We are syndicating this article from The Retail Bulletin.
Ashley Burkle is the Director of Business Development at Identiv, where she leads initiatives that help global brands implement secure digital identities across their product lines.
Her work focuses on advancing IoT-enabled packaging solutions that enhance transparency, strengthen consumer engagement, and support more sustainable product lifecycles.
Identiv is a global leader in RFID-enabled IoT solutions, creating secure digital identities for physical objects and enabling more transparent, connected product ecosystems. With technology integrated into more than 2 billion applications worldwide, Identiv supports innovation across healthcare, consumer electronics, luxury goods, smart packaging and more, helping brands bring greater intelligence, accountability, and sustainability to every product they make.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
Absolutely. Much of my career has been spent helping brands navigate the intersection of technology, design, and retail experience; finding new ways for physical products to communicate, engage, and deliver value. Before joining Identiv, my work in business development and global retail strategy gave me a front-row seat to witnessing just how rapidly the consumer landscape was changing. Brands were starting to realize that packaging could be more than a container – it could be a storyteller, a data source, and a trusted bridge between the physical and digital worlds.
At Identiv, that vision comes to life every single day. As Director of Business Development, I help global brands reimagine their packaging through secure digital identities, bridging every product to the cloud, to the consumer, to a more sustainable lifecycle. Identiv’s mission is to give digital identities to physical objects, and that idea drives everything we do. We’re creating IoT solutions that help brands build greater intelligence and integrity into their products, so every item they make carries a sense of trust and accountability.
What does your company do? What is your USP?
Identiv develops secure NFC, BLE, and UHF RFID inlays, tags, and labels that give retail products a unique digital identity – so items can be authenticated, traced, and connected from the moment they ship from the production site to the moment they’re in a shopper’s hands. Whether placed on the package or integrated directly into the product, our technology turns physical goods into reliable sources of real-time data. That data helps brands defend against counterfeits, maintain accurate inventory, and create simple, useful moments of engagement for shoppers at their point of decision and throughout their product use at home.
We pride ourselves on delivering true end-to-end IoT connectivity in collaboration with our trusted cloud partners, guiding brands, retailers and partners from pilot programs to large-scale production through a global network of engineering and manufacturing expertise. Our teams work across the U.S., Europe and Thailand, to ensure every pilot project and full-scale deployment is seamless, efficient, and built to last.
Over years of custom projects, we’ve designed, tested, and refined hundreds of prototypes for use cases where digital identity has traditionally been difficult to deliver. That experience defines our mission: make digital identity possible for any retail product that benefits from it, no matter how demanding the requirements.
What’s special about the platform and your approach?
We focus on a simple idea: people want to trust the products they buy, and brands need a reliable way to show that trust is earned. Our solutions are designed to make that connection clear, consistent, and seamless for everyone involved.
Because we’ve built a substantive library of solutions and engineering prototypes across a diverse set of materials, form factors, and real-world conditions, we know how to design and manufacture intelligence into the exact place it needs to be. That experience is what drives dependable scanning, streamlined interactions, and products that convey a clear, trusted story.
What advantage does it add?
For brands and retailers, the advantage is twofold: operational intelligence and establishing a more meaningful interaction with the end-customer. On one hand, Identiv’s smart packaging improves visibility across the product lifecycle by tracking items through manufacturing, logistics, and retail shelves to ensure authenticity and optimize inventory. On the other, it transforms that same data into a useful, intuitive touchpoint between the brand and the consumer.
When a shopper taps an NFC-enabled cosmetic jar or wine bottle, shoppers have the potential to be instantly connected to brand-authorized digital experiences – ranging from product information and sustainability details to tutorials, promotions, rewards, and even one-tap reordering for qualifying items. When thoughtfully implemented, it creates a frictionless path to deeper engagement and trust.
For retailers, that real-time visibility translates into measurable business value. Reduced counterfeit returns, faster restocking decisions, and more accurate demand planning, just to name a few. For consumers, it delivers what they increasingly expect – a sense of trust in what they’re buying and a clearer view of the story behind it.
How does a product or service implementation actually look — and how do you measure success?
Every implementation begins with collaboration. We start by understanding what our IoT inlay or tag product needs to go on – and there are many sizes, shapes and surface types that can be simple or complex to design for. That’s where our experience matters. With decades of specialized IoT design under our belt, our team draws from one of the industry’s deepest libraries of proven structures, materials, and performance data to engineer the right solution for the job.
From there, we develop and test the inlay or tag to ensure it performs flawlessly on the intended form factor. That may mean designing for metal surfaces, matching the curvature of a glass bottle, fitting on a tiny space, or integrating smoothly into the label of a premium sports accessory. Whether we’re adapting a design we’ve perfected over many prior projects or creating something new alongside a customer, our goal is reliability that holds up in the real world.
