Digital product passports: a brief explanation

While a dozen definitions may exist for it, a digital product passport is simply a detailed history ‘book’ on a product and may include, among other things, its provenance, the source of origin of the raw materials used in its production, and the authenticity of the product itself.

Early use case suggests that digital passports were geared primarily towards addressing the issues around sustainability, circularity and ethics. Authenticating the product itself was definitely part of the features, and while it did not appear to be a primary concern at first, it is now one that underscores the service.

The rise of digital passports for luxury brands

Panerai is not the first luxury brand to adopt digital passports for its products. Breitling was the first in the horology industry to issue passports on its timepieces, and in 2022, teamed up with Arianee once again, as well as Sourcemap, to make its first fully traceable timepiece, the Super Chronomat Automatic 38 Origins.

Digital product passports however seem to be more commonplace in luxury fashion. The Aura consortium issues a certificate of guarantee for the products in its programme, and Chanel has its own digital passport it gives for its bags. Pangaia and Yoox Net-a-Porter use the Eon Connected Product Platform to issue digital twins for their products, complete with their provenance and other details.

But that seems to be about the scope of usage. Other horology brands like Audemars Piguet, Dubuis and Vacheron Constantin are part of the Arianee consortium but do not have their digital passports out yet. In fact, it appears that a significant reason why fashion brands might perhaps be more inclined to issue them can be linked to government intervention in this regard. The European Union, for example, is looking to set up an EU digital product passport in the Ecodesign for Sustainable Regulation that would legally force EU-based companies to integrate them into their production process. It also has a Circular Economy Action Plan that mandates businesses in the textile, industrial and electric vehicle battery and construction industries to include digital passports in their products by 2024.

Are digital product passports about to become more commonplace?

The short answer? Yes.

Even if government mandates did not happen, the persistent rise and evolution of counterfeit goods would have driven luxury brands to introduce modern technology to fight an ancient, never-ending problem.

As it stands, the push for more transparency in the industry, coupled with superfakes threatening the exclusivity that is one of its pillars, and increasing legal mandates would push luxury brands to integrate digital passports into their processes and products. How well it would solve the challenges that bedevil the industry is another matter entirely.

The post Digital Passports: The Future of Luxury Goods? first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

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By July, the value of the most popular crypto, Bitcoin, had fallen by at least 70% from its November 2021 high of nearly $69,000. Today, with prices at a little over $19,000, the situation is even direr.

And yet, in spite of these gloomy stats, luxury brands, who appeared hesitant at first, seem to be rushing into the crypto and blockchain tech space. This year alone, Balenciaga, Prada, Tiffany&Co, and Gucci are among the top luxury labels that have dropped NFT projects, created products linked to NFTs or cryptocurrencies, or announced that they would be accepting cryptocurrencies as a form of payment. And no, there is nothing to indicate that this is a passing fad or a one-off trial.

What exactly do luxury brands understand about NFTs, cryptocurrencies and blockchain that the rest of the world does not seem to get?

The virtual cannot exist (forever) without the physical

If there is one thing all luxury brands involved in the NFT/crypto space have in common, it is this: all the projects have physical products that their customers can enjoy in real-time.

For example, Gucci’s NFT project with Superplastic is a 3-part series of limited-edition NFTs that allows its buyers to own 8-inch tall, handcrafted, white ceramic sculptures that are the exact replica of their digital counterparts.

Tiffany&Co launched NFTiff, a made-to-order program for the Cryptopunk community that allows them to turn their avatars into a piece of jewellery upon the purchase of a digital pass from the platform. The passes sold out within 20 minutes of their launch.

In 2021, Dolce&Gabbana partnered with the digital luxury marketplace, UNXD to launch and sell Collezione Genesi, a 9-piece digital collection of NFTs that its buyers could convert to physical couture items. The collection racked in a total of 1885.719 ETH or approximately $5.7million USD, with the highest selling item being the sapphire-and-diamond encrusted Doge Crown purchased for $1.25million USD. The Italian luxury house has since launched DG Family Boxes, another NFT project that will confer unique benefits to its holders while inducting them into the DG family.

