Category: Blog

The National Retail Federation reports November and December to be the most lucrative time of year for retailers, averaging approximately 19% of their annual retail sales. Brands and retailers have to stay competitive and at the forefront of the consumer’s mind at all times – especially online, where the majority of consumers plan to make their purchases. But how can you increase the ROI of your holiday e-commerce marketing campaigns?

1. Start early.

With Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas, the last two months are some of the busiest for the retail industry. For the high spending seasons like the end-of-year holidays, brands and retailers start their prep early; many start planning their holiday marketing campaigns in August or September so that they can kick off the campaigns in early October, or even late September. Over the past decade, over 50% of consumers start shopping around for presents in early November, with approximately 40% of consumers starting in late October – it’s in your best interest to kick off your annual holiday campaigns sooner rather than later to capture the early birds’ attention while simultaneously giving your campaigns time to optimize. 

2. Stand out.

With the plethora of marketing campaigns around this time of year, it pays to stand out. 

Branding is an important aspect of holiday e-commerce marketing because of the consumer’s openness to discovering new brands/products; it’s important to increase awareness and buzz for when consumers are finally ready to buy something. One way to do this is to create a memorable experience for your customers. Physically, this typically translates into over-the-top holiday decorations for your retail stores, themed pop-ups, or even having special guests make an appearance. Digitally, this is typically more difficult but virtual stores provide brands with an easy opportunity. 

Virtual stores can be a valuable addition to your digital holiday marketing campaigns because they enable brands and retailers to create unique, custom, and memorable experiences for your customers. Combining fantastical elements with practical functionality, you are able to either digitally recreate a physical experience or get creative with something completely out of the box – you’re not bound by physical constraints, so the options are endless. The Obsess team will work with your creative team to create the store of your dreams and help your campaign stand out from others using innovative retail technology.

3. Thoroughly engage.

Brands and retailers will also want their campaigns to be engaging, to keep them relevant and at the top of the consumer’s mind throughout the season. Using AR and VR technology in the retail industry helps increase engagement rates across the board. Proprietary data from 4+ years of creating virtual stores and experiences has shown that the Obsess virtual store platform increases engagement both with individual products and the brand. 

Virtual stores are interactive, immersive, discovery-driven, and filled with fun content for users to engage with. Between games, quizzes, gift guides, videos, and other interactive elements, there are a lot of ways to get your audience to engage with your brand. The rich array of relevant content for individuals to interact with also increases the average time spent within the store and prompts users to explore the experience in its entirety, driving them to discover more products.

For example, many Obsess partners use gamification as a means to provide their customers with special promo codes – think scavenger hunt that unlocks a code upon completion. Within the virtual experience, brands and retailers can prompt users to complete a task to obtain a special discount or gift. When introducing the task, you have the opportunity to prompt action and create urgency by highlighting scarcity (i.e. first x amount of people get a gift with purchase) or a time limit/countdown (i.e. must complete before x date).  

Bring online shopping to life with compelling, creative content in a highly contextual environment to capture the joy of the holidays, even if the user is shopping from their couch. 

4. Be personal.

The traditional e-commerce shopping experience is dry – it’s thumbnail after thumbnail on a plain, white grid, making personalization difficult. As convenient as the typical online experience is, many people still crave the personal touch of shopping in-person. So how do you make the online shopping experience personal?

Virtual stores make online shopping personal by appealing to the user’s human nature through social features that help mimic the in-person experience. With innovative capabilities such as selfie booths with AR filters, one-on-one service consultations, the ability to shop with your friends, live streaming with influencers, and other features, there’s no shortage of ways to make your user’s shopping experience unique to them. Obsess has even created a feature where the user can add their own touch to the room itself! 

5. Keep data.

Keeping data is important to better understand your customer and therefore optimize your e-commerce marketing campaigns. You have to know what your customers are interacting with, where they are interacting, etc. to sell to them.

Virtual stores serve as another (unique) sales channel for you to obtain data to utilize in order to boost sales and can be a valuable addition to your e-commerce marketing strategy. You control the e-commerce transaction in virtual stores and therefore are able to own the data associated with it. Get direct consumer data and see where your customers are clicking – which products they are interacting with, which pieces of content they find most appealing, etc. – to determine how you want to move forward in your retail strategy. 

