Authentication Methods in Luxury Resale: Where Are All the Security Features?

Luxury and premium resale platforms and brands are improving their authentication processes in response to more sophisticated counterfeits, according to a report by Bella Webb of Vogue Business.

Prioritising product authentication in this rapidly growing market has proven beneficial to resale platforms such as eBay, which enjoyed double-digit growth in luxury sneaker sales following the launch of its Authenticity Guarantee service in 2020. The service has since been expanded to watches, handbags and, most recently, trading cards.

When sneakers eligible for the service are purchased through eBay, the seller ships them to a team of expert authenticators for a multi-point physical inspection, after which a unique NFC-enabled tag is applied to the left sneaker. The tag contains details on the sneakers’ authenticity and makes it easy to re-list them for sale in the future.

The inspection is carried out by a specialised group of sneaker enthusiasts called Sneaker Con, which eBay acquired in 2021. The elements inspected include the packaging box, sizing labels, soles, stitching, logos, heel tabs, laces – and even the smell of the shoe! In addition, the seller’s listing description is checked to ensure it matches the product.

No mention is made, however, of any specific overt or covert security features being inspected on the product.

Human-led authentication is key

While some resale platforms use AI and machine learning as a first line of defence (often detecting counterfeits before they are even listed), human-led authentication remains paramount.

Without authenticators, experts say the luxury resale industry would crumble, void of consumer trust and rife with increasingly sophisticated counterfeits. ‘Our marketplace can’t function without guaranteed authenticity,’ said Derek Morrison of resale platform StockX.

When StockX started hiring authenticators in 2018, Morrison said ‘you couldn’t search for authenticators on LinkedIn, it was mostly enthusiasts doing it informally’. Now, there is a whole ecosystem of roles and support staff, including former interior designers, architects and hospitality workers.

‘Recruitment is a key challenge because there is no university for authenticators,’ said Vestiaire Collective’s Head of Authentication, Victoire Boyer Chammard.

The fashion platform runs practice tests for applicants and bolsters existing knowledge with its internal Vestiaire Academy programme. Each candidate trains for at least three months and is supervised for seven, with additional monthly courses to update staff on new collections. ‘Knowledge of fashion history is important, in case labels are cut out,’ Chammard explained.

The RealReal, the largest seller of secondhand fashion, only hires fine jewellery authenticators with a certificate from international gemstone identification standard GRA, while watch specialists must be certified horologists. For fashion, talent often comes from luxury brands or auction houses.

At Goat Group, a global technology platform which merges primary and resale markets, authenticators train for several months before authenticating anything independently and have to pass internal tests with 100% accuracy.

Time is of the essence for rapidly growing resale platforms. StockX handles tens of thousands of items per day, split between 300+ authenticators at 11 authentication centres, each checking over 50 touch points per product.

At Vestiaire Collective, which has 15 million members worldwide, the 60-person authentication team leans on a 600-page handbook of tips and unique markers, regularly updated by a team of researchers visiting brand boutiques.

To streamline the process, lower value items are authenticated based on images uploaded by the seller. Those that raise red flags undergo further checks, including checking the original invoice and proof of purchase. Any item can be authenticated, but those over €1,000 are done so by default at Vestiaire Collective.

The buyer has the option to select physical inspection at one of Vestiaire Collective’s four authentication centres – in the US, Hong Kong, France or the recently added UK branch. Here, authenticators check the packaging and dustbag, whether the model exists, the shape and materials, stitching, irregularities that confirm the item is handmade, the typography of the logo, the metal components, serial number and accompanying paperwork.

Here again, no mention is made in the Vogue Business report of the use of specific security features such as holograms, optical effect motifs or UV elements to authenticate the product, which leads one to wonder whether in most cases these features just don’t exist.

Having said this, The RealReal’s Rachel Vaisman does acknowledge the importance of security features and the involvement of brand owners in the authentication process, in her recommendation that brand owners update hard-to-replicate markers of authenticity every year and inform authenticators of these changes.

The report also refers to a recommendation by the co-founder and CEO of IoT software company Evrythng, who suggests that brand owners who apply visible QR codes on product care labels should use them in tandem with more covert features like watermarking or NFC chips, in case the codes are damaged or the product label removed.

