Prada to leverage NFC to authenticate fashion products

Prada's Galleria store in Milan, Italy
AUTHENTIC: NFC tags in Prada goods will soon allow shoppers to access product information and “even a video clip with the Italian maestros in Tuscany talking to a consumer”

Consumers purchasing bags, purses, shoes and accessories manufactured by Italian fashion house Prada will soon be able to authenticate a product and access information about how and where it was made by scanning an embedded NFC tag with their mobile device.

Prada has already begun using NFC tags to track each product through the manufacturing and delivery processes to the point of sale and is now planning to leverage the technology to offer a range of digital customer experiences that will also include personalized purchasing suggestions and the potential to order and customize specific items.

The use of NFC chips to provide each product with a unique digital identity “allows a very smooth operation from the industrial side to stores, and in the future, will enable connectivity with consumers throughout the life of the product,” Prada’s industrial director Massimo Vian told a Vogue Business webinar.

“We are thinking to upload images of that product during the production moment, even a video clip with the Italian maestros in Tuscany talking to a consumer — ‘Hey, I am Mrs Maria and I am building your product and I am so proud’ … And it’s not any purse, it’s that very purse. And to that extent the information we can pass onto the customer is infinite and moreover unique.

“By scanning your purse, bag or pair of shoes, you could have immediately suggested that that bag was part of one look from spring-summer 2021 and you could buy together other items to complete that look.”

“What is important is to establish the connection with the product, that that product was made in a specific place and, of course, trustability in sustainable materials is important and will be more and more important,” Vian said.

“Through these chips, I think in the future the customer will be allowed to understand where the leather will come from, which type of leather, how many grams of CO2 has been emitted to that leather and I think that information will be crucial to the consumer in the near future — and the chip and the technology will allow that.”

Prada launched a leather bracelet incorporating wearable contactless payments technology in March.

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