Company focuses on innovation to build trusted relationships in a crowded marketplace

SINGAPORE, Jan. 23, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reebonz Holding Limited (RBZ), a leading online luxury marketplace and platform in Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific region, today announced that it has implemented the blockchain technology as part of its ecosystem strategy to establish the provenance of products. The Company is focused on building trust and providing authentication and ownership tools to its members.



All products sold by Reebonz from its inventory (“B2C Merchandise Business”) since January 2019, will have a digital certificate. This digital certificate will bear a QR Code which contains information such as product details, transaction details and history, and provenance of ownership. Products can be verified through the Reebonz mobile application, which will provide the digital certificate. As part of Reebonz’s MOU with VeChain, signed in February 2019, the digital certificate will be hosted on the VeChainThor Blockchain. While the project is in proof of concept stage, the Company intends to iterate on this to develop a scalable solution for all products. In its initial phase, approximately 50,000 unique products will bear a digital certificate in the blockchain and was live by late December 2019.

Another benefit of the digital certificate is to further the company’s luxury ecosystem, where it enables buyers to become sellers, and sellers to become buyers through its “Sell Back Guarantee” service. A customer could choose to Sellback to Reebonz, allowing the Reebonz team to digitally validate the product certificate, thereby leveraging technology to scale its authentication efforts. Reebonz has been at the forefront of promoting sustainability by creating a customer focused circular economy, where one can be a buyer and seller with equal ease.

Further functionalities such as “Transfer of Certificate” and “Revoking” to other individuals will be introduced later this year as part of Reebonz’s expansion into providing Blockchain as a Service. There are likely to be several benefits of these functionalities. For example, if a Reebonz product is gifted, the digital certificate can be transferred to the recipient to prove ownership so long the recipient is part of Reebonz ecosystem. Should the recipient choose to take advantage of the Sell Back service, Reebonz can honour the Sell Back Guarantee promise to these owners, thereby allowing a customer to be part of its luxury ecosystem. In the instance a product is stolen, customers can revoke the certificate to ensure protection. Customers would also be able to take advantage of transacting on their own a C2C basis. The digital certificate can serve to verify authenticity and ownership transfer.

With a mission of making luxury accessible to everyone through an ecosystem that connects buyers and sellers, Reebonz has prioritized its efforts in creating a trusted online destination for authentic luxury. The efforts to authenticate using the digital certificate to prove provenance will augment Reebonz’s in-house team of ateliers that specialize in authenticating leather products, timepieces, gemstones and jewellery. Pre-owned products are already subjected to rigorous testing and examined for distinct characteristics before being issued a “Reebonz Atelier Authenticity” card.

Reebonz’s CEO and co-founder, Samuel Lim, commented, “Building trust with our customers is one of our core values. Using cutting edge technologies and innovative measures, we hope to provide the first of its kind tracking and authentication tools for luxury products in Asia. We have evolved to a customer centric model, allowing anyone to buy and sell their luxury products through us in a seamless way. We are excited to use the blockchain technology and work with VeChain to solve one of the key global issues impacting our industry. The authentication of pre-owned luxury items using the blockchain is just one of many high impact innovations Reebonz is pioneering to improve the luxury shopping experience for customers across Asia Pacific.”

“Our partnership with Reebonz sets a new standard for solutions based on VeChainThor Blockchain, which will be gaining momentum in the luxury industry with increasingly extensive applications,” added Sunny Lu, Co-Founder and CEO at VeChain. “Developing such a solution with a global and local mindset will pave the way forward for innovation, enabling frictionless, trustworthy, and transparent e-commerce of luxury products and finally changing the operating model of the industry.”

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