Introducing Astraverse: Black-Led Startup Building The First Play-to-Wear Fashion Metaverse Fashion Revolutionized with Gamified Retail Virtual World
London, UK
|
February 08, 2023 12:00 PM Eastern Standard Time
Led by a team of energetic, innovative, black designers and digital artists, Astraverse.xyz is on a mission to revolutionise digital fashion experience. By building a virtual world where physical and digital (tech folks call it ‘phygital’) fashion blend perfectly, Astraverse reinvents the way we will stay fashionable in the near future with their 'play-to-wear’ concept where one can win fashion pieces, delivered to their door steps, through their proprietary games.
If you were ever hooked on Sims or other games with fashion at its core, you will be familiar with what Astraverse is building. In this universe that the team has created, the possibilities are endless. This gamified retail experience in the metaverse, or what the team has coined “Play-To-Wear'', is here to stay. “We are adding a ‘meta-commerce’ backend to the gaming front to create a global, sustainable fashion platform for the next generation of retail shoppers,” commented Delz Erinle, Founder of Astraverse.xyz. The team is now on a mission to build the first virtual world for gamified retail. Everything happens by jumping into a virtual world with your avatar - with Astraverse, you can now interact with the brands close to your heart, collecting digital coins or landing your hands on mystery boxes from these brands through games and fashion quests found on the metaverse.
"It’s the perfect time to things different, almost 10 years since Amazon came online and introduced a new way of shopping; the stars have aligned to reinvent fashion retail and gaming gives us the tools to achieve this," mentioned Niyi Okeowo, Art Direction Lead and Co-founder of Astraverse.xyz at the Astraverse2050 launch party last month in Lagos, Nigeria.
New Data from Roblox has also illustrated just how big 2022 was for digital fashion on the virtual world platform. In September, on the heels of its New York Fashion Week show, Carolina Herrera worked with model Karlie Kloss and creator Lovespun to turn one of its runway gowns into a Roblox dress. The digital dress, which was released for 500 Robux (approximately $5), sold out within hours and were resold for over $5,000 in the following weeks on secondary markets.
Industrywide, there is also a sustained interest in gamified digital fashion. Some of the notable collaborations include Ralph Lauren on Fortnite; Burberry on Minecraft; and Blankos Block Party and Dior in Gran Turismo 7. More recently, Calvin Klein opened an online gaming experience with avatar company Ready Player Me — a fitting choice for the brand to begin their phygital offering to their customers.
Building since 2020 before the metaverse hype cycle began, the Astraverse.xyz team has made great progress. The Astraverse team has since received grants from Epic Games & Meta, and garnered over 1000 demo testers for the 3 iterations they had conducted at Dcentral Austin, Zebu Live London & NFT London.
They also managed to attract a 100+ brand waitlist and have grown their community to 20k members, while being accelerated by University of Cambridge I4SF, Nvidia Inception Programme, DeFine, Technation, KPMG. The team believes strongly in a common goal - to add “metacommerce” in a futuristic-yet-familiar way that brings a level of physicality to the e-commerce experience.
The Astraverse team has since planned for a lot of partnerships in the upcoming years, including a launch with a global retailer that has everyone excited on how gaming and web3 to create a new experience that makes fashion retail more gamified and sustainable. When asked about the next milestone, the team commented to look out for the upcoming release of their 1st Play-to-Wear event - the Astra Mystery Box Challenge, scheduled to launch in February at NFT Paris. For this challenge, Astraverse has partnered with several brands for their players to win their apparels through games on Astraverse.
For a more personal touch with the team at Astraverse, tune in to this exclusive executive interview with the core team at Astraverse.xyz and G2M Digital to find out more on what they are building on the ground. Stay updated with the upcoming news from Astraverse.xyz by following their Twitter or Instagram.
Contact Details
Delz
+44 7423 506633
Company Website
