By
Mayowa Adebajo
March 12th, 2024
The Cartier’s parent company expects the innovative technology to increase the transparency of its logistics system. The new board member of Richemont Jin Keyu who announced this decision also made a strong point on the importance of the academic research of the crypto sphere form the macroeconomics perspective.
Luxury goods companies want nothing but the best. Their customers are ready to pay the high price, but they want to be sure that they get the premium quality object. That is why these companies always keep an eye on the innovative technologies. No wonder Richemont, the luxury goods giant that owns well-known brands like Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, Alfred Dunhill and Montblanc, has turned its attention to blockchain.
Richemont plans to achieve increased transparency of its supply chain with the help of the blockchain technology. Jin Keyu, a board member of Richemont, said: “As Cartier’s parent company, we [Richemont] have recently decided to start utilizing blockchain to trace the origin of diamonds, rocks and gold back to the mines or recycling factories. For all the watches we sell, we also hope to (use blockchain) to track their sources to validate their authenticity.”
Blockchain can be used to create an effective solution that can counteract theft and fraud. Richemont expects it to bring the transparency of its logistics system to the new level. Moreover, this decision is likely to score the brand points with the implementation of the innovative technology.
The company is not making a risky move as the blockchain-based solutions of this kind already exist on the market. One of them is Arianee Blockchain, a platform that allows luxury brands to keep track of post purchase traceability.
The existence of the similar solutions raises an important issue which is characteristic for the blockchain startups: they tend to develop the projects from scratch. This problem was also addressed in the speech of Jin Keyu, who is not only a board member of Richemont, but a talented economist and the youngest professional teacher at the London School of Economics.
She pointed out that blockchain startups tend to ignore the experience of other project not to mention the disregard for the academic research in the sphere. Keyu revealed her next intention: the study of the crypto sphere from the perspective of macroeconomic theories. Richemont will not be the only company benefiting from Keyu’s studies: she also plans to work as an advisor for China-based blockchain startup Ultrain.
Richemont is not the first luxury goods company that has decided to make use of the blockchain technology. CoinSpeaker has already reported on RealChain Foundation Ltd and its investigations in the sphere of minimizing the fraud risk and cutting transaction costs on the luxury goods market. However, blockchain can be more than just a technological stack. Chronoswiss, Swiss watchmaking company, got inspired by the world of cryptocurrencies and released a limited edition of crypto-themed watches.
The expansion of blockchain to the luxury goods sphere is a good sign for the technology. Luxury brands are not as conservative as financial institutes, but they are still extremely concerned about their reputation. Luxury goods giants like Richemont are not ready to risk their brand image by implementing risky technological solutions – and the latest announcement of Keyu is a selling point for blockchain.