Louis Vuitton Owner To Use ‘AURA’ Blockchain To Track Luxury Goods

• Toshendra Kumar Sharma
• April 13, 2019

I will begin with this piece of news: LVMH coming up with a Blockchain platform named AURA, to track their luxury goods. The luxury brand is very cautious about the credibility of their products. Today when the market is flooded with counterfeited products, it has become a daunting task for the original company owners to maintain the authenticity of their product and at the same time ensure that the end-user is getting the right product for the price they have paid. Louis Vuitton, a luxury bag brand has come up with an innovative and much-awaited move wherein, it will be promoting the use of Blockchain based platform to track its product. They have named this platform AURA. In this blog, we will be exploring what AURA is and which features of Blockchain it has harped upon.

 

A Quick Overview Of Louis Vuitton

It is one of the most admired and popular luxury bag brands. LVMH has around 60 luxury brand under its umbrella, they include names like Dior, Hublot, Louis Vuitton, and Dom Pérignon.  In 2018, they had a revenue of $53 billion. Being such a huge potential market and trusted the brand, it becomes imperative for them to provide the best and original products to their buyers. But recently the counterfeited product market has expanded which has also impacted the revenue of these companies. So, how will Blockchain help in overcoming these problems?

 

Let’s Explore:

The Blockchain is a digital ledger technology. Provenance, decentralization, and data security are the underpinnings of this technology that makes it extremely useful for other companies. But, it is important to highlight here that Blockchain is not the sole technology which works; most of the implications of this technology are associated with AI or IoT. The latter technologies are also fairly new, although a bit older than Blockchain technology.  But when all these come together, then we have a highly advanced and modern system which is very efficient.

 

So, what it has to do with LVHM decisions of creating a Blockchain based platform?

The answer to this is very simple. As already mentioned provenance or tracing the origin of the product is important for any organization. It not only ensures that the right product is reaching the end-user but at the same time, tracking of the product will help them understand how and what are the bottlenecks in this entire process.

 

With Blockchain, tracking becomes easier. It follows time-stamping which simply means that if any information is fed into the system, it will become easier for anyone to track or trace the formation. This feature can be very useful for companies like LVHM who wish to guarantee their customers original and authentic product.

What Is AURA?

As mentioned above, AURA is a Blockchain-based platform which will go live in the month of May or June 2019. Initially, this platform will work for Louis Vuitton and Dior and later it will be extended to other brands as well. This system will work on proof-of-authenticity. With this, the company wishes to trace the origin of raw material to the point of sale. The end result would be making the Blockchain as an integral part of their business operations.

This platform is built using Quorum which is an Ethereum Blockchain that was developed by JP Morgan. The company has deployed a dedicated team which will solely work on exploring various avenues of Blockchain technology and its implementations. It will be working closely with Microsoft Azure and ConsenSys.

 

The objective of this move is to create a tamper-free system and at the same time it will assure LVHM that they are harnessing original raw-materials for manufacturing their products. The success of any market solely depends on the authenticity of its products, with this move LVHM will not only have a check on the supply of the raw material but at the same time, they can also guarantee their customers of providing them with authentic products.

 

Concluding Thoughts

It would not be wrong to claim here that Blockchain is engulfing every business venture. It has proposed itself as a promising technology that will change the course of doing business. Ensuring more reliability and trust are key aspects of Blockchain which makes it useful for everyone.