Increase ROI of your digital holiday marketing campaigns this year and boost your sales with virtual stores that increase awareness and engagement throughout the busy season. Learn how Obsess can help you build your own virtual store by emailing us at contact@obsessVR.com.

As budgeting season approaches, brands and retailers have to figure out the most optimal way to allocate their funds – especially with the current state of the economy. There are a wide variety of marketing solutions at a retailers’ disposal but some are more cost-efficient than others, such as virtual stores when compared to physical stores. 

Virtual stores offer an immersive and discovery-driven experience that can provide high engagement at a lower cost compared to traditional brick-and-mortar stores; they’re able to mimic the experience of in-store shopping without the full costs of operating a storefront. In this blog, we will highlight the top 4 reasons virtual stores offer a more cost-effective retail strategy compared to retail stores.

1.) Lower Opening Costs

Physical retail stores are high cost and high effort. The average cost of opening a retail store in a prime location such as New York City can be over $2M. This is, on average, 6X the amount it would cost to open a virtual store. The $2M price tag includes typical costs such as necessary permits and operating licenses, security deposits, interior designer fees, furniture and store fixtures, and the marketing expenses associated with launch. Virtual stores don’t have the same expenses and can therefore launch at a fraction of the cost. 

The calculated cost of a physical store also only represents the opening cost for a single location. For major retail brands it is necessary to open multiple brick-and-mortar locations around the world, but this is extremely costly. The internationalization of virtual stores allows a single store rendition to be translated and used anywhere around the world, complete with different currencies.

2.) Shorter Go-To-Market Time

Perfectly conceptualizing, curating, and establishing a brick-and-mortar store for launch is a time-consuming and tedious endeavor. Between finding a retail space, developing the aesthetic, constructing a store layout, sourcing materials, hiring staff, and coordinating the store launch, a lot needs to happen before doors open. Virtual stores take a quarter of the time to launch than physical retail stores. The Obsess team works with your creative team to conceptualize and design a custom virtual store. You will have a dedicated team to collaborate with your internal team on 3D designing/photographing, UI designing, implementing content, engineering, and UX testing to bring your vision to life in a timely manner. Rather than taking 12 months for a retail store, virtual stores typically take 2-3 months from start to finish.  

When it comes to launching pop-up stores, a quick turnaround time is extremely important. Obsess, the leading Virtual Store Platform, has worked with a wide variety of brands that have launched virtual pop-up stores in a short time frame. For example, Crocs launched a fully 3D-rendered experience complete with a unique variety of content extras and an avatar of the rap superstar Saweetie to promote their new line of shoe charms. The metaverse store experience “has driven double-digit engagement rates across social media platforms, outperforming digital benchmarks” according to Crocs’ CMO Heidi Cooley. 

3.) Lower Operating Costs

The average price per square foot to rent a retail space in New York City is around $2,775. For a 2,000 square foot store, this ends up being around $5,550,000. When taking into account all operating costs such as salaries for labor, utilities, maintenance, and insurance, operating a physical retail store in NYC can cost around $6M annually. 

Virtual stores provide a highly engaging, discovery-driven shopping experience at a fraction of the cost of a brick-and-mortar store. Retailers are able to satisfy consumer demand for experience without having to pay the additional operating costs associated with maintaining physical retail stores – there is no need to pay utilities, maintenance, or insurance, driving operating costs for a virtual store down to your Obsess subscription. This typically ends up being around $250,000 per year.  

4.) Higher Audience Reach

Virtual stores are not limited by store hours and are accessible worldwide at any time; consumers are able to experience a store without having to go to the physical location. The increased accessibility enables retailers to reach a significantly larger audience than the foot traffic a singular brick-and-mortar store would allow. Brands are able to capitalize on the wide reach of virtual stores, capturing and engaging new consumers across the globe without having to establish a physical presence in international markets. 