Balenciaga’s NFT drop in July followed almost the same format. The Cristóbel Balenciaga: To the Moon NFT collection, which consisted of artwork inspired by former Balenciaga artistic director, Lorenzo Riva’s collection of more than 8,000 of Cristóbal Balenciaga’s drawings from the peak of the couture movement, gave selected minters the chance to win Balenciaga apparel and gift cards. 25 people also received a physical copy of one of Balenciaga’s 70-year-old drawings while other NFT holders got rewarded with whitelist spots for upcoming Animal Concerts NFT drops and access to special giveaways of both live and metaverse concert tickets.

Is the luxury sector the future of NFTs, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology?

Perhaps it is still too early to make a definitive statement, but, should blockchain tech and every other innovation that flows from it survive and thrive in the future, it would not be amiss to say that the luxury sector helped make it happen and the strategies it adopted served as a viable blueprint for the rest of the world.

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NFTiff: A made-to-order program for an exclusive minority

For now, NFTiff is available only to the CryptoPunk community, and not just any NFT holder. The reason is quite simple.

According to the younger Arnault, CryptoPunks as the ‘OGs’ of the NFT world. The collection, which is limited to a supply of 10,000 one-off avatars, can only be afforded by a certain, very affluent, subset of people. Alexandre Arnault is one of them, and so also are Jay Z, Snoop Dogg, Gary Vee, Logan Paul, Serena Willams and Alexis Ohanian, amongst others. It is this very rich, rather young community that the VP hopes to turn into Tiffany & Co loyal customers.

“These clients obviously skew a bit younger than our [classic] client base. It’s an anonymous [population], it’s not like you know who owns what, but what we generally understand is that they are younger and very affluent, a lot of them made large amounts of money in the crypto sphere. People need to understand that a lot of the things in their world are linked to luxury like desirability, scarcity, trends — they understand the ups and downs,” explained Arnault.

“What is exciting for people is that you can hold an NFT but you can’t see or experience anything with them. At Tiffany, we are giving them the opportunity to turn [a Cryptopunk] into a piece of jewellery made by hand with the utmost craftsmanship,” he said further.

How the Tiffany & Co NFTiff platform works

From August 5, Cryptopunk owners can access the NFTiff website to purchase a digital pass that will be stored in blockchain technology. The passes are only available for purchase with Ethereum cryptocurrency and are priced at 30 Ethereum, which is currently trading at around $50,000 dollars.

The NFTiff passes are not unlimited, however. Restricted to only 250, any CryptoPunk holder with more than one ‘punk’ will be only permitted three passes.

Once purchased, holders can then go ahead to exchange them for a custom-designed pendant and an NFT digital artwork that resembles the final jewellery design. Each pendant will be designed at Tiffany’s innovation centre in New York City and produced at its workshop in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Based on the colour palette of the NFT, each pendant will wither be rose or yellow gold and will have at least 30 gemstones and/or diamonds. It will be attached to an 18k gold adjustable chain of rectangular links made to resemble pixels. NFTiff holders will receive a render of their piece by October, and although the CryptoPunk used to create the pendant belongs to them, they will not be allowed to participate in the design process or provide feedback on the render. Pendants are expected to reach their owners by early 2023.

What next?

For now, it is not immediately clear if version 2.0 of this bespoke program will be made available to other NFT communities, like the Bored Ape community. However, as Alexandre Arnault says of the possibility of this happening in the future, “Never say never.”

Source: Yahoo Finance

The post Tiffany & Co is turning CryptoPunk NFTs into Wearable Jewellery first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

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The new functionality has been added to the Tag Heuer Connected Calibre E4 smartwatch, and will also be available as a free update for smartwatch owners via Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. Users will get the opportunity to display their NFT artworks on their timepiece face by connecting their crypto wallets, such as Metamask or Ledger Live, to guarantee authenticity.

Frédéric, CEO of Tag Heuer, will be using the functionality himself: he recently bought an NFT from Bored Apes — an Ape with an eyepatch and a diamond grin.

How it works

Users interested in this new feature can transfer multiple NFTs to the new Lens timepiece face via a paired smartphone. Once transferred, you can resize the images, so they fit on your smartwatch’s round screen. The timepiece face has three unique ways of displaying time while showcasing your favourite NFT artworks, which are displayed in a hexagon with a cloud of particles gravitating around the image. This includes a conceptual design with a triangle and a circle representing hours and minutes.

You don’t have to worry about the clarity of the images under sunlight: Tag Heuer says the screen is clear even in strong sunlight. And high fidelity colour reproduction means your NFTs are displayed just as the creators intended.

