In New York City, I worked for many high end brands; Gucci, Prada, Marni (to name a few). On a good day, sales staff could bring in $1000 dollars in commission without at breaking a sweat, as average price points were well above $1000 dollars on any item. Of course customers were among the most wealthy; however, there was no better customer to have than a Asian businessman. Why you ask? Because it was almost a certainty that he would spread over $20,000 at one time. On what you ask? Well, mostly on ladies items. For who? For his company back in Asia to knock off. What? Why? Well, counterfeiting is a real problem in the fashion industry. As soon as new designs hit the catwalk or showrooms, counterfeiters are on the prowl. With in days, a designer’s hard work would be commandeered to produce low end copies. Counterfeiting has been accepted as a cost of doing business for some time; until Seal Network took on the task of thwarting the thief of intellectual property.
By connecting to the Ethereum network, customers can verify a product authenticity using the Seal Network app. The app will read a NFC chip that is embedded into the product. NFC chips are one of the most durable and can withstand an appropriate level of wear and tear. Currently available solutions use RFID chips or QR codes that can be copied or manipulation to give “false positive” readings; making Seal’s NFC chip a more reliable option for product verification. Seal’s NFC chips will be product by one of the leading chip manufacturer who reputation for quality is quite high. Seal has selected NXP Semiconductors to produce cost-effective secure NFC chips for the Seal Network. NXP Semiconductors is located in Eindhoven and is the industry leader in NFC technology. Once customers realize the benefits of NFC verification, it will surely become the industry standard.
Data and interaction on the Seal networks is tokenized; creating a first ever ecosystem that allows manufacturers and brands to earn from the sale of goods to second hand buyers. Whenever a product Is resold, transfer of ownership will require a predetermined amount of Seal token to be used to update information and register the new owners information on the blockchain. Brands and manufactures will be able to receive a percentage of the tokenized transaction fee for verifying the products authenticity against their ledger. This will create a first time opportunity for brands and manufactures to receive payment from after sales from their creations. This incentivization scheme is a win for both customers and brands which will help to fuel wider spread adoption of the Seal Network anti-counterfeiting solution.
Although counterfeiting is the main focus of the platform, it addresses a slew of other problems that customers and brands face. First is thiet prevention; Seal’s NFC chip can verify ownership when an item is lost of stolen. The NFC chip can be programmed to send an alert message whenever someone attempts to interact with it. The second is parallel importing; items destined of one region/area are often diverted to other markets to be resold through unauthorized channels. The brands and manufactures can also program the chip to inform buyers and distributors of such discrepancies. Third, product recalls; product recalls are a logistical nightmare. However, now using the Seal Network, manufactures can send push notifications to the owners of the recalled product saving both parties time and effort.
Of all the new blockchain projects as of late, Seal is one of the few that is addressing a problem that affects both businesses and customers. The solutions presented are viable and ready to disrupt the multi-billion dollar counterfeiting industry. Seal Network is currently conducting its’ ICO presale round and all indications are that it will hit its hard cap very soon. As we are all affected by counterfeiting, so participation in the Seal Token Sale Event is more that just an investment, it is being responsible citizens. For more details please have a look at the following links:
Website: https://seal.network/
Whitepaper: https://seal.network/seal-whitepaper.pdf
Twitter: https://twitter.com/r/seal_network
Bitcoin Talk ANA: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2929809.0
Cubanlinx81: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1260230;sa=summary