For example, Armani Beauty launched a virtual store in tandem with their pop-up concept in the UK’s Piccadilly Circus to promote various products such as makeup and the brand’s Sì fragrance. Without having to fly to London, users can experience a virtual rendition of the pop-up complete with interactive entertainment options, the ability to book appointments with beauty consultants, a billboard display of Cate Blanchett (the fragrance’s spokesperson), AR technology that allows users to try on products, and a 360-degree virtual exterior of Piccadilly Circus.

Not only are virtual stores a more innovative, immersive, and discovery-driven form of e-commerce, they are also a low-cost, high performing platform. This platform performs especially well with the younger generations. These younger audiences are more familiar with the interface, via gaming, and are less likely to shop in physical locations; adhering to their behaviors and preferences is necessary to stay relevant. Virtual stores are the perfect solution to cutting costs in your retail strategy, while staying relevant in an evolving retail market. Get more details of the comparison in the infographic “How Virtual Stores Can Reduce Cost Compared to Retail Stores” here.

Obsess has partnered with the biggest brands in a wide variety of industries to create over 150 virtual stores. To learn more about how Obsess can help you build your virtual flagship store, send us an email at contact@obsessVR.com.  

The newest trend in e-commerce is virtual selling technology. Virtual stores are one of the many innovations that have come out of this new trend that brands are capitalizing on as a way to build unique engagement and differentiate their digital offerings. Virtual stores are 3D, 360 full-page visual experiences that live on a brand’s e-commerce site and on metaverse platforms. These digital experiences allow consumers to browse an online e-commerce store in a more immersive and discovery-driven fashion. Virtual stores merge the best of online and offline shopping, allowing leading brands to enhance their brand engagement and extend their revenue potential. 

The top 6 ways brands are using virtual stores include:

1. Virtual flagship stores
2. Virtualizing retail stores
3. Virtual stores for seasonal and holiday campaigns
4. Introducing new product launches and collections
5. Virtual pop-ups
6. Digital showrooms for wholesale and merchandising

1.) Virtual Flagship Stores

The dot.com is the new flagship store. From setting up retail flagship stores, brands are now transitioning to opening virtual flagship stores. A virtual flagship store is a 3D digital destination for a brand, where you can explore the brand’s world, learn about the brand story, discover the latest products, and shop for them. It is a permanent immersive virtual presence that becomes a go-to location for customers to visit and leaves a much more lasting and memorable impression than a flat e-commerce website.

Brands update their virtual flagship stores with the latest collections throughout the year and can change the merchandising and decorations seasonally. A brand’s virtual flagship store can be available in all their markets and is localized to the local language, currency, and product assortment. Brands are seeing higher engagement, interaction rates, and conversion rates with their virtual flagships.

Key benefits of a virtual flagship store: 

• A highly customized, interactive, and fully branded virtual experience    
• Enables brands to showcase products in a discovery-driven format to consumers globally 
• Allows brands to update their products throughout the year and make their dot.com the new flagship store

Retailers can use the Obsess Experiential E-commerce Platform to create custom virtual flagship stores that are photorealistic and highly interactive.

NARS Cosmetics launched a virtual flagship store powered by Obsess that according to Beauty Magazine “answers the need for a new way to shop for cosmetics, and adapts the brick-and-mortar feel to the current retail landscape.” In the virtual flagship, shoppers can book one-on-one artistry sessions, utilize virtual try-on technology, view artistry tutorials, and get matched using Matchmaker, an AR and AI-powered foundation shade finder. The virtual store windows and the visual merchandising was updated through the year and new collections were added.

Mary Kay Inc. has created its virtual flagship store named Suite 13. Once inside the pink door, this 3D environment leads consumers through a fun, easy-to-use escape from traditional online shopping. Users can discover global fan-favorite products, skincare collection features, and highlights of Mary Kay heritage in a trendy loft setting. “Suite 13 will provide Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultants with the flexibility of a digital business by being able to introduce our Mary Kay brand everywhere at any time and to elevate the way they build relationships with their customers by sharing an immersive beauty experience,” says Mary Kay Chief Marketing Officer Sheryl Adkins-Green. Customers can order their favorite products or connect with their Independent Beauty Consultant for a personalized tour.

