As ConsenSys’ first venture in Hong Kong, ConsenSys Social Impact is partnering with social initiative LUXARITY to transform retail luxury recycling, donation transparency, and grant allocation.

LUXARITY is the social venture arm of the Lane Crawford Joyce Group (LCJG), Asia’s premier fashion retail and brand management Group . Based in Hong Kong, LUXARITY was founded to create social impact in response to recent global fashion trends that have seen an increase in unsustainable and non-environmental consumption practices.

This year, LUXARITY will embark on a mission to recycle luxury goods, collect donations, and educate buyers about sustainable consumption — all with the support of blockchain technology. In partnership with ConsenSys Social Impact, LUXARITY aims to redefine how we as consumers interact with luxury products, fashion items, and social impact donations. The partnership will establish a public blockchain on which pre-loved luxury items, cash, and cryptocurrency donations can be tracked. People will be able to donate to LUXARITY, who will register the goods and donations on the blockchain. At an annual, two-week “pop up,” LUXARITY will sell the luxury items, the proceeds from which will be tracked on the blockchain and donated to a number of social and educational causes.

The revolution comes from the registration of both the luxury goods and the donations on the blockchain. Currently, nonprofits and charities are plagued with a lack of transparency concerning where and how donations are allocated. Third party websites that track charities and the quality of their donation transparency have emerged in an attempt to provide people with peace of mind when they contribute to a cause or organization. LUXARITY, recognizing the desire from donors to know precisely where their money goes, will register donations from the pop-up sale on the blockchain, allowing donors to track precisely where their money goes, when it is spent, and how it is spent. Moreover, LUXARITY will provide people with the opportunity to decide to which cause they would like to spend their money — including education on ethical consumption, environmental causes, and recycling efforts.

ConsenSys Social Impact

Through the partnership with ConsenSys Social Impact, LUXARITY is transforming the retail and social impact ecosystem in three primary ways:

LUXARITY has been hosting the luxury resale pop up in Hong Kong every year since 2012 (it became an official social venture in 2015 and part of LCJG in 2017). The partnership allows LUXARITY to improve its social impact with blockchain technology. By improving asset tracking through the tokenization of physical donations and allowing donation transparency, LUXARITY recognizes the few inefficiencies in its current model and is striving to cure them by leveraging the Ethereum blockchain. Beyond just the retail industry, LUXARITY is setting a standard for the tracking of physical goods, both within and without the world of giving. With the successful tracking of second-hand luxury goods for a social cause, LUXARITY will serve as a model for any platform seeking to tokenize and track physical assets on the blockchain. The world of social good, impact investing, and charitable giving has long been an attractive form of philanthropy and driving force of social change. Coordination inefficiency, donation obscurity, and outright corruption are unfortunate qualities of many efforts and organizations. The immutability, transparency, immediacy, and public access of blockchain technology is uniquely poised to address all these matters. LUXARITY’s innovative jump into this technology represents the beginning of a paradigm shift in the way companies and individuals donate.

The world of retail — luxury or otherwise — can often be conflated with a world of excess and indulgence. This has transformed the consumer mindset. They no longer simply crave products — they crave humanity behind products. They want to see the honesty, even imperfection, in the companies that sell them the products. That openness and transparency engenders intense loyalty in today’s consumers. LUXARITY recognizes that tackling the issue of fashion turnover and clothing excess head on is an opportunity to address a growing consumption and recycling problem in Asia and elsewhere. By serving as a model for other global retailers, LUXARITY will engender a more ethical and sustainable future of consumption. An effort like this — with the same degree of security, transparency, efficiency, and size — was previously impossible before the introduction of blockchain technology. With ConsenSys Social Impact and LUXARITY working together, we imagine a not-too-distant future of revolutionized retail consciousness and social impact.

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