OTB, the international fashion and luxury group that owns brands such as Jil Sander, Maison Margiela and Marni, Announced on Wednesday that it will provide blockchain-based digital certificates of authenticity for all products from those labels, starting with the Fall/Winter 2024/2025 collections.
The certificates use blockchain technology and an NFC (near-field communication) chip embedded in each garment or accessory. This allows customers to verify the authenticity of a product by scanning the chip with their smartphone and accessing a tokenized certificate stored as an NFT on a blockchain network.
“This is an important step forward in the OTB innovation process, as it allows us to guarantee greater transparency, new ways of interaction and an increasingly cutting-edge experience for the customers of our luxury brands,” said Stefano Rosso, CEO and board member of Marni . member of the Aura Blockchain Consortium, in a statement.
OTB, a member of the Aura Consortium, has already registered approximately 1.2 million products with NFC chips on Aura’s Ethereum-compatible blockchain network as of early 2022. With the process now standardized across all luxury brands, OTB expects to register more than 1.5 million products annually.
OTB’s Aura-powered authentication app in action. Image: OTB
“Full adoption of blockchain technology and its integration with our manufacturing processes means we can quickly respond to any challenges and opportunities presented by future legislation,” said Rosso.
The Aura Consortium includes more than 40 leading luxury brands from multiple industries, including giants such as Louis Vuitton, Prada, Mercedes Benz and Tiffany & Co. To date, more than 40 million products have been registered in the private chain, the Consortium announced in May.
The Aura platform allows brands to enable not only digital authentication functionality, but also the ability for brands to connect directly with customers and for people to transfer ownership of items in the chain.
Editor’s note: This article was written with the help of AI. Edited and fact-checked by Andrew Hayward.