Ultimately, only brand owners can really authenticate

Despite the extensive and rigorous approach to authenticating luxury resale items, as described in the Vogue Business report, other reports describe how some resale platforms are still failing to detect a significant number of counterfeit goods.

According to a Forbes article by Richard Kestenbaum, entitled ‘The RealReal is Still Battling Fakes…’ counterfeits have been slipping through that platform’s authentication process.

The reason for this has to do with The RealReal’s obligation as a public company to start turning a profit, which it isn’t at the moment, explained Kestenbaum. Although it would make sense for The RealReal to spare no expense in authenticating every product, the vast range of product knowledge required for the successful authentication of millions of items is challenging. So it’s inevitable that fakes wind up going through the system without being detected, and no one knows how many.

Most product knowledge does not reside with resale companies like The RealReal, said Kestenbaum, but rather with the companies that make the products.

The RealReal has partnerships with brands like Burberry, Stella McCartney and Gucci, but these partnerships are for marketing rather than authentication purposes.

On the other hand, one of The RealReal’s competitors, Vestiaire Collective, recently announced a partnership with the fashion brand Alexander McQueen in which the brand will also participate in authentication.

But as a complete business model that leverages the knowledge of brands at all levels, including authentication, Kestenbaum said he only knew of the one provided by Trove.

‘As a consumer, you’ll probably never know you’re transacting with Trove when you encounter it’, said Kestenbaum. ‘But if you go to the resale site of Patagonia and REI, it looks like the sites are operated by those brands; in reality, Trove runs its resale businesses as a subcontractor.’

That gives Trove access to the product knowledge it needs to ensure authenticity, gives the brands a new stream of income and a new consumer to market to and gives consumers the confidence that what they’re buying is real and that the brand backs it up.

All other things being equal, it’s more comforting to a consumer to buy from a reseller where the brand implicitly endorses the authentication. Leveraging a brand’s authentication knowledge is also a great way to reduce authentication costs and build a sustainable resale business, observed Kestenbaum.

So what happened to the security features?

The authentication techniques described in this article should raise some questions within the authentication solutions industry, one of which could be: where did all the security features go?

The luxury resale platforms covered in the Vogue Business report refer to authentication as a skill that must be learned over a period of several months and that involves recruiting dedicated authentication experts focused on specific product groups (such as the eBay sneaker experts).

These experts are then expected to go through a seemingly long, long list of product characteristics, such as stitching and logo placement, in order to identify tell-tale flaws in the product under examination.

But hardly any reference is made in the report to the use of overt and covert security features. Indeed, when security features are mentioned, it is as if they have taken on a role of secondary, ‘nice-to-have’ features, over and above the physical product characteristics examined by authenticators.

However, given that those physical characteristics are often not, themselves, security features, counterfeiters may be able to reproduce them to a level where it is very difficult to distinguish them from the real thing, thereby making the authenticators’ job even harder.

Just as bank clerks and shopkeepers are used to verifying one or two security features on a banknote (such as watermarks and UV effects) in order to validate the note as genuine, shouldn’t brand resale authenticators have their lives made easier by being able to access the same kind of high-security features?

Is the apparent lack of security features on luxury resale products due to the fact that such features are usually attached to the original packaging rather than to the product itself, so that as soon as the packaging is discarded, the features are lost? Or is it that security features do exist on the product itself but nobody knows where they are or how to use them?

One could argue that banknotes are easier to authenticate anyway because they all carry uniform features, as regulated by a nation’s central bank. But maybe now would be a good time for markets that find themselves in the crosshairs of counterfeiters (such as the sneaker market) to create a standard set of openly communicated security features for use across all brands in the group.

Would such a system work in the secretive world of luxury authentication, though? If a quote from luxury resale site Hardly Ever Worn It is anything to go by, probably not. The quote goes: ‘we have learnt the stringent rules on how to authenticate luxury fashion and accessories over time – and that isn’t a handbook we want to give back to the marketplace or expose to counterfeiters.’ 

So it would appear from the reports covered in this article that the luxury resale sector is, in general, happy to continue with its own, somewhat clandestine form of authentication.