The luxury industry has a trust problem it cannot label its way out of.
Brands have spent years layering on authentication. Holograms. NFC tags. Blockchain certificates. Digital passports. Each one adds a signal. None of them solves the core issue. The trust still lives next to the product, not inside it. And anything that sits on the surface can be peeled off, copied, or faked.
Today we are changing that. DUST Identity and Selinko, part of TOPPAN Group, have partnered to deliver verifiable, impossible-to-copy authentication for luxury goods and high-value products. The joint solution is already protecting products in the market. It is available now, across product categories and form factors.
The Problem Is Bigger Than Fakes
The numbers are stark. The OECD-EUIPO Mapping Global Trade in Fakes 2025 report estimated global trade in counterfeit goods at USD 467 billion in 2021. That is 2.3 percent of world trade.
But the dollar figure understates the damage. Counterfeiting erodes brand trust. It undermines consumer confidence. It corrodes the secondary market that luxury increasingly depends on. A fake does not just steal a sale. It poisons the chain of belief that makes a brand worth buying in the first place.
The threat is also accelerating. AI now replicates visual and digital assets at scale and at speed. A logo, a label, a QR code, a certificate. If it can be seen, it can be copied. Anything that sits on the product rather than in it becomes a target.
What Brands Have Versus What Brands Need
Luxury brands do not lack authentication technologies. They lack a trust architecture that stays connected to the product itself.
That connection has to survive everything a luxury product goes through. Different markets. Ownership transfers. Resale. Reauthentication years after the first sale. Most authentication systems break somewhere along that path because the link between the object and its record was never physical to begin with.
The missing layer is physical identity embedded within the object, inseparable from it, working alongside the digital systems brands already run.
The Solution: Physical and Digital, Unified
DUST Identity's patented technology embeds diamond dust-based physical anchors directly into products. This creates a unique physical signature intrinsically linked to the object itself and highly resistant to replication.
Not a label. Not a certificate. A physical authentication layer embedded within the product itself.
Selinko's digital product identity platform connects that physical anchor to everything the brand runs around it. Ownership records. Digital product passports. Consumer engagement experiences. Authentication services. Traceability data. Because the platform is technology-agnostic, brands can combine and orchestrate multiple trust technologies according to their product, market, and customer requirements.
Together, the two technologies strengthen the chain of trust that follows a product from manufacture to ownership, resale, and reauthentication throughout its lifecycle.
Why This Partnership, Why Now
"The luxury industry is at an inflection point," said Ophir Gaathon, PhD, CEO of DUST Identity. "Brands increasingly need authentication strategies that combine trusted physical and digital evidence. DUST provides a physical authentication layer embedded within the product itself, while Selinko connects that layer to the digital services and experiences brands need to operate at global scale. Together, we are enabling a stronger and more resilient foundation for product trust."
Selinko brings scale and depth. The company has spent fourteen years building a broad platform for product identity, spanning NFC and QR, consumer engagement and authentication, backed by TOPPAN's global infrastructure and financial strength. It is trusted by more than forty luxury brands worldwide.
"What DUST Identity brings is the one piece we couldn't offer before," said Gregoire Fremiot, Selinko's CEO. "An authentication that lives inside the object itself, invisible and unreplicable, for the products where nothing else can go. Together, we don't just add a technology. We close the loop."
Built for Where the Industry Is Heading
The market is moving toward this model whether brands are ready or not.
Consumers are demanding greater transparency about provenance and ownership. Resale markets require verified histories. Regulators are moving toward mandatory digital product passports. The pressure is coming from every direction at once.
The brands that will lead are the ones that can offer a single, coherent authentication story. Simple to communicate. Verifiable at every touchpoint. Credible from first sale to final resale.
That is what physical and digital identity, unified, makes possible. Trust that belongs on the object. Trust that travels with it. Trust that holds.
Press release is here: https://www.einpresswire.com/article/919237203/dust-identity-and-selinko-toppan-group-partner-to-embed-unclonable-physical-identity-into-luxury-products
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