MILAN – Management change is afoot at the Aura Blockchain Consortium, which announced Tuesday that OTB’s Stefano Rosso is succeeding Prada Group’s Lorenzo Bertelli as chairman.
The Marni chief executive officer and Maison Margiela president is taking on the role Bertelli has held for five years, since the nonprofit Aura was established in 2021 by founding members LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, Prada Group, Compagnie Financière Richemont‘s Cartier brand, Diesel parent OTB Group and Mercedes-Benz Group.
“Today, Aura is much more than just a technology platform. It represents a vision for the future of luxury,” Rosso said. “Taking on this role is both an honor and a responsibility for me. In a world where trust is increasingly paramount, our ambition is to help define a global standard that ensures transparency, protection, and value throughout the entire product lifecycle,” he added.
His appointment follows the arrival of a new CEO at Aura earlier this year.
As reported, the consortium named Marcel Härtlein its new CEO and general secretary last January, succeeding Romain Carrere, who was named to that role in 2023. Härtlein was previously group head of digital and IT at French luxury glassmaker Lalique.
“The complexity of the challenges facing the industry today – from transparency to sustainability, and even the new geopolitical dynamics reshaping value chains, market access, and global standards – calls for an increasingly collective approach,” Rosso said. “It is only through collaboration that we can build truly scalable and lasting solutions. Aura was created precisely with this goal in mind: to enable the industry to move forward together, faster, and with greater impact.”
The consortium today includes more than 50 luxury brands and has registered more than 80 million products on its blockchain.
Aura promotes the use of a single blockchain solution open to all luxury brands worldwide to help consumers trace the provenance and authenticity of goods. It offers a range of solutions to more than 25 member brands, including NFTs and a Multi-Token Minter.
The blockchain can include both upstream, meaning production and sourcing info, and downstream, meaning loyalty programs or insurance tied to an object, as well as repair and resale.
The tech standards that Aura’s blockchain has been creating are establishing a framework and technological standard that will help brands adapt to the needs of digital product passports.
The blockchain’s private and closed network also support the privacy concerns of luxury brands, as its technology can be used across brands but is not proprietary to any one of them. Its technology helps enable member brands to be aligned with the sustainability-focused requirements of the European Union.
In 2022, Aura joined the Sustainable Markets Initiative Fashion Task Force.
The SMI coalition, aimed at accelerating the transition toward a more sustainable future in the global fashion, textile and apparel sector, was launched by the-then Prince of Wales, now King Charles, during the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in 2020, and its Fashion Task Force is chaired by former Yoox Net-a-porter chairman and CEO Federico Marchetti.
