Certilogo, the connected product and authentication platform for fashion and luxury brands founded in 2006, participated in the latest edition of EP Summit 2023, emphasizing how important digital authentication is for fashion products.
During the event organized by Pitti Immagine on the relationship between fashion and the digital world, Michele Casucci, CEO and founder, Certilogo, explained how digital product authentication enables fashion and luxury brands adopting digital IDs to support their traceability, consumer engagement and digital product passport strategies.
"Brands are facing a complex challenge to implement the traceability required by digital product passports. It is important that they do not compromise their investments in these projects by underestimating the importance of protecting their products or by misjudging the security they believe they have," Casucci said.
Though, new technologies are also a prime target for criminals, and digital IDs and product passports are no exception.
Connected products seem to be redefining the concept of product authenticity. In addition to their ability to be instantly authenticated, the digital tag itself, the content, services and storytelling of the consumer journey accessed through the digital connection, all become elements that help certify product authenticity and enhance consumer trust in the brand.
However, these same elements can be targeted by a new generation of digital counterfeiters who "hack" digital IDs and Digital Product Passports to appropriate a brand's product identities. In fact, stolen and fake IDs applied to counterfeit products are giving rise to a new era of "super-fakes" that are more advanced and convincing than ever before.
Regulatory pressure is driving more fashion brands to proactively adopt connected products, anticipating legislation that will make them mandatory. The EU's Circular Textiles Strategy places the Digital Product Passport (DPP) at the center of its initiatives. Other legislation, such as the Inform Consumers Act and the Shop Safe Act in the U.S., will make brands responsible for protecting consumers and the environment in case of fraudulent sales on e-commerce platforms. Therefore, authentication will soon become a standard and essential functionality to comply with these provisions.
Will hackers and counterfeiters can find a true obstacle in this technology? Certilogo thinks so, as explained by Casucci.
"What sets Certilogo's Secure by Design approach apart from the competition is our more robust and secure authentication procedure, the result of years of experience as Certilogo was founded in 2006, and it employs a complex, multilayered approach using AI, image recognition, and proprietary algorithms to properly authenticate any type of tag or marker and intercept, recognize, and manage the consumer experience of fakes and clones," explained the manager to The SPIN OFF.
"We are independent of marker technology and can guarantee any type of marker, while others are tied to a single technology such as NFC. Along withn that, others do not have the same robustness to recognize cloned and fake products. Certilogo can recognize cloned products, even when they use QR codes," he continued.
Certilogo's approach protects both the brand's services-allowing only authentic products to enter–but also puts the brand in control of the "real world"–and it has a high capacity to intercept large numbers of illegitimate products, recognize them, manage the delicate user experience, recover lost sales, and help the brand take action to stop counterfeiters.
With a walled garden approach, brands ignore the problem of illicit products, fail to protect their consumers, and allow illicit products to pollute brand circularity.
"No other competitor in the market has the same deep expertise in industrializing product labeling and delivering consumer experiences, with over 80 connected brands, 500,000,000 digitized products, and one user every four seconds connected to our platform," added Casucci underlining they are unique in offering the service not only to very largest and highly respected brands, but they also have products designed and accessible to smaller start-up brands, with SaaS plans starting from €249 per month.
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