Founding member of Aura Blockchain Consortium, OTB announces that the entire collections of its main Maisons, Jil Sander, Marni and Maison Margiela, will be equipped with NFC chips and registered on the platform.
It had been the fourth luxury player to join, at the end of 2021, the Aura Blockchain Consortium platform, co-founded earlier that year by the Lvmh, Prada, Richemont groups.
Italy’s OTB, owner of labels Diesel, Jil Sander, Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor&Rolf, companies Staff International and Brave Kid and a stake in Amiri, is now the most advanced in the process…
Complete transparency
In a press release published at the beginning of June, the group headed by Renzo Rosso indicated that it would provide its customers with a digital certificate of authenticity for all products (garments and accessories) for its main Houses, namely Jil Sander, Maison Margiela and Marni, starting with the Autumn-Winter 24/25 collections. This will ensure complete transparency for customers on the products they buy, by informing them on the manufacturing processes involved (origin of raw materials, different stages of production, environmental footprint…), and protect them against counterfeiting. This process will also facilitate the second-hand market, which is growing exponentially in the luxury sector.
To achieve such certificates of digital authenticity, OTB performs two essential steps: it inserts an NFC chip into each garment and accessory, and registers all of them on the AURA blockchain platform. Thanks to the NFC chips, its customers can access digital authenticity certifications and detailed information on the products they buy, via their smartphones.
A pilot project had already enabled OTB to carry out such a process on the most emblematic accessories from Maison Margiela, Marni and Jil Sander, representing some 1.2 million products since the beginning of 2022.
1.5 million products
The group is thus moving up a gear, with now the guarantee that more than 1.5 million products a year will be registered on the Aura blockchain and equipped with digital authenticity certificates.
According to Stefano Rosso, board member of the Aura Blockchain consortium and CEO of Marni, this announcement represents “an important step forward in OTB’s innovation process, as it enables us to guarantee greater transparency, new modes of interaction and an increasingly mediatized experience for the customers of our luxury brands”. In his eyes, “the widespread adoption of blockchain technology and its integration into our production processes means that we will be able to respond quickly to all the challenges and opportunities presented by future legislation.”
Begun in the Lvmh fold in 2019 before taking shape in 2021 with its competitors -a rarity in luxury goods-, Aura Blockchain Consortium today has some forty members, evolving in the worlds of fashion, watchmaking-jewelry, spirits or automotive. In addition to the numerous associate companies from the founding groups (Cartier, Bulgari, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Hublot, Loro Piana, Heristoria…), other companies such as Tod’s and Mercedez Benz have also joined the consortium. More than 40 million products have already been registered on the platform.
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Featured Photo: © Aura Blockchain
