Timepiece NFTs expands Watch World’s Metaverse

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are offered for almost everything these days. Artwork. Digital racehorses. And – increasingly – even watches.

Nima Behnoud, formerly the creative director of jewelry and watch retailer Jacob & Co. and a former artistic director of the watch retailer Tourneau, had wanted to add a watch to the mix of clothing and accessories brand Nimany when “this whole NFT vibe happened,” he said in a recent video interview from his New York studio.

By February 2021, Mr. Behnoud had put together designs and received prototypes to make a watch when he walked into a chat room in the clubhouse about NFTs and began learning more about them.

After making – and selling – some NFTs of his own artwork, he decided that he would no longer release just one physical watch, but also an NFT version, one with a game element and different levels.

So at the end of April this year, he introduced the Nimany Club, his collection of 1810 digital clock NFTs.

NFTs are digital assets that are verified using blockchain technology. They have seen increases in both popularity and price over the past year and a half, especially in the art world, although the luxury and fashion sectors, including goldsmiths and watchmakers, have also experimented with the technology.

Of course, there is no guarantee that NFTs will hold value over time.

“It is difficult to predict whether this will pick up in the long run,” Deependra Pandey, founder and CEO of the Switzerland-based Luxury Venture Group of Investors, said in an email. NFT activity “depends heavily on the broader NFT adoption of the collectibles market,” he said.

Last year, the Swiss watchmaker Jean-Claude Biver, who resigned in 2018 as president of LVMH’s watch department, put up for auction a digital photograph of the prototype of Hublot’s Bigger Bang All Black Tourbillon Chronograph, but NFT did not reach its reserve. price and did not sell. More successful was Jacob & Co. when it released a 3D animation inspired by the Epic SF24 travel watch as an NFT in April 2021: It sold in a 24-hour auction for the equivalent of around $ 100,000. The brand re-entered the NFT site in April 2022 with the Astronomia Metaverso collection , where eight watch designs were turned into NFTs that it planned to auction in June (five of the designs were available as actual watches).

Over the past year, brands including Hublot, Bulgari and Panerai have also embraced the potential of NFTs as a way to publish works by notable artists inspired by companies’ watch designs, to serve as a brand for authentication and ownership and to improve the customer experiences.

“We are excited about this new digital world,” Ricardo Guadalupe, CEO of Hublot, wrote in an email, “and we look forward to the way it can improve the traceability of blockchain technology, and also add value to our watch owners. »

Panerai boss Jean-Marc Pontroué wrote in an email that the brand “The goal is to leverage value to transform the relationship we have with our customers and our community on the decentralized Internet. ” By 2023, he said, the company intends to introduce digital passports for all its watches through NFTs as a way to prove ownership after a watch purchase and to unlock other services and benefits for customers.

Mr. Behnoud’s Nimany Club has seen NFTs organized in varying numbers within levels he calls Ceramic, Freak, Steel, Gold and the rarest, Unicorn, each priced at 0.1 Ethereum in cryptocurrency, or around $ 181. Holders of the Gold and Unicorn levels have the opportunity to exchange them for a physical Nimany watch in a lottery-like prize draw scheduled for June 15. As of early June, 65 buyers had purchased 270 of his NFT watches, he said.

“Clocks are very similar to cryptotechnology,” said Mr. Behnoud, explaining that both commodities are constantly increasing in value. See collectors can – and should – join the NFT scene, he said – it’s just that “they have to skip this technology curve”.

The British watchmaker Backes & Strauss has added a sporting element to its NFTs. A partnership with Brazilian footballer Dani Alves, who plays for FC Barcelona, ​​and Metaverse consultant ColossalBit was announced in May to produce NFTs linked to the Alves Trophy Collection, a series of 43 physical clocks celebrating 43 trophy moments from Mr Alves’s career.

What is the appeal of the old watchmaker?

“It’s definitely about wanting to engage with a new audience,” said Nick Tolfree, Business Development Manager at Backes & Strauss, “and being aware that customers are buying into brands in a completely different way than they did 10 years ago. . “