Once deployed, success is measured in outcomes, not outputs. That might mean verifying that a counterfeit problem has significantly dropped, that compliance reporting transitioned from manual to automated processes, or that consumer engagement has meaningfully increased through tap-to-connect interactions.
When brands see that packaging is no longer just a cost center but a continuous data and engagement channel, that’s when they know they, and we, have succeeded.
How are retailers using your systems to gain competitive advantage — and what does best practice look like? Can you share a case study?
Retailers are starting to see connected packaging not as a future promise, but as something that can create real value right now. With Identiv’s technology, a product becomes part of an ongoing relationship, extending the experience beyond the store and deepening trust over time.
A great example of this comes from our award-winning solution with ZATAP and Genuine-Analytics in the wine industry, where counterfeiting continues to be a major issue. Together, we used NFC and blockchain technology to confirm that each bottle, and the wine inside, is exactly what it claims to be. For producers, that means peace of mind. For retailers, it delivers a powerful competitive edge, helping protect margins, reduce fraud risk at the point of sale, and strengthen shopper trust through verified authenticity.
In retail, best practice often starts small – a pilot across a few SKUs or stores – and then scales as brands realize how easily the same digital identity can serve multiple goals.
Are there any other companies you partner with?
Partnership is central to how we innovate. No single technology solves every challenge, and we believe that the strongest results come from collaboration. We work with companies across industries that share our same vision for connecting products to purpose, from platforms that enable digital transparency to the chip makers and manufacturing partners who help ensure every connected product is built with the right technology from the start.
Take our collaboration with Narravero, for example. As new regulations like the EU’s Digital Product Passport (DPP) requirements take shape, brands and retailers are under pressure to capture and share accurate information about every stage of a product’s life. Together, Identiv and Narravero are turning that challenge into an opportunity. By linking our secure inlays with their digital platform, we’re giving products a voice — revealing how they were made, where they came from, and how they can be responsibly reused or recycled.
Each partnership strengthens our belief that innovation has the greatest impact when it’s shared, and when technology helps create clarity and confidence for everyone who touches it.
What challenges and opportunities do you see in UK retail for 2026 — and what challenges are retailers facing in 2025?
Retail is entering a new era defined by transparency and customer expectation. In the UK and across Europe, the Digital Product Passport initiative is reshaping how brands think about data, and is requiring them to document sourcing, materials, and sustainability attributes at the product level. That’s a challenge for many, but also a massive opportunity for those who act early.
Retailers are also grappling with shorter product lifecycles, counterfeit goods, and consumer fatigue around marketing claims. The winners will be those who replace static packaging with interactive packaging – where a tap proves authenticity, reveals sustainability data, or unlocks tailored content. It’s a shift from “telling” a brand story to proving it in real time when the consumer initiates and wants to learn.
We expect the interest and use of connected packaging to continue to grow, and over time, become an expectation from consumers viewing digital identity as part of what defines a premium, responsible brand.
How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
Our role is to make this shift simple and scalable. Identiv helps brands weave intelligence into their products so the same technology used for compliance also enhances how people experience and understand what they buy.
Where some see the Digital Product Passport as adding another layer of complexity, we see a moment to redefine transparency. By combining secure inlays with intelligent data infrastructure, our technology allows every product to hold its own verified record, and give consumers simple, instant access to the truth behind what they’re buying.
For brands, this opens the door to a new kind of customer relationship. Instead of only pushing information outward, companies can respond to actual consumer needs and behaviors. That shift has the potential to reduce engagement fatigue and build a more natural, two-way connection with the people who use their products.
What is on the horizon for Identiv as a company?
Looking ahead, we’re focused on making intelligence feel effortless; technology that blends naturally into products and packaging while quietly expanding what they can do. A major part of that work is the development of sustainable materials and new sensor-enabled labels that give brands a clearer view into how their products move, age, and perform. We’ve also invested deeply in advancing our BLE capabilities so these labels can monitor temperature, humidity, shock and more throughout the supply chain, offering real-time insight into product condition from production to point of sale. This level of visibility is already reshaping how companies think about freshness, safety, and circularity across their operations.
At the same time, we’re building upon our decades of expertise in global manufacturing and engineering design to deliver specialized IoT capabilities to complex packaging applications.
Any final thoughts?
At Identiv, we’ve seen through our work with brands that trust is built through clarity, transparency, and intuitive connection. When information is easy to understand and interactions feel natural, the technology itself fades into the background, leaving confidence in the product, in the brand, and in the choices people make every day. That’s the future we’re proud to work toward alongside our partners.
