Richemont’s Enquirus is new digital platform to thwart luxury watch and jewellery thieves

Richemont, a key player in the luxury watch and jewellery sectors, announced on Thursday that it has launched “a neutral, global digital platform designed to help reduce watch and jewellery-related crime”.

Called Enquirus, it’s open to all luxury brands and was designed “in close collaboration with a wide range of partners, including watch and jewellery manufacturers, law enforcement agencies, insurance companies, the pre-owned market and clients”.

It’s intended to be a “trusted space [that] allows for watch and jewellery information to be securely uploaded, searched and shared by multiple parties, while protecting customers’ identities. All data is solely used to facilitate the identification of lost and stolen items, making the purchase and resale of such pieces more difficult”.

Richemont CEO Jérôme Lambert said the new solution “brings together multiple stakeholders to serve customers and the entire industry, by facilitating borderless cooperation between police forces and insurance partners. By providing free access for customers and industry partners, the opportunity to sell stolen watches becomes more prohibitive, with the ultimate objective of reducing the incentive to steal watches in the first place”.

And the firm’s Chief Transformation Officer Frank Vivier added that the goal is “to bring on board as many industry players as possible, as well as the Police Departments of all the major cities in the world, to make Enquirus the largest international database of lost and stolen watches and jewellery.”

Watch owners and industry partners can register, declare and search for lost and stolen watches and jewellery through individual or business accounts. They need to create an account and register their collection using the brand and serial numbers, upload documentation in the secure digital vault, and report lost or stolen pieces.

They can quickly connect to their pieces that have been registered anywhere in the world in case of loss or theft. 

And via the search function, customers considering buying pre-owned watches or jewellery can also check the database and ensure they’re not buying a stolen item prior to purchase.

The system has more than 175 luxury watch brands and several top jewellery brands already pre-loaded, “to make registration easier for clients”. These include all the Richemont Maisons (such as A. Lange & Söhne, Baume & Mercier, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Roger Dubuis and Vacheron Constantin), as well as other major players in the watch industry. 

The Département de Sûreté Territoriale in Paris, as well as the Geneva Police Service des Bijoux department and other European police forces are registered with Enquirus. And it has been awarded Secured by Design accreditation, the official police security initiative owned by the UK Police Service. Other police departments around the world will be onboarded in the coming months.