In September 2019, high-level executives from LVMH, Prada Group, Richemont and others met at the historic Louis Vuitton family house in the Asnières-sur-Seine suburb of Paris to hammer out the details of a blockchain platform created specifically for the luxury industry by technology company Consensys and Microsoft. The key focus was how the companies, despite being competitors, could develop a blockchain platform that would verify the authenticity and provenance of luxury goods.
“We were talking about every point together, such as, ‘What is the appropriate legal entity?’, ‘What are the governing principles?’,” says Timothy Iwata Durie, Cartier’s global innovation director, who participated in the discussions. (Cartier is owned by Richemont.)