OTB to equip Jil Sander, Marni, Maison Margiela products with digital authenticity certificate

Italian fashion group OTB is set to make the supply chain of all the products commercialised by its leading luxury labels fully transparent. Between now and the Fall/Winter 2024-25, Renzo Rosso’s group will equip all the products by its Jil Sander, Marni and Maison Margiela labels with digital authenticity certificates guaranteed by blockchain technology, for a total of 1.5 million items a year.
 

OTB, which also owns luxury label Viktor & Rolf, jeans label Diesel, manufacturing company Staff International and childrenswear label Brave Kid, and holds a minority stake in US label Amiri, will equip the products with a near-field communication (NFC) chip, and register them on the Aura blockchain platform, a consortium set up in 2021 by OTB with the LVMH group, Prada, and Richemont-owned Cartier. The technology will enable customers to access a digital authenticity certificate, containing information about each individual product’s origin, via a smartphone. 
 
OTB first deployed a pilot project, registering a selection of accessories by Maison Margiela, Marni and Jil Sander, and then extended the solution to all of these labels’ products. OTB said that, since the start of 2022, it has registered approximately 1.2 million NFC-chip-equipped products on the Aura blockchain.

“This is an important advance in the OTB innovation process, because it enables us to guarantee greater transparency, new ways of interacting with and an increasingly high-profile experience for our luxury brands’ clients,” said in a press release Stefano Rosso, a member of the Aura Blockchain Consortium’s board and the CEO of Marni. Within OTB, he is also notably in charge of BVX, the group’s entity that focuses on virtual reality projects.
 
“Full-scale adoption of blockchain technology and its integration within our production processes means we shall be able to respond promptly to all the challenges and opportunities presented by future legislation,” added Stefano Rosso.