2.) Virtualizing Retail Stores

Brands are creating virtual versions of their retail stores for flagships, new store openings and more. Virtualizing a retail store means creating a photorealistic 3D virtual tour of it on your e-commerce website, that is fully shoppable. This increases the reach of the physical retail store to a much wider audience beyond those who can come there in person, hence increasing the ROI on the retail real estate investment. Virtualized retail stores can connect to both in-store and online inventory. They bring the full creative scope of the brand’s visual merchandising into online shopping, turning e-commerce into an experience. 

Benefits of virtualizing retail stores:

• Store becomes accessible to a wider audience 
• Remote shopping enabled 
• Makes in-store inventory digitally accessible 

Retailers can use the Obsess Experiential E-commerce Platform to virtualize their retail stores at a high resolution and with a fast turnaround time. 

Ralph Lauren’s series of virtualized retail stores is a relevant example of brands that have successfully transformed physical locations into 3D, immersive digital experiences. Ralph Lauren (RL) has virtual versions of their Bal Harbour store, The Watches & Fine Jewelry Showroom, The Accessories Showroom, and the Polo Factory Store in Gloucester. By visiting the Ralph Lauren website and by clicking on the “RL Virtual Experience” page, a visitor can virtually travel around the world with Ralph Lauren and be immersed in their renowned and unique flagship stores in various locations. Customers can click on any product in the virtual store and order it online or call the store. The “RL Virtual Experience” serves as a new sales channel in addition to Ralph Lauren’s retail stores and e-commerce website. 

3.) Virtual Stores for Seasonal and Holiday Campaigns

Brands and retailers are continually searching for engaging, exciting, and entertaining campaigns to capitalize on seasonal and holiday sales pushes. A 3D-rendered virtual experience offers a new experiential shopping format and a viable new sales channel. With a virtual experience, you can create an environment that is a 3D model of your retail store, a creative concept store, or a completely fantastical location.

Key benefits of seasonal and holiday virtual experiences: 

• Gaining a new engaging virtual sales channel to drive sales pushes
• Providing consumers with a creative, interactive, and discovery-driven shopping experience 
• Lower production costs with CGI than doing on-location shoots

Virtual stores can change seasonally without the reconstruction costs associated with a brick-and-mortar location. Seasonal experiences are often temporary spanning typically no more than three months. A digital space offers a quicker turnaround and lower maintenance and costs when it comes to either creating a purely seasonal experience from scratch or touching up a few elements to make it more holiday-like. 

Tommy Hilfiger launched a holiday virtual store for the winter season. Upon entering the 3D immersive space, the user navigates through a holiday setting with candy canes, presents, and shining stars. There are a handful of interactive experiences to enhance user engagement such as the “All of Our Favorite Scents” where the user can click on a scent and receive instructions for creating a Tommy DIY Diffuser. The “Tommy Hilfiger Hot Chocolate Bar” experience gives recipes for a Caramel Spice, CoolHaus’ Dirty Mint Hot Chocolate, or Fatty Sundays Mint Hot Chocolate. The “Get All Wrapped Up” section is an educational experience where users can watch a short video on sustainable gift wrapping with activist GreenGirlLeah. The Tommy Hilfiger virtual store offers consumers holiday cheer through a highly engaging and interactive virtual sales channel.

4.) Introducing New Product Launches and Collections

Brands are leveraging virtual stores to showcase new product launches and collections in an innovative way and to enter the metaverse. Virtual stores offer brands the opportunity to have a completely unique, branded, visual digital experience to immerse consumers in their brand world while leaving a lasting impression. The highly interactive and contextual environments of virtual stores help consumers envision how they would personally use the product.

