Authenticity Repositories
In the luxury watchmaking and leather goods sectors, counterfeiting represents between 5 and 9% of global trade: however, the real issue is no longer simply fake goods circulating in parallel markets. It is the authentic piece whose authenticity can no longer be proven. Your after-sales service teams spend hours authenticating timepieces for clients wishing to resell.
Your paper certificates are lost, falsified, or remain stuck in drawers. The second-hand market is booming: a high-end multi-brand distributor, a premium watch retailer, a certified resale platform: and your houses are losing control over the valuation of their own creations. Meanwhile, each external repair workshop that works on a piece creates a gap in its history.
Legal teams track stolen pieces reported to insurers without a reliable centralised database. And when a VIP client requests the complete history of their piece purchased fifteen years ago, the response depends on the goodwill of an Excel file maintained by someone who may have left the company.
This solution belongs to the Data, Master Records & Reporting family.
Challenges holding back your performance
Current authenticity certificates—whether paper or PDF—have no genuine evidential value. They can be photocopied, lost, or forged. Internal databases exist, but they operate in silos: the Geneva workshop cannot see what the Hong Kong after-sales service has recorded. What about the NFC chips integrated into products in recent years?Without a coherent backend infrastructure, they merely redirect to a static webpage that can be easily cloned. As for third-party certification platforms, they create dependency on an external actor that may disappear, change its terms, or suffer a data breach. The result: teams spending their time responding to authentication requests by email, second-hand market disputes that are impossible to resolve, and a loss of control over the residual value of your creations.
Our Technical Approach
Our approach relies on an internal distributed ledger: not an expensive and slow public blockchain, but a cryptographic logging infrastructure that you control. Each manufactured piece receives a unique digital identity, linked to its NFC chip and serial number. This identity accumulates time-stamped and signed events: manufacturing, quality control, initial sale, revisions, changes of ownership.
The cryptographic signature ensures that a recorded event can no longer be modified or deleted: even by your own IT teams. Ownership transfer functions like a bank transfer: the new owner accepts the piece into their personal space, the former owner loses access. For theft declarations, a marked piece triggers an alert if someone attempts to verify or transfer it.
The public verification portal allows anyone: potential buyer, customs officer, insurer: to confirm authenticity without revealing the identity of the current owner.
Immutable Logging
Cryptographically secure record from manufacture through to revisions.
Chip Interfacing (NFC)
Design of reading interfaces interacting with integrated physical chips.
Transfer of Property
Digital workflows enabling the official transfer of the passport to the new purchaser.
Verification Portal
Secure public interface enabling authenticity validation with a single scan.
Management of Stolen Objects
Immediate flagging blocking all official transactions on a serial number.
Maintenance Logbook
Addition of evidence of revision by certified workshops directly into the passport.
Technical Architecture
Several sources, one master record to arbitrate between them, then analysis: Core HR & Unified Repository and Observatories & Open Data stem from this same chain.
- Immutable LoggingCryptographically secure record from manufacture through to revisions.
- Chip Interfacing (NFC)Design of reading interfaces interacting with integrated physical chips.
- Transfer of PropertyDigital workflows enabling the official transfer of the passport to the new purchaser.
- Verification PortalSecure public interface enabling authenticity validation with a single scan.
- Management of Stolen ObjectsImmediate flagging blocking all official transactions on a serial number.
- Maintenance LogbookAddition of evidence of revision by certified workshops directly into the passport.
Smooth and frictionless integration
We connect to your existing systems: production ERP, retail CRM, after-sales software: via standard APIs. No manual data entry: when a component leaves the workshop, the event is automatically published in the register. For components already in circulation, we provide for a progressive enrolment phase during after-sales visits. Existing NFC chips are compatible; we simply add the backend verification layer.
Your teams retain their usual tools, with an additional tab to consult the certified history.
Mapping of existing flows
Audit of your production systems, after-sales service and customer relations. Identification of event injection points in the register.
Pilot deployment on a collection
Implementation of the register and connectors on a limited product line. Training of workshop and after-sales service teams.
Opening of the verification portal
Public interface for purchasers and partners. Integration of theft alerts with your legal teams and insurers.
Extension and enrolment of the existing estate
Generalisation to all collections. Programme for progressive enrolment of historical pieces during after-sales service returns.
Measurable results for your organisation
- Authentication time for customer service reduced from 45 minutes to under 2 minutes per component
- 70% reduction in authenticity-related disputes on the secondary market
- Recovery rate of pieces declared stolen multiplied by 3 thanks to automated alerts
- Complete maintenance history available within 10 seconds for VIP clients
- Average valuation of second-hand items increased by 12 to 18% owing to proven traceability
- Zero dependency on third parties for the sustainability of certificates over 50 years and beyond
Clarifying your decision-making
What happens if you disappear in ten years — do our certificates become invalid?
The infrastructure runs on your servers or on an environment you control. Clarendis transfers the source code and full documentation to you. Even without us, your teams or another provider can maintain the system. It is a deliberate architectural choice.
How should one manage the tens of thousands of pieces already in circulation without NFC chips?
Pieces already in circulation are enrolled during an after-sales visit, by adding a chip or an engraved code. High-value pieces and those that naturally return for servicing are handled first. Within three to four years, most of the active inventory on the secondary market is covered.