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Haelixa's answer to superfakes is DNA on the case, read back with a swab
Haelixa binds DNA markers to a watch at the factory so it can be swabbed and tested later, which does nothing for the watches already out there.
Hen & Mills Editorial · 3 min read · 12 August 2026
The markers are non-toxic, vegan and biodegradable. I sat with the vegan part for a moment before I realised it is exactly the kind of thing you publish when you know the first question will be what have you sprayed on the watch I plan to wear.
The company is Haelixa, it is Swiss, and the system is called ProofDNA. The pitch is that you stop squinting at a watch to work out whether it is real and swab it instead. Haelixa set out its case in a piece on 10 August titled "Why superfakes are beating the naked eye", and SwissWatches Magazine picked it up this week.
Swab it, then wait 35 minutes
Worth saying why anybody is bothering. Fakes have got good enough that the checks we all repeat to each other, the date font, the sound of the rotor, the heft when you pick it up, do not hold up anymore unless you do this for a living. I have talked myself into being sure about a watch on rotor noise alone. I would not try it now.
Unique DNA markers get bound straight onto the finished watch at the factory, no extra processing and no residue. When somebody later needs to know whether this is the watch that left the line, they take a swab and run a forensic PCR test against it. That happens in a lab or on a controlled on-site device, takes about 35 minutes, and comes back as a Certificate of Analysis.
The trouble with serial numbers
I rate the logic of it, which surprised me. A serial number is only information about a watch, and information copies. On a good fake it already has been copied. A blockchain entry has the same weak join in it, right where the physical object meets the digital record: the record can be perfectly honest and still be pointed at the wrong watch. Bind something to the object and the question changes from does this number match a list to is this the physical thing that left the factory. You cannot photograph it, you cannot lift it off a genuine example, and you cannot buy it on the grey market.
The limit is that it only works forwards. A watch made in 2019 has nothing on it to swab, and the secondary market is mostly watches built long before anybody dreamed this up. Marking helps the factory and the first owner. It does nothing for the 1970s chronograph on the auction table, which is where the money and most of the fraud sit.
Kemptthal, Hong Kong, Gandhinagar
Haelixa runs the same technology two ways. ProofDNA is the authenticity side, and it covers watches, jewellery and handbags. TraceDNA is the traceability side, following raw materials through a supply chain, and most of its published work there is in textiles. The company is based at Kemptthal in Switzerland, with offices in Hong Kong and in Gandhinagar in India. Its newsroom also lists a WATCHPRO piece on the luxury watch industry from 23 July.
The client list is the thing to watch
None of this helps you standing at a counter with a watch in your hand, and it puts no test in your pocket. Where it could genuinely matter is a brand's own service desk, or what an auction house is able to say about a watch that has been back to the maker and swabbed. Haelixa names watches, jewellery and handbags as its categories, and the day a watch brand says out loud that it is marking its cases is the day this stops being a supplier's pitch.
