Warranty & Verification

Digital Watch Passports

A permanent record for every timepiece, carried in the box on a card the owner can tap. The card is designed, printed and encoded at the atelier; the record behind it is held in an independent registry for the life of the watch.

Abarel produces the object. SerialProof keeps the record. A maison commissions both under one mandate.

01/

The system

Three parts, one mandate

An object worthy of the box it sits in

A digital watch passport is not a piece of software a maison installs. It is three things working together: an object that goes in the box, a record that outlives it, and a page the owner sees when the two meet.

The carrier

A warranty card or a warranty booklet, produced in the atelier tradition: heavyweight stock, foil, emboss or letterpress to the maison's finishing standard. The chip is laminated within, invisible in the hand. Each carrier is serialised and encoded once, at production, to an address that belongs to that single timepiece.

The registry

Every serial is entered into SerialProof, the independent registry Abarel operates. The entry is written once and maintained thereafter, independently of the maison's own systems, campaigns and website rebuilds.

The certificate

A tap opens the certificate page for that watch: its serial number, its reference, the standing of its guarantee, and whatever the maison chooses to place behind it – a setup film, a service history, a note from the workshop. Every tap is signed by the chip itself, so the registry distinguishes an original from a copy before the page is drawn. No application to install. No account to create. No typing.

Credit-card format, maison-specified stock and finishes

Secure NFC chip laminated invisibly within the card or booklet

Individually serialised and encoded at the atelier, under the maison's own serial range

Cryptographically signed on every tap; a cloned carrier does not pass

Works with any modern smartphone

The encoded address never changes; what it displays can be updated at any tim

Held on registry infrastructure in Switzerland

02/

What the passport is actually for

A warranty card has always been a promise in print. The difference now is that the promise can answer for itself, years later, in someone else's hands.

The box is no longer the end of the relationship

Until the tap, a maison's contact with the owner ends at the counter. After it, the first thing a new owner does with the watch opens a page the maison controls: the film that explains the complication, the service interval, the invitation to register. It is the only moment in the ownership of a watch when attention is guaranteed.

A counterfeit card has nothing to point to

A printed card can be reproduced. An encoded record cannot. The tap resolves against registry infrastructure that a counterfeiter does not hold, and a card that resolves to nothing is its own answer. For the maison, this moves authentication away from the eye of the retailer and onto something checkable by anyone.

Provenance is what the second owner pays for

A watch changes hands more than once. Each time, the questions are the same: is it genuine, when was it sold new, what is left of its guarantee. A registered piece answers all three in a few seconds, without the maison being asked. Watches that can prove their history hold their standing; those that cannot are argued over.

Continuity, without a platform to maintain

The record does not depend on the maison's website, its agency, or the content management system in use this decade. Campaigns end, and sites are rebuilt; the address encoded in the card at production stays valid, and the maison keeps full export rights to its records throughout.

For an independent maison, it is a signal

Digital passports arrived with the largest houses. A serialised, verifiable record from a smaller maison says something specific about how seriously it treats what it makes – and it says it to collectors, to retailers, and to the secondary market at once.

03/

Signed by SerialProof

Built for the scale of a trade fair.

`Cards are only as good as the record they resolve to. The register behind them is deliberately held apart from the commerce around it.`

Every carrier Abarel produces is registered in SerialProof, the independent registry Abarel operates. The separation is the point: a register that sells the watches it records is worth less than one that does not, and the value of an entry rests on that distance. SerialProof issues and verifies; the atelier designs, encodes and produces.

Each certificate is held on registry infrastructure in Switzerland, under Swiss data-protection law, and resolves independently of the maison's own site. Verification requires no account and reveals no personal data. A maison retains full export rights to its records at all times, in open, machine-readable formats, and the record is structured so that an interface can be opened onto it should the maison's own systems need to read it directly. A documented continuity plan governs the records over time, so that they do not depend on any single company – ours included – remaining in business.

Under the maison's own name

Certificates can be presented white-label, on the maison's own subdomain, while the underlying record remains on registry infrastructure in Switzerland. The owner sees the maison and nothing else; the permanence is the registry's to keep.

04/

The programme, part by part

Commissions begin at any of three points:

Reprint

production from files held on record at the atelier, with no design work.

Layout update

text revisions, language changes or updated references within an existing layout.

Full creative development

concept, typography, layout and print-ready files from the start. Photography and translation are quoted separately.

05/

Common questions

What does the owner see when they tap the card?

The certificate page for that individual watch: its serial number, its reference, the standing of its guarantee, and any content the maison has placed there. Before the watch is sold, the same tap shows the piece as registered and awaiting activation, which is what a retailer or a prospective buyer needs to see at that moment. After activation, the full certificate stands. No application, no account, no typing, at either stage.

Can we change what the card shows after production?

Yes, and without touching a single card. The chip is encoded once, to a permanent address; what that address displays is managed by the maison from its own panel. Campaigns end, films are replaced, websites are rebuilt, and every card issued years earlier keeps working.

How long does the record last?

It is kept for the life of the watch. Each certificate lives at a permanent address on registry infrastructure, independent of the maison's own website, and each maison retains full export rights to its records at all times. The guarantee within the record runs for whatever term the maison sets; the record itself remains legible after that term has ended.

Can the certificate carry our own domain?

Yes. Certificates are presented white-label, on the maison's own subdomain, while the underlying record remains on registry infrastructure in Switzerland. The owner sees the maison and nothing else; the permanence is the registry's to keep.

Do watches need a Digital Product Passport?`

Not yet. The EU is introducing product passports group by group – batteries, textiles, electronics and others come first, and watches are not named in the current working plan. The registry is nevertheless built along the same lines: a unique identifier bound to the individual piece, a persistent machine-readable record, and data a maison can export at any time. A maison adopting it now is not starting from nothing if requirements do arrive.

Why an independent registry, rather than our own database?

Because the value of a record depends on who keeps it. A register held by the seller is a claim; a register held apart from the sale is evidence. Maisons already rely on outside registers for theft and recovery for exactly this reason. The registry also outlasts the systems a maison happens to run this decade, and the maison keeps its data throughout.

Can a booklet do this as well as a card?`

Yes, and with the same secure chip and the same signed tap as a card; only the carrier differs. An inlay is set into the print of the booklet, so the object stays exactly as it was in the hand and gains a record behind it. Cards suit maisons who want a single object in the box; booklets suit those whose documentation carries a manual, several languages, or a brand story.

What if the owner loses the card?

The record remains in the registry, bound to the watch's serial. A replacement carrier is produced and issued through the maison.