Italian fashion group OTB has joined the AURA Blockchain Consortium as its fourth founding member. The other founders include luxury conglomerate LVMH, Prada Group and Richemont’s Cartier.
OTB owns eight fashion brands, including Diesel, Maison Margiela, Marni, Viktor&Rolf, and Jil Sander and has more than €1.3 billion ($1.5bn) in revenues.
LVMH initiated the blockchain platform in 2019 as an anti-counterfeit solution enabling customers to verify that its products are originals. However, since then, the objectives have evolved to include sustainability.
“We aim to provide our strong contribution to this strategic collaboration focusing on a circular business model, transparency for the customer, innovation and sustainability,” said Stefano Rosso, Board Member of OTB Group.
Brands already active on the platform include Bulgari, Cartier, Hublot, Louis Vuitton, Hennessy and Prada.
In June, Daniela Ott joined AURA as General Secretary and is now accelerating its rollout. It’s adding AURA Light, a software as a service solution, to lower the barriers to adoption. It’s also developing a non-fungible token (NFT) solution for luxury brands. We believe the anti-counterfeit solution is already an NFT at a technical level, but not in the popular collectible sense.
Meanwhile, another luxury blockchain consortium is Arianee which is working with Breitling, Richemont brand Vacheron Constantin and others.
Several luxury brands are dipping their toes in the water with NFTs, each in their own way. Louis Vuitton launched an online gaming experience to celebrate its 200th anniversary. Dolce & Gabbana sold a collection of nine NFTs for $5.65 million. And Gucci is exploring 3D clothing.
