MoonPay dishes on NFT Fashion Blitz – WWD
Crypto fintech firm MoonPay has big plans to make non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, both easier to create and easier to buy — and that grand strategy has everything to do with fashion, the company told WWD.
Days after the Council of Fashion Designers of America revealed it chose the platform to handle transactions for its upcoming NFTs, creative arm MoonPay Studios lit up New York Fashion Week with digital fare for Alo Yoga, Collina Strada and Brandon Maxwell, who came to the shows with a variety of NFTs ranging from fun to functional.
These collaborations are not accidental. In an exclusive interview with WWD, the company explained that these are parts of a broader strategy aimed at fashion – and now that NYFW is in the bag, MoonPay can turn its full attention to its next fashion project: an undisclosed NFT that will connect the platform with a large athletic brand.
The details are still under wraps, but according to Tom Capone, the new head of MoonPay Studios, the vision behind them is not. Essentially, the company sees fashion as a key to making the metaverse mainstream.
“We believe that Web 3.0 is inevitable, and our mission is to onboard the world,” Capone continued. “Fashion is exciting because it’s usually at the forefront of a lot of trends, and it usually helps shape the way culture moves—shape culture itself.”
A former Creative Artists Agency talent agent and Web 3.0 executive, he innately understands the cultural capital of fashion and entertainment, and the power of their influence on consumer mindsets. “We saw Kanye’s Instagram of Snoop Dogg wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt and it inspired him more than any other ad or marketing stunt he’d ever seen,” he added. “It went viral, which speaks to a deeper point: Fashion is literally designing the future.”
MoonPay isn’t the only metaverse platform zeroing in on it. Other providers, large and small, have raced to justify brands armed with a range of services. Some simply digitize products or create 3D files as NFTs, while others develop pop-up stores to showcase them, build out entire multi-layered virtual world destinations, stage metaverse events, and much more.
For fashion brands and designers, the motivation is clear, both from a creative and business point of view.
Fashion requires evolution, said Maxwell, who sees his MoonPay partnership as a natural step forward given technology’s continued impact on the world. “This is the new age of digital fashion that breaks the conventional understanding of what fashion can be,” he said. “It’s an opportunity for us to transform, express and embrace more of ourselves, not less.”
For designers, there is actually creative freedom in a virtual world that does not depend on natural laws such as gravity or other constraints. The metaverse can look limitless in a financial sense as well. Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Burberry and others have already raked in millions of real dollars from virtual fare, and that’s just for starters. More brands are breaking into NFTs all the time — like Puma, which just dropped its first digital collectibles at New York Fashion Week. Research firm Technavio estimates that the fashion metaverse will be worth $6.61 billion by 2026, and it estimates that market growth in 2022 will jump 30.5 percent year-over-year. Morgan Stanley analysts believe the market for virtual luxury goods could soar as high as $50 billion by 2030.
The prospect has spawned deeper and more fascinating investments — from Philipp Plein’s $1.4 million land purchase of virtual reality platform Decentraland early this year to KNXT, a mysterious Kering initiative that landed on the crypto world’s radar this summer, following a trademark filing in July for NFT- is. , retailing virtual goods and other metaverse efforts.
The latter seems particularly exciting. The KNXT website describes itself as a drop test program, with three main sections: WSPRD, likely a play on “whisper”, offers links to Kerings-branded products; WYHIWYW stands for “what you hear is what you buy”, at least according to its Instagram account, to connect music and fashion tastes; and MFDF or a “digital fashion marketplace” makes it an obvious place to sell Gucci, Balmain or other NFTs from across Kering’s portfolio.
How much of that represents current plans remains to be seen, primarily because KNXT is not new. The Internet Wayback Machine shows that different parts of the site were online last year, with some pages looking quite different. Previous social media posts and an earlier filing with the US Patent and Trademark Office also suggest the program is a renewal of another initiative. The November application detailed promotions, advertisements, loyalty programs and community building.
All in all, it looks like a major overhaul, possibly in response to fashion’s technical center of gravity moving into the virtual realm. At this point, it appears that the current version of KNXT is approaching the runway soon.
Of course, the broader question is whether these or other Web 3.0 projects actually reach people other than crypto kids and investors.
Last month, Forrester’s latest Media and Marketing Benchmark Recontact Survey found that less than a quarter of online adults in the US are familiar with the metaverse, at 23 percent. The analysis firm also saw in its Empowered Customer Segmentation study that technical competence on the part of the consumer helps, but not as much as one would think. Even among the most tech-savvy respondents in this group, less than half claimed to be familiar with the metaverse.