A new revolutionary introduction to horology?

The art of watchmaking has come a long way since legend has it that Abraham Louis-Breguet created the first wristwatch for the Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina, even though Patek Philippe officially claims this record. The world of horology has since welcomed quartz, accepted stainless steel as luxury after the debut of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in 1972, and learned to live with – and even embrace – the sheer audacity introduced by the Ulysse Nardin Freak in 2001.

But most of these historic moments have been related to function, material and style/design. The introduction of quartz, for example, meant more accurate timepieces at incredibly cheap prices.

NFTs are no doubt revolutionary and have so far succeeded in upending the traditional structure of power in the creative industry. But how exactly does having your NFT show up on your timepiece face count as revolutionary? Perhaps, if this feature had appeared before the advent of smartphones, it might have been considered a more groundbreaking concept?

Frédéric is more confident in the ability of the new feature to take off and become widespread in horology. “We already sold nice pieces,” he tells Vogue Business. “Now, we will speak more directly to the community. We remain very confident in the mid-term. There is volatility, but overall there was very strong growth last year and we are expecting strong growth this year.”

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Cancellations, especially those done last-minute, are a hotel’s worst nightmare. Empty rooms not only mean decreased revenue, but they may also impact a hotel’s ratings if it happens frequently. Apparently, nothing has worked so far, not even cancellation fees, leaving owners exasperated about how they can effectively manage the situation.

Until now.

As adoption grows, NFTs are finding new and creative uses across industries. And the hospitality industry is the latest to unlock a new function: some hotels in the Dominican Republic and Hawaii are now allowing guests to make reservations through NFTs to avoid the cancellation challenge.

RNTs: the New NFTs for Hotels

In 2020, tech startup Pinktada launched with a promise to replace the “archaic and outdated reservation model” of the hospitality industry. So far, it has tested its revolutionary method in the Dominican Republic and Hawaii and plans to expand to San Francisco, Bahamas, Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, and Cozumel among other locations.

Its model is quite simple. Guests make reservations at any of the hotels on the Pinktada network by purchasing Room-Night Tokens (RNTs). The RNTs would guarantee the buyer a specific room for a specified number of nights, which is exactly how traditional booking methods work.

The RNT model is a win-win for everyone. Once it has been purchased, the hotel receives value and it cannot lose the revenue from this booking regardless of whether or not the guest shows up. Guests on the other hand have the option of doing so much with their RNTs. They can sell it to other guests on the Pinktada platform at current market prices (which means they can make a profit if prices go higher); they can swap it for another room in another (participating) hotel. They can even transfer to someone else, all at no cost to the hotel.

There is a clause, however: RNTs can exchange hands “up until midnight local time two nights before the reservation in the time zone of the hotel.” In addition, the exchange can only happen among registered users on the Pinktada platform.

Is the future of Hotel Bookings here?

It’s still too early to say, but with all the uncertainty the world has faced in the last two years, adoption may happen faster than if this technology were introduced pre-2020.

Besides, no hotel likes cancellations. If RNTs ensure that they get to make a profit from all bookings without losing paying guests, then you just may be making a reservation with an NFT sooner rather than later.

The post You May Soon Have To Pay for Your Hotel Bookings with an NFT first appeared on Aspire Luxury Magazine.

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And while business may be booming in the virtual world, in reality, quite a number of people and countries are still shut out of it, not because they have not been invited, but because, as of now, they have not found any practical reasons to make a transition to the metaverse. Data is not readily available, but, based on trends on the African continent, you could say that such ‘out-of-body’ experiences do not really feature in our top ten list of needs and things in vogue.

 

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That is, until recently, when Delz Erinle, a product and UX designer and Niyi Okeowo, an art director, started Thrill Digital.

At the height of the pandemic last year that forced global lockdowns, Erinle saw how difficult it was to shop seamlessly from the safety of our homes. His solution? Team up with Lead Developer and Chief Technical Officer (CTO), Luke Jeffers, to use 3D to create a VR shopping product that would make the entire process more accessible and effortless.

From here, Thrill Digital moved on to pitch a lot of investors and in January this year, won a $40,000 MegaGrant from Epic Game to create a VR shopping product. They achieved this  – “an innovative 3D experience for London Fashion Week” which was showcased in February – in collaboration with Lone Design Club.

