
Dr Hilde Heim, co-lead and founder of MFITT, said: “This is about futureproofing UK fashion. FASHTRAX empowers brands to adapt quickly and cost-effectively to new rules, while embedding transparency and innovation at the heart of their business models.”
“FASHTRAX marks a major step forward in preparing manufacturers for digitalising the fashion supply chain. It drives innovation, sustainability, and competitiveness across the UK garment sector. Our vision is for it to become the go-to platform for enhancing transparency, efficiency, and sustainability in global fashion supply chains.”
The project is already delivering wider benefits across research, education, and policy.
At the university level, the project has cemented MFITT’s leadership in supply chain transparency, within the Sustainable Approaches to Fashion Enterprise (SAFE) research group. It has also sparked new collaborations aimed at developing a consumer-facing version to help inform ethical and sustainable purchasing.
For students, FASHTRAX has enriched the curriculum with real-world insights, better preparing them for a rapidly evolving industry. Outputs are being shared via webinars, reports, and presentations to influential bodies like the UKFT, the OECD and the EU Commission’s Joint Research Centre, ETP and CIRPASS-2.
In the UK, the initiative has drawn interest from the British Fashion Council, WEFT, and WRAP. The tool will shortly be shared with the British Standards Institution (BSI) and the government’s recently launched Circular Economy Taskforce.
Dr. Heim added: “As the fashion industry undergoes digital transformation, the MFITT research team is proud to support this shift. FASHTRAX is poised to be a game-changer for the fashion industry, offering clear benefits for the economy, manufacturers, and technology suppliers.”
InterAct was a £4.4 million Made Smarter Innovation-funded, Economic and Social Research Council-led network that brought together economic and social scientists, UK manufacturers, policymakers, and digital technology providers to address the human issues resulting from the diffusion of new technologies in industry.
With involvement in over 70 events both in-person and online, welcoming more than 2,000 stakeholders to engage and connect, InterAct has placed building the Network at the heart of their activities. With more than 750 network members, the community has proven to be a dynamic bridge between industry, policy and academia.
InterAct funded 30+ projects spanning topics from Digital Change Management to sustainable steel manufacturing and public perceptions of manufacturing, bringing together 100+ researchers from more than 40 institutions.
InterAct also collated insights for UK manufacturing from the global manufacturing environment, leading research missions to engage with 150+ manufacturing and digital technology leaders in Singapore, Malaysia, India, Australia and Sri Lanka.
For more information about the project visit https://fashtrax.mmu.ac.uk.
For more about the work of InterAct visit https://interact-hub.org