“The fact that metaverse awareness is low even among the earliest adopters of the technology means there is a lot of work to be done at the top of the funnel to build out a viable market,” Mike Proulx, vice president and director of research at Forrester, wrote in a blog post.
That is exactly where MoonPay is fixed.
The main fintech business is, in Capone’s words, an “on-ramp” to Web 3.0, as it allows people to buy and sell crypto and NFTs with fiat currency. In other words, customers of CFDA’s premier digital collectibles will be able to use familiar forms of payment, such as credit cards, debit cards and even Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay.
Behind the scenes, MoonPay Studios works with brands on NFT strategy and development. While it can secure plenty of virtual inventory to impress consumers, the team—like the fashion brands it works with—focuses on just the right fit to meet customers’ goals.
“If you’re a fashion designer that focuses on luxury, your strategy might be a little different than a mass market retailer that speaks to a different demographic,” Capone elaborated. “We will take all these facets into account and create what we believe is a comprehensive and compelling use case for Web 3.0.”
Sometimes the goal is simply to expand the brand or test creative boundaries.
“I have always seen fashion as an important creative frontier, with only two things limiting the collections I design: imagination and physics,” said Hillary Taymour, Collina Strada’s creative director. The work with MoonPay on her NFT artwork and the Web 3.0 opportunity, more generally, eliminates one of these limitations. “What’s next will be fresh and exciting – NFTs that speak to the core of our brand, emphasizing our ethos of social awareness, change and self-expression.”
Like Collina Strada, Brandon Maxwell chose a visually oriented NFT to express his brand, but in video form. As for quantity, it was minted to the size of the NYFW crowd and delivered via a QR code printed in the show program. However, Alo Yoga needed more utility for The Aspen Collection, its first luxury line.
Not that the brand wanted a technical extravaganza. It partnered with Digital Twinning on augmented reality trials in New York. But the NFTs, the brand’s first, needed to bring different elements to the table. Ultimately, they will act as blockchain-based certificates of authenticity for people who buy the physical products, as well as access cards that unlock real-world benefits.
Think of it as a VIP club with exclusive benefits that include personal shopping through a private customer manager, access to Alo Wellness Clubs and other experiences at Alo Houses.
“Being able to try on the collection in real time via AR and receive an immutable certificate of ownership not only elevates the shopping experience, but also the authenticity, transparency and safety of our products,” said Angelic Vendette, vice president and head of marketing at Alo Yoga. “[It] creating the building blocks to provide lifetime value and rewards to our most loyal customers.”
It is possible, thanks to the smart contracts baked into NFTs. These pieces of software or code run automatically when certain conditions are met, and because they’re stored in the blockchain, they can’t be tampered with, at least not easily.
Brands are just starting to explore what smart contracts can do, and MoonPay is eager to help them find out.
This summer, the company launched HyperMint, a self-service platform designed to make it easy to mint and distribute NFTs, including smart contracts. For MoonPay, fashion week was a kind of springboard to bring its useful NFTs to the sector, giving maisons an interesting way to build relationships and create exclusive clubs or communities with top benefits. It helps that HyperMint, as a self-service system, can pump out NFTs at scale and even support simplified purchase via email check. Alo Yoga is the first fashion and lifestyle brand to use HyperMint.
Of course, the appeal is not limited to fashion. Universal Pictures, Fox Corporation and Snoop Dogg’s Death Row Records signed early, as did CAA, Capone’s former stomping grounds.
The talent management agency was interested in developing smart contracting strategies for VIP clients in entertainment, digital media, publishing, fashion and philanthropy. Shortly after that, in July, MoonPay announced his appointment to lead the Studios business, along with other executives. It’s a bold move as crypto plummets and the state of the economy destabilizes the NFT business, causing the OpenSea market to lose 20 percent of its workforce.
Then again, there is reason to be safe. After a $555 million Series A round in November valued the company at $3.4 billion, MoonPay revealed in a blog post in April that a star-studded line-up of investors had practically thrown their money at the platform. Justin Bieber, Maria Sharapova, Brie Larson, Paris Hilton and many others brought $87 million to the business as part of Series A.
Hollywood is obviously thrilled. MoonPay hopes Paris and New York will be too. Because where cultural light sources go, consumers will surely follow.
