LVMH, Prada & Cartier partner on Aura Blockchain Consortium
An unprecedented collaboration between luxury industry giants LVMH, Prada Group, and Cartier (part of Richemont) led to the creation of the Aura Blockchain Consortium.
An unprecedented collaboration between luxury industry giants LVMH, Prada Group, and Cartier (part of Richemont) led to the creation of the Aura Blockchain Consortium. This groundbreaking partnership aimed to develop the world's first global luxury blockchain, providing consumers with a high level of transparency and traceability throughout the lifecycle of a product.
The Aura Blockchain Consortium is a non-profit association of luxury brands investing in technologies to enhance the customer experience and build a virtuous future for luxury. By making blockchain solutions and related technologies easily accessible to all luxury brands, the consortium aims to address shared challenges such as authenticity, responsible sourcing, and sustainability in a secure digital format.
Built from scratch as a private blockchain, Aura uses less energy than public blockchains. The state-of-the-art technology matches a product ID to a client ID, providing the infrastructure to enable consumers to access the history of a product and proof of its authenticity at every step of the value chain, from raw materials to point of sale, and beyond. This allows luxury brands to communicate directly with consumers, telling a unique story around the quality of their materials, craftsmanship, and creativity, while strengthening the relationship between client and brand.
Among the founding members, LVMH Maisons Hublot, Bvlgari, and Louis Vuitton are already active on the platform. For example, Hublot has launched a digital e-warranty stored in the Aura infrastructure, enabling customers to verify the authenticity of their watch via a simple photo taken with a mobile phone. Brands using Aura can develop their own experiences according to their specificities and customer expectations while maintaining their data and adhering to the strictest standards of client privacy.
The benefits of using Aura extend to the secondary market, where sellers can easily verify themselves and their products, granting buyers access to the full history of second-hand items. This helps clean up the secondary market and ensures that buyers do not spend large sums of money on counterfeit items they believe to be genuine.
The Aura Blockchain Consortium is open to all luxury brands, not just the founders, and offers flexibility to support companies of varying sizes and adapt to individual needs. By promoting the use of a single global blockchain solution, the consortium accelerates the transition to a circular business model, trust, transparency, innovation, and sustainability for customers and the luxury industry as a whole.
