Since November 4, 2019, for each purchase of a new Ulysse Nardin watch from an official reseller network, a free and tamper-proof extended warranty certificate, anchored in the most widely used and robust public blockchain, is generated and digitally signed by Ulysse Nardin. The certificate is then emailed to the customer or sent to their Ulysse Nardin user account. That is a novelty in the entire watch industry.
Hence, Ulysse Nardin is the first luxury manufacturer to deploy blockchain certification to all its collections. Blockchain is a technology that can be used to store and transmit information or transactions. It is a global digital database shared among multiple users that can, at any time, using a cryptographic system, verify the validity of information, add data and record a transaction. Ulysse Nardin’s approach used here is to store the digital signature of all PDF warranty certificates in the form of a “hash” – an encrypted string of characters – on the Bitcoin blockchain.
But what is really the advantage compared to simply saving the document in a private Ulysse Nardin user account? The warranty certificate becomes tamper-proof when protected on the blockchain as it cannot be hacked. The blockchain technology is also used in the car industry for instance to secure any sensitive data. The registers of “hashes” are publicly accessible anywhere in the world at anytime. Thereby removing the risk of losing or forgetting compared to physical warranty cards. Furthermore, the certificate becomes useful for the after-sales service or when it is offered as a gift or re-sold (certified pre-owned). The warranty certificate will accompany the watch during its whole lifecycle – if it changes its owner, the new owner can simply be registered through a special transfer button on its user account. At the moment of this registration, Ulysse Nardin will generate another warranty certification on the name of the new owner.
The physical guarantee card will continue to exist and thanks to its “bubble tag”, customers will be able to extend the watch warranty to five years and thus directly generate their online blockchain warranty certificate. Not only that this technology guarantees more security in the future, it is also a smart move of Kering, to which Ulysse Nardin has been part of since 2014, to collect important customer data by offering an attractive Blockchain solution and also be able to track the watch in case of resale.