Now, the digital creative firm wants to make their products even more interactive and attractive by bringing them into the real world. The idea came after Erinle carried out research in a mall in London where he asked people if they would play a game to win luxury prizes. The feedback they got from people was affirmative. “We didn’t set out to create a metaverse project initially. It was like a virtual shopping experience, first,” he said.

The result of the research gave birth to Astra by Thrill Digital, a fashion crypto game in the metaverse where players who happen to love fashion, use crypto, and love games can win real-life fashion luxury items. The game would have its own crypto token, which must be connected to a crypto wallet. Players will try to amass as many crypto tokens as they can within an allotted time, after which a leaderboard is created where winners will be declared and take home luxury fashion items.

Speaking about the challenges Thrill Digital has faced so far, Lead 3D designer, Charles Egbejule, explains that daring to dream they can build a mini metaverse out of Africa was one of the biggest challenges they had to face. For lead VR architect Adekunbi Ajai, however, building remotely from different parts of the world was more of a challenge for the team. But they were able to adapt and can now easily communicate, she added.

Brand designer and co-founder, Niyi Okeowo, agrees but adds that raising awareness on a new concept like digital fashion was part of the numerous challenges they faced. “We were trying to sell the product while teaching people about it,” he explained.

Astra went live on December 20 and the first luxury fashion item users will be playing for is a Balenciaga Small Hourglass Tote Bag which will be delivered to the eventual winner wherever they are in the world. The game is available on PCs for now but will soon be rolled out to VR headsets and, hopefully, mobile devices.

Source: Techcabal

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Working with Wanna on the Gucci Virtual 25s

The Gucci Virtual 25s – the name of the sneakers – was produced in collaboration with fashion AR startup, Wanna. This is not the first time both brands are collaborating: last year, they worked on a feature in the Gucci app that allows users to virtually try on timepieces before purchase. Before that, Wanna had developed an AR technology that allowed users to try on the Ace sneakers on the same app.

Gucci is also not the only brand Wanna has worked with to develop an AR alternative to testing products physically. So far, it has been used by Adidas, Lacoste, Puma, All Birds and Farfetch, amongst others.

However, this is the fashion AR company’s first original digital product, designed by creative director Alessandro Michele.

Why did Gucci make the Virtual 25s?

Gucci’s latest sneakers, which goes for $11.99 on its app but can be purchased for an even lower price of $8.99 on Wanna’s app, can only be worn digitally. Unlike the other collaborations between both brands which were attempts to digitize the shopping process, the Virtual 25s will not make it to the buyer’s feet in real life.

Wanna gives an idea behind this decision. On its site, it states that one of the goals of the project is to “engage Gen Z customers with Gucci brand and products.” As a luxury brand, Gucci might be out of the reach of the younger generation, but instead of ignoring this demographic with the hopes that they can be targeted when they are older and wealthier, it is reaching out to them now with an affordable alternative that they can purchase for gaming and social media posts.

However, others think that this is Gucci’s way of entering into the world of NFTs, which has seen an explosion in popularity in the last couple of weeks.

What are NFTs?

NFT means Non-Fungible Tokens. In simple terms, they are assets that exist in a digital-only form that can be bought and sold. This BBC article gives an in-depth explanation of what they are and how they work.

On the 12^th of March 2021, Christie’s announced that it had auctioned off a digital collage by an artist named Beeple for nearly $70m, in an unprecedented sale of a digital artwork that fetched more money than physical works by many better-known artists. Earlier, musician Grimes sold digital pieces of her artwork for more than $6m.

There is some confusion on whether this is just another digital fad that will see people losing their funds, especially as NFTs do not grant you exclusivity: you are the recognised owner, but whatever NFT you purchase can be seen by everyone all over the world and shared on the internet without restrictions.

But Wanna co-founder and CEO, Sergey Arkhangelskiy, is not fazed. “In five or maybe 10 years a relatively big chunk of fashion brands’ revenue will come from digital products… Our goal as a company is to actually supersede the product photos… and substitute it for something which is way more engaging and closer to offline shopping,” he told Business of Fashion.

However, he is cautious of the NFT market, citing the hurdles in setting up bitcoin wallets and purchasing on blockchain for consumers. “It’s not very user friendly,” he said. As for the development of digital products, “we’re on the very early stages of this.”

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