Authentique is Featured in The Spin Off
WHY CHASING A FAKE PRODUCT CAN BE AS EASY AS TAKING A PHOTO
Buying secondhand designer products has become an increasingly important phenomenon among fashion addicted and vintage lovers. Along with that, this purchasing behavior also helps avoid that "preloved"—that can easily become "undesired"—items end up in landfill too soon.
For these reasons, platforms like Vestiaire Collective, The Real Real, and in some cases also Vinted, have become the new must-go destination for those willing to buy cool items at more affordable prices. Despite this, it is still unclear how anyone can be sure if a specific item is authentic or not.
A solution for the problem is offered by Authentique app, a French authentication app launched in 2021 as a Web3-based service that belongs to Ordre Group, a fashion technology firm. More recently, thanks to a partnership with Alitheon, a worldwide key player in Vision AI across aerospace, energy, defense and manufacturing, anyone can check the authenticity of a product by simply scanning it with a smartphone.
Authentique app
Alitheon’s FeaturePrint no-touch serialization technology will be exclusively licensed for use by Authentique for the luxury and fashion industry globally, and will bring immediate benefits for brands, retailers and resellers.
Authentique’s seamless user experience is only based upon visual recoignition and requires no physical RFID, NFC or QR. Thanks to the accuracy of Alitheon's FeaturePrint technology, it ensures that brands can now irrefutably trace their products throughout their lifecycle providing transparent provenance while consumers can verify and authenticate products using a scan from a smartphone.
With this new solution, both consumers and B2B insiders will be able to simply take a picture of a product with a phone to identify it, authenticate it, and trace it. And if desired, they can be connected to its product data which can eventually be incorporated into a digital product passport (DPP).
Authentique app
The technology provides the ability to identify unique digital fingerprints for products that, when matched through the Authentique app, can be used for immediate verification for any product on their system.
“Incorporating Alitheon’s FeaturePrint into our Authentique platform will enable our customers to tackle some of our industry’s biggest authentication and verification challenges. Together, we are ushering in a new era–where counterfeit goods, gray market products, and fraudulent returns can be irrefutably identified with one click of a phone camera,” commented Simon P. Lock, CEO and founder, Ordre Group.
As the industry prepares for the implementation of new regulations in the EU mandating the use of DPPs, Vision AI is set to take on a range of new applications as a replacement for QR codes and NFC chips. These traditional methods of tagging products have limitations for serialization and authentication, as they can be easily removed, counterfeited, do not wear well on certain items, and are difficult to recycle.
Currently, the Authentique business has operations in Paris, London, New York, Milan, Sydney, LA, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Dubai. Key clients include Louis Vuitton, The Row, Balenciaga, Givenchy, Michael Kors, Yohji Yamamoto, Thom Browne, Simone Rocha, Agent Provocateur, Victoria Beckham and many more.
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