Elephants raises CHF 500.000 and launches luxury watches co-ownership platform

With purchase prices in some cases higher than the cost of a family home, high-end watches have always been a luxury reserved for the very wealthy. With its co-ownership platform, Elephants, founded by Paolo Catalano and Gianvito Grasso in 2022, is now making this asset class accessible to common people.

The watches selected on the platform are unique, vintage and out of production, ensuring their status as rare and iconic. The limited supply of these timepieces leads to a very high demand in the market.

How it works:

1. Elephants uses a data-drive approach to select the luxury timepiece
2. Users can buy fractions of the asset
3. When the campaign is completed, Elephants stores the timepiece in a safe location
4. Elephants monitors the market and helps the owners find the best time to sell the watch, the funds are then divided among the owners proportionally

Elephants operates in accordance with Swiss regulations and it is affiliated with the SRO SO-FIT. The start-up based at Tecnopolo in Manno (TI) is leveraging the power, protection and traceability of blockchain technology to divide the cost of high-end watches among several owners. The Elephants token is representative only of the ownership right to a fraction of the watch and with the transfer of the token the related ownership right is also transferred.

“We’re democratizing opportunities in an asset class historically reserved for the very wealthy.” says Paolo Catalano. “Elephants allows anyone to join an asset class that has outperformed the S&P500 by over 100% over the past seven years.”

Gianvito Grasso adds, “The exceptionally high cost of most luxury wristwatches creates a de facto monopoly: these watches are built for the rich, collected by the rich and bought and sold by the rich. Watch enthusiasts and those looking for alternative assets are left out in the cold. We’ve found a way to open the door a little and let some of them in.”

The Elephants platform is now available at www.elephantsclub.io and the demand for the first timepiece is already very high. New campaigns will be launched soon.

(Press release / SK)