Calvin Chan
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
Legitimate
Calvin is the CEO and Founder of Legitimate, the premiere phygital ecosystem for the next generation of consumer retail applications. Prior to starting Legitimate, Calvin worked at several early stage startups as a product engineer. He started his career in New York at Skillshare, where he rediscovered his passion for fashion and streetwear through helping produce and launch classes and workshops in the creative space. Specifically the class hosted by Jeff Staple was a huge turning point for Calvin as that cemented his desire to merge his expertise in technology with his interest in streetwear and fashion.
However, in 2017, Calvin was caught in the Ethereum frenzy, and became obsessed with the idea of decentralized computing. Calvin joined AirSwap in 2017 as an engineer, where he built one of the first decentralized swap protocols for crypto assets. AirSwap was acquired by ConsenSys in 2019. Shortly before the acquisition was finalized, Calvin decided to leave to start his own company, Legitimate.
Since then, Legitimate has grown to work with international luxury, streetwear, and web3 brands. From AMBUSH and BrightMoments to PUMA and ROCNation, Legitimate works with the most culturally relevant brands to create physical products with unique digital experiences.
Starting Legitimate
Throughout his teenage and early adult years, Calvin bought and sold “grails” through swap meets in LA, as well as online menswear marketplaces like Grailed.com. He knew that one of the biggest problems facing the streetwear and luxury industries were the prevalence of counterfeit products (a $500B+ growing industry as of 2019).
In blockchain, one of the earliest identifiable “real-world use cases” of the technology was supply chain tracking and authenticity/provenance verification. However, at the time (2019), nobody was focusing on the “last-mile” problem: how do you securely tie physical products to digital identities. Building off of his expertise from AirSwap, Calvin knew that blockchain could solve a lot of the larger counterfeiting issues that plagued the streetwear and luxury markets.
That’s when Calvin decided to start Legitimate, a company with a name designed to instill confidence in consumers purchasing high value streetwear and luxury goods around the world. Through talking with brands and major stakeholders early on, Calvin understood that brands desired more than just binary authenticity. It wasn’t enough for brands to just tell customers that what they were buying was real, they wanted to demonstrate authenticity through narrative and engagement. They wanted to engage with customers on a completely new level.
Legitimate’s LGT Tags (securely programmed NFC hardware) were designed to not just verify authenticity, but to allow brands, projects, and creators to connect physical products to customizable digital experiences.
However, in 2017, Calvin was caught in the Ethereum frenzy, and became obsessed with the idea of decentralized computing. Calvin joined AirSwap in 2017 as an engineer, where he built one of the first decentralized swap protocols for crypto assets. AirSwap was acquired by ConsenSys in 2019. Shortly before the acquisition was finalized, Calvin decided to leave to start his own company, Legitimate.
Since then, Legitimate has grown to work with international luxury, streetwear, and web3 brands. From AMBUSH and BrightMoments to PUMA and ROCNation, Legitimate works with the most culturally relevant brands to create physical products with unique digital experiences.
Starting Legitimate
Throughout his teenage and early adult years, Calvin bought and sold “grails” through swap meets in LA, as well as online menswear marketplaces like Grailed.com. He knew that one of the biggest problems facing the streetwear and luxury industries were the prevalence of counterfeit products (a $500B+ growing industry as of 2019).
In blockchain, one of the earliest identifiable “real-world use cases” of the technology was supply chain tracking and authenticity/provenance verification. However, at the time (2019), nobody was focusing on the “last-mile” problem: how do you securely tie physical products to digital identities. Building off of his expertise from AirSwap, Calvin knew that blockchain could solve a lot of the larger counterfeiting issues that plagued the streetwear and luxury markets.
That’s when Calvin decided to start Legitimate, a company with a name designed to instill confidence in consumers purchasing high value streetwear and luxury goods around the world. Through talking with brands and major stakeholders early on, Calvin understood that brands desired more than just binary authenticity. It wasn’t enough for brands to just tell customers that what they were buying was real, they wanted to demonstrate authenticity through narrative and engagement. They wanted to engage with customers on a completely new level.
Legitimate’s LGT Tags (securely programmed NFC hardware) were designed to not just verify authenticity, but to allow brands, projects, and creators to connect physical products to customizable digital experiences.