How Origyn’s Partnership With WatchBox Sets Diamond Standard In Authentication For Luxury Timepieces

Swiss Foundation Origyn has partnered with WatchBox, world’s leading platform for the certified pre-owned market in luxury timepieces.

The non-profit Origyn foundation employs intelligent technologies run on decentralized computer infrastructure to identify and authenticate across verticals including including art, collectibles, digital media and luxury goods.

Where the watch industry is concerned, says CEO Daniel Haudenschild, formerly a partner at Ernst & Young, “Origyn’s mission is to become the equivalent of GIA, the global standard in diamond authentication.”

Going forward, every watch sold via WatchBox will be associated with a utility NFT, a blockchain based digital certificate, guaranteed by Origyn, proving that the watch is genuine.

First off, the watch is authenticated by WatchBox experts. It is then placed into one of Origyn’s proprietary minting boxes. Using ultra high resolution cameras and artificial intelligence, the box photographs the watch at 360 degrees and mints a digital certificate containing its unique biometric fingerprint. When you get down to micron level, no two watches are alike.

Once it has been generated, the watch’s biometric passport is accessed simply by scanning said watch, ‘Shazam style,’ via Origyn’s consumer smartphone app. If the watch’s warranty is still valid, that will also be embedded in the digital certificate as standard.

“It’s always been a challenge to ensure people are not buying counterfeits,” says Origyn co-founder Vincent Perriard. And he should know. His three decade career in the watch industry began as Audemars Piguet’s Communications Director and took in the role of Vice President at Hamilton followed by CEO positions at TechnoMarine and Concord.

The Swiss watch industry alone loses $2 billion annually to counterfeits, with over 40 million counterfeit luxury watches produced and sold annually.

Before Origyn brought product and data together, you’d receive a paper certificate or at best a QR code linking to a page where you’d register your watch, he says. Which was fine if you were buying direct from Cartier but more problematic in the secondary market because a genuine QR code doesn’t necessarily guarantee a genuine product. For the record, you can’t chip a watch because it interferes with the mechanical movement.

Now, however, to realize Origyn’s ambition to become the world standard in authentication for the luxury watch industry, there needs to be a massive rollout. As Perriard puts it, “the race for data” is on.

While the objective is to penetrate the primary market, he acknowledges that 300 year old watch brands are notoriously slow to adopt new technology. “It’s a must,” he says, “we have to go there. But we want to go faster. So instead of simply waiting, we’re grabbing the secondary market where the volumes are huge.” Hence the deal with WatchBox, its biggest player.

The certified pre-owned market in luxury watches has already overtaken the primary and according to McKinsey is predicted to reach over $30 billion by 2025.

“As soon as we reach a certain level you’ll be able to go up to someone in the street and scan their watch and the app will recognize it,” says Perriard. “If it doesn’t then the watch will be fake.”

The WatchBox deal is just the start. Perriard is signing 10 further contracts with secondary retailers this week and come 2022 Q4, Origyn will open offices worldwide where consumers can go to have their watches verified and digitally certified.

In addition to underwriting the human side of authentication, Origyn will soon offer an additional benefit via a new and disruptive insurance company based in Guernsey. “Origyn Insurance will be a joint venture with a huge London insurance company,” reveals Perriard. “It will break all the rules with prices set at 50% below average.”

Going forward, he says, Origyn will also power joint ventures with multi brand retailers, enabling them to offer a resale concierge service in addition to authentication.

“Statistically there’s a 40% chance that you will resell your watch,” he says. “So we’re giving retailers the chance to jump into the secondary market and sell a watch more than once and I can tell you that the reaction has been massively positive.”

The reason for the traction is because watch brands are working less with retailers and increasingly opening their own boutiques so as not to give up their margins. The concierge option gives the retailer the chance to retain business and stay in the game.

Origyn whose investors include Table Management, billionaire investor Bill Ackman (Origyn was his first token investment), Polychain Capital and even Paris Hilton, raised $20 million in its most recent funding round. The foundation’s utility token, OGY, is set to become publicly tradable in the second quarter of this year via a Dutch auction — “a natural price-finding mechanism,” says Haudenschild. Even the reserve price would set its value at $1billion unicorn status.