The digitalisation of the warranty card or how each watch becomes its own certificate!
In a world-first in the fight against counterfeit watches, Hublot has released a completely digital warranty stored in the AURA blockchain. The authenticity of Hublot timepieces will now be guaranteed by visual recognition of the micro-structure of their materials.
With the introduction of this new authenticity platform by Hublot, warranty cards, and authenticity certificates will soon be a thing of the past. The Swiss watchmaker is simplifying the process of tracking and tracing their watches, from the manufacture to the points of sale to the customer. Hublot has been working on ground-breaking algorithms in partnership with the company KerQuest since 2017. The shared goal of these two companies was to develop a technology which specifies in the recognition of the microstructure of the materials that make up the Hublot timepiece. For Hublot, this seemed like a no-brainer. A watchmaking master in the Art of Fusion, Hublot has been differentiating itself from other brands for their use of materials for the past 40 years.
Of course, creating a material recognition technology came with initial problems. The recognition of the individual materials has been studied for several years; however, the problems arose when trying to recognise materials in unison. As the technology around us developed and became better, so did the ability to combat this problem. With the evolution of smartphones, improvement in camera definition and also the further enhancement of artificial intelligence, Hublot and KerQuest were able to perfect the visual recognition of an entire watch finally.
Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO of Hublot, said that “After being one of the first companies in the world to equip its watches with an electronic warranty in 2009, Hublot is once again innovating with the Hublot e-warranty. Hublot will use an electronic passport and warranty system, much like facial recognition, based on the uniqueness of the materials that make up its watches. This advanced technology required more than three years of research and development in partnership with the company KerQuest. Today, thanks to the Hublot e-warranty, a simple photo taken with a mobile phone is all it takes to activate the warranty and access it while verifying the authenticity of the product. Although the technology developed relies on complex algorithms, it is simple and user friendly. A perfect fusion between technological complexity and ease of use.”
The passport of the watch is first established at the Hublot manufacture. Specially designed optical readers take images and reconstruct the timepiece to the highest detail, in very high definition. When the sale of the timepiece is made at the boutique, the point of purchase activates the Hublot e-warranty. The e-warranty process takes a photo of the head of the watch lined up with a duplicate shown on the screen.
This photo is then sent to the computing infrastructure, which will process it and automatically activates the warranty once the piece has been correctly identified. Once authentification has been confirmed, the customer then receives their Hublot e-warranty through the channel of their choice (SMS, E-mail, WhatsApp, WEChat, Instagram, Messenger etc.).
The Hublot e-warranty technology is already available in the Paris Vendôme boutique for almost a year, with the Swiss boutiques and retailers already being operational as well. With this new technology, Hublot is indeed faithful to their motto “Be first, unique, and different”. Using a simple, easy and effective system, Hublot is paving the way in the watchmaking world in improving the prevention of counterfeiting and theft.
