Can You Trust Luxury Resale? A Founder’s Honest Take on Counterfeits

Fake bags are everywhere. Anyone who spends enough time around luxury resale knows that.

And I think it would be dishonest for me, as the founder of a resale platform, to pretend that RETRO//VRS is somehow immune to that reality.

I did not build RETRO because I thought I could eliminate counterfeits. I built it because I became frustrated with how much of luxury resale still depends on being told to trust someone else.

“Pre-verified.”

“In-house experts.”

“Trusted seller.”

Those phrases may represent completely legitimate systems. But as a buyer, you are still usually being shown the conclusion. You rarely get to see much of what sits behind it. That has always bothered me.

Authentication is important, but authentication alone is not the same thing as transparency. A certificate can be wrong. Documentation can be incomplete. An authenticator can make a mistake. A seller may genuinely believe something about an item that later turns out not to be true. So instead of pretending those possibilities don’t exist, I wanted to build a system that could account for them.

At RETRO//VRS, we start with what we actually know about a piece.

That might include an authentication report. It might include an original receipt, boutique correspondence, repair records, an authenticity card, photographs, acquisition history or documentation supplied by a collector. Sometimes the provenance is extensive. Sometimes it isn’t. And sometimes what we know comes directly from the collector.

I think that distinction matters.

If a collector tells us that a piece was given to them directly by a brand, for example, we can record that as collector-provided provenance. If there is documentation supporting that history, we can record that too. But those are not the same thing, and I don’t believe we should present them as though they are.

The goal is not to make every piece look equally documented.

The goal is to show our work.

For assets that enter the RETRO marketplace, we create a continuing provenance record that preserves the information and documentation associated with the piece. Where appropriate, supporting records, including authentication documentation, may be published in redacted form so buyers can see the evidence without exposing private collector or transaction information. That record can continue with the asset as ownership changes, rather than disappearing when the transaction is complete.

And transparency does not mean giving up privacy.

RETRO may know who owns a piece and preserve its ownership history while still protecting the identity of a collector from public disclosure. Names, addresses, transaction details and other sensitive information can remain private while the relevant provenance of the asset is preserved. That balance is important to me.

Luxury resale has spent years asking consumers to trust the platform. I think the next version of resale should give people enough information to decide what they trust for themselves.

And that becomes even more important when something goes wrong.

Can I promise that a counterfeit will never make it through RETRO?

No.

I won’t make that promise.

People make mistakes. Authentication systems make mistakes. Documentation can be misleading. Counterfeiters are sophisticated, and they aren’t going to stop becoming more sophisticated because a marketplace launches a new authentication process.

What our system is designed to provide is a record of how that asset entered RETRO and what information was associated with it at the time.

What information was provided?
What documentation was reviewed?
Was there independent authentication?
Who authenticated it?
What did RETRO know at the time?
Who owned the piece?
Where did ownership move next?

That is where I think accountability has been missing from resale.

A green check tells you what someone concluded.

A provenance record tells you how you got there.

And over time, that record should become more useful, not less. Every new owner, authentication, repair, transfer or additional piece of documentation can become another part of the asset’s history.

That is ultimately what interests me most about provenance. It isn’t just about proving that a bag is real today. It is about preserving what we know about that bag so the next owner doesn’t have to start the investigation from zero.

There is still a much larger problem, though.

I don’t believe the counterfeit issue can ever be completely solved by resale platforms or authentication providers alone.

The brands made these assets.

In an ideal system, the provenance of a luxury piece wouldn’t begin ten or twenty years later when it appears on a resale marketplace. It would begin with the brand that created it. The original record would start there.

Brand. Original owner. Next owner. Next collection. Next transfer.

A continuous history.

That is where I think this eventually has to go.

The technology already exists to create that kind of infrastructure. What doesn’t exist yet is widespread participation across brands, collectors, authentication providers and resale platforms.

Until it does, none of us should pretend the system is perfect.

RETRO certainly isn’t.

But I would rather tell you exactly where the imperfections are than hide them behind a badge.

I can’t promise a perfect system.

So I built a transparent one.

— Alessandria