Milan, 16 January 2023 – The Bennet NFT Club, the first loyalty project created by a company in the large-scale retail sector based on blockchain technology and Non Fungible tokens, has been officially launched. A system entirely made in Italy by Smiling, a Milan-based Innovation Company specializing in blockchain for marketing.

Who the Bennet NFT Club is aimed at

Bennet NFT Club is a loyalty platform dedicated to tech-savvy customers of any age, with a special focus on millennials and “customers of the future” who will drive new buying trends, with new and experimental initiatives.

This is an initiative that has no precedent in Italy in the retail sector, and very few internationally, and is part of a trend of extremely innovative Web 3.0 / Blockchain projects pioneered today only by multinationals active in the world of sports and entertainment.

From Bennet’s headquarters they stated:

“We are very proud of our loyalty project based on a community token created thanks to blockchain and NFT technology, which is already enjoying considerable success. The Bennet NFT Club was announced in December 2022 in a teaser phase with a landing page on the Bennet.com eCommerce website, and in just a few weeks, the number of registrants exceeds the NFTs available for this first launch phase (2,700 in total). Bennet invested in this project first to experiment, but the first response from the public is extremely encouraging. We are curious to enter the future (digital and blockchain) together with our customers and very motivated to add a new stage in that development path that has made our company a reference point for digital innovation in Italy and abroad.”

How the Bennet NFT Club works: packages available

The Bennet NFT Club is an initiative open to everyone, both registered customers (there are more than 2 million in Italy) and non-members: anyone can access the dedicated web page https://nft.bennet.com/ and sign up by providing their personal data and connecting their blockchain wallet (MetaMask or others).

The user is offered three collections of Non-Fungible Tokens for a total of 2,700 different digital objects offered, whose basic design takes its cue from Bennet’s new shopping bags made by IED-Istituto Europeo di Design in 2022 (https://www.bennet.com/shopper-bennet-ied). 

The three NFTs by Bennet collections have three different cost ranges and, correspondingly, three different benefit packages, and all offer the chance to participate in a contest that is unprecedented to date: the prizes up for grabs are in fact six listed NFTs, minted on the blockchain by leading brands such as Gucci, Nike, Adidas, and The Sandbox (one of the most well-known metaverse).

The packages currently available to access the Bennet NFT Club today are: 

1. NFT Platinum, costing 30 euros including the following benefits: 

• 25 euros in shopping vouchers at any Bennet supermarket, 
• An exclusive NFT from the new Bennet Shopper Collection in collaboration with IED Milano,
• The New Bennet Shopping bag 2023 designed by IED, 
• the chance to enter the contest for the drawing of an NFT from The Sandbox, worth €1,900, and an NFT “RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis HMN Cryptokicks,” worth €970.

1. NFT Gold, at a cost of 25 euros including the following benefits: 

• 20 euro shopping vouchers at any Bennet supermarket.
• An exclusive NFT from the new Bennet Shopper Collection in collaboration with IED Milano,
• The New Bennet Shopping bag 2023 designed by IED,
• the chance to enter the contest for the drawing of two NFTs from the 10 KTF Gucci Grail line, one worth €960 the other worth €810.

1. NFT Silver, at a cost of 20 euros including the following benefits: 

• 15 euro shopping vouchers at any Bennet supermarket, 
• An exclusive NFT from the new Bennet Shopper Collection in collaboration with IED Milano.
• The New Bennet Shopping bag 2023 designed by IED,
• the chance to participate in the contest for the drawing of an NFT “RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis HMN Cryptokicks” worth €740 and an NFT from the “Adidas Originals” line worth €700.

With this innovative loyalty project, Bennet begins a multi-stage journey that aims to guarantee its customers new services and exclusive benefits through the different kind of interaction between the physical and virtual worlds made available by the metaverse. An interaction that will also take different forms with respect to the brand and bring added value for the customer and the community. By 2026, Gartner forecasts say that 25% of the population will spend at least one hour a day in the metaverse between work, shopping, education, social media and/or entertainment.

An unprecedented contest

Moreover, all NFTs by Bennet offer the opportunity to participate (for the first time) in a contest that puts up for grabs 6 NFTs whose latest market value is between €700 and €1,900 based on a public price: each individual NFT has a history of multiple purchases and sales tracked on Opensea, on which they were purchased specifically to be put up for grabs. 

These 6 NFTs were originally “minted” (i.e., “produced on the blockchain”) and then auctioned on OpenSea by prestigious International brands such as Adidas, Nike, Gucci, and The Sandbox. 

In fact, the 6 NFTs are individual pieces part of the well-known Adidas Originals, RTFKT-Nike Dunk Genesis Cryptokicks, 10 KTFGucci Grail as well as from the well-known Metaverse The Sandbox collections; all 6 NFTs are currently visible, but unavailable, on the Opensea page of Smiling https://opensea.io/smiling-blockchain from which they will then be transferred to the winners who can re-list and list them on the market and/or dispose of them through their wallet in another way.

The different applications of NFTs in the distribution sector

NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens, which originated as tools to digitize collectible items generating $41 billion in spending in 2021 (source: Metav.rs, https://metav.rs/blog/nft-market-statistics-2021-2022/), are becoming a particularly interesting tool for brand enhancement and value creation. 

Giorgio D’amore, CEO of the Innovation Company, added:

“Smiling has been among the pioneers in Italy in the realization of applications for NFTs, launching one of the very first projects in the world applied to e-commerce: the ‘EATABLE TOKENS’ of Italiaregina.it, the largest vertical online shop for the sale abroad of Italian food excellence. Together with Bennet we now want to change the future of loyalty. At this point in the market where many companies are acting with extreme fear, Bennet instead is launching with us into a new adventure which users have shown they like even before it has begun. It is worth noting that this is only a first step; we have other open sites in this area that we will launch in the near future.”

About Bennet

Bennet was born in the early 1960s from a vision of Enzo Ratti. Since then its expansion has been continuous, transforming it over the past 60 years into a market leader in hypermarkets and shopping centers, with locations throughout northern Italy.

Bennet has 69 hypermarkets and superstores and 59 active bennetdrive pickup points, with a total sales area of about 350,000 sq. m., more than 7,000 employees, 50 shopping malls of its own and more than 1,350 stores inside.

Expertise, experience and professionalism have enabled Bennet to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate customers’ needs so as to ensure an ever-improving offer in value for money, breadth of assortment and service.

Through a business policy in step with the times, targeted expansion programs and the creation of an unmistakable image and style, Bennet has succeeded in gaining and always maintaining market leadership in the areas in which it operates.

About Smiling

Smiling is one of the 2000 Innovative SMEs recognized by the Italian state and has raised more than 1 million euros from professional and institutional investors. As an Innovation Company, it began its activity by developing and launching on the market several proprietary platforms in the AdTech (advertising technologies) sector.

During the Covid years, the company invested in R&D by filing a new patent and creating new Blockchain applications for the Martech sector (technologies for marketing) with focus on the creation and management of NFTs for large companies, dedicated NFT marketplaces, new cryptoloyalty® applications (loyalty software based on blockchain).

*Bags and physical products are not shipped