LVMH joins Prada and Cartier to the luxury blockchain Aura Screen reader support enable

By: Bharggavi Ssayee

April 22, 2021 11:00 PM

The Aura blockchain consortium for luxury goods is growing. In addition to the Hublot, Bvlgari and Louis Vuitton brands, it now houses Prada and Cartier from the Richemont group. The promise: a secure electronic certificate.

The LVMH group, the Ethereum ConsenSys studio and the multinational Microsoft created in 2019 a new consortium: AURA. This aims to integrate blockchain technology into the luxury industry. And in 2021, this consortium is growing.

LVMH's brands are now joined by those of a competitor. In a press release, the luxury group indeed announces the arrival of two new brands in this industry. These are Prada and Cartier de Richemont.

A certificate of authenticity stored on the blockchain

LVMH highlights an “unprecedented collaboration between competitors”. And what is at stake is therefore the dematerialization of operations and information on the Ethereum blockchain - but in a private version.

The contribution of the blockchain relates more specifically to warranty information for luxury products. In particular, it allows brands to issue a certificate of authenticity and to fight against counterfeiting.

"Aura Blockchain associates a product identifier with a customer identifier, providing an infrastructure (...) allowing consumers to access the history of a product and proof of its authenticity at each stage of the value chain", details LVMH.

The issues of traceability, sustainability and authenticity are shared by the various luxury players. With Aura, the objective is therefore to pool technological investments around a single solution.

Hublot, Bvlgari and Louis Vuitton exploit Aura

After a first phase involving only the brands of the LVMH group, the consortium is now striving to open up to competition and to the industry as a whole. To date, the Hublot, Bvlgari and Louis Vuitton houses are active on Aura.

Customers of these brands can confirm the authenticity of their watch via a photo taken from their smartphone. The authentication of luxury watches is indeed the first use case of blockchain in the sector.

Note that this common platform does not mean pooling customer data. User companies remain the owners of their data and its confidentiality is guaranteed. As for the recording on the blockchain, it allows to preserve the data against any modification and falsification.