US' Entrupy expands beta testing programme for sneaker authentication

For the final stages of its application development process, the company is inviting qualified sellers and resellers of frequently-counterfeited sneaker styles including Nike Air Jordan 1, Adidas Yeezys, and Gucci to join the beta testing programme, which will grant them no-cost use of the technology for the remainder of 2021, at minimum. The service will include authenticity certificates and Entrupy’s financial guarantee for sneakers Interested parties who buy or sell over ten pairs a month can apply for participation via Entrupy’s website, the company said in a press release.

The Entrupy sneaker authentication app brings the same powerful technology that has, to date, been available only to larger enterprises as a hardware-enabled solution called Legit Check Tech. By launching an app-only version, Entrupy is making the technology accessible to a broader array of resellers and marketplaces participating in the large and lucrative sneakerhead economy. Like the enterprise version, the mobile app leverages advanced imaging and a proprietary database with millions of records collected from real and fake products to instantly verify the authenticity of the world’s top-selling styles.

In addition to verifying authenticity, the new Entrupy app provides product fingerprinting and registration with every item scanned, making them fool-proof from swapping. The immutable identifier is created based on characteristics that are invisible to the human eye and specific to each shoe. At any point in the future, the exact identity of that item can be reconfirmed by performing a new scan and verification against the records in Entrupy’s secure cloud database, according to Entrupy.

The full launch of Entrupy sneaker authentication app is expected in 2022. Additionally, Entrupy is actively working on building API integration capabilities for third-party marketplaces. This would enable marketplaces that operate as conduits between sellers and buyers to guarantee the authenticity of products sold on their platform without physically possessing and inspecting items. Not only will this increase buyer confidence, it will reduce friction by speeding shipping times.

In 2020, over $1.3 billion in counterfeit goods were seized by US Customs and Border Control (CBP) agents. Further large-scale busts throughout 2021 have led some experts to theorize that the global pandemic has exacerbated the issue, as infringers are exploiting shifts in shopping behaviour alongside disruptions in transborder supply chains to distribute fake goods to unwitting consumers. Since inception in 2016, Entrupy alone has secured over $600 million in customer inventory based on the value of authentic merchandise on the secondary market.

“The fast-growth and high-profits of sneaker resale, especially combined with fragmented and distant digital sales channels, are significant means and motive for bad actors. As both the quantity and quality of their fakes keep increasing, it can be hard for even the most knowledgeable authenticator to have complete certainty that a pair of sneakers is legit. Entrupy augments their existing expertise, giving authenticators the ability to ‘see’ things that might otherwise escape notice so they can know that, 100 per cent, that item is authentic,” Vidyuth Srinivasan of Entrupy said in a statement.

“A few years ago, no one was talking about the ‘circular economy’. Today, it’s high on the list of ways we can continue enjoying fashion at the same time we take care of the planet. Ensuring the circular economy continues its healthy pace of growth requires that we foster trust and confidence in secondary markets, which means bolstering our ability to detect counterfeits and remove them from circulation. The more confidence and trust people have in the products they buy, the more those products - and the overall market - can reach its full potential,” Srinivasan said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (GK)