Key benefits of virtual experiences for new product launches: 

• Create innovative, engaging experiences to immerse consumers in new products and collections 
• Provide consumers with 3D product interactions to enable custom actions to better understand the product  
• Facilitate virtual social shopping experiences with the Obsess Shop with Friends feature, which allows video streaming with up to 10 friends

Charlotte Tilbury’s “Pillow Talk Party” virtual experience powered by Obsess unveils the latest products in the Pillow Talk collection. The social experience invites customers to shop with their friends and watch live masterclasses together. Upon entering the Virtual Wonderland, users can join live shopping excursions with their friends and receive a complimentary 15-minute virtual consultation to create a “Pillow Talk Party” look. The experience offers immersive 3D product interactions where users can unbox products, open them, and perform custom actions such as twisting a lipstick or refilling a reusable bottle. Visitors are welcomed into a boudoir with makeup tutorials for (directly shoppable) base, cheek, and lip products. The “gem game” lets users collect points for every tutorial video they watch and unlock free products.

5.) Virtual Pop-up Stores

Pop-up stores have been a hugely successful retail strategy and revenue driver for brands. However, they can only drive a finite amount of sales depending on the time span of operation and foot traffic in the area. Virtual stores are a solution to the restrictive nature of pop-ups as they maximize the potential of a pop-up store, making it accessible and shoppable from anywhere at any time.

Key benefits of a virtual version of a pop-up store:

• Significantly widens the audience for the pop-up store
• Virtual versions can stay open longer than physical versions, driving sellthrough
• Provides deeper insight into consumers’ interests and interactions with key data 

A relevant example of this is the multi-brand retailer MyTheresa creating an immersive, 3D pop-up shopping experience for Moncler. When a user enters the virtual experience they are immersed in sky-high rocky mountains covered with moss and soaring clouds, a location that is as cinematic as the collection itself. The virtual reality experience is set in North Tyrol, a northern Austrian state in the Alps that’s renowned for its ski resorts and historic locations.

6.) Digital Showrooms for Wholesale and Merchandising

Many companies are now using virtual stores internally as educational tools and resources for their merchandising teams and virtual showrooms for their buyers. Virtual stores can educate merchandising teams on the layout of collections in retail stores. Virtual showrooms allow for both a detailed and bird’s eye view of the collection for wholesale buyers without having to physically visit showrooms, hence reducing the carbon footprint and speeding up the buying process.

Key benefits of virtual showrooms for wholesale and merchandising:

• Serves as a virtual educational tool and resource for merchandising teams, buyers, and vendors
• Enables buyers and vendors to see new products and collections virtually, reducing the carbon footprint and speeding up the buying process
• Minimizes the number of samples created to go on display in showrooms, allowing brands to further their sustainability initiatives

Virtual showrooms can be leveraged as an experiential e-commerce tool to facilitate orders with buyers. Obsess digital showrooms are highly interactive and engaging experiences for buyers replete with garments and accessories rendered in a 360-degree space, video fits of each style, and detailed 2D images with product descriptions. In the digital showrooms, high-quality rendered images replace the touch and feel of physical products. Brands can significantly reduce the number of samples created to go on display in their showrooms, as well as minimize the need to travel to view new collections.

To learn more about how your brand can leverage Obsess for these use cases, write to us at contact@obsessVR.com. 

The pandemic fundamentally changed how e-commerce brands build their channel mix and operate their businesses. Companies previously accustomed to in-person selling, by way of brick-and-mortar storefronts and in-store sales associates, were forced to re-evaluate their selling strategies. Forbes noted that “81% of growth leaders [used] the pandemic as an opportunity to redefine the customer experience in digital and virtual channels.” This gave way to a variety of new technologies that helped businesses sell virtually despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic. Virtual stores, live stream shopping platforms, and 3D product models are some of the unique innovations that arose from this gap in capabilities. 

While these solutions may have initially been viewed as interim, many companies have found virtual selling to be even more effective. In a 2021 survey, Bain & Company and Dynata found that “92% of B2B buyers prefer virtual sales interactions, up 17 percentage points from our survey in May 2020. More sellers also realize its effectiveness, now at 79% compared with 54% last May.” Companies are integrating a variety of virtual selling technologies into their e-commerce channel mix not just as an interim solution, but as a way to sell better than ever before.

Virtual Stores and Virtual Selling

Virtual stores play a vital role in creating a robust virtual selling strategy. Offering an experiential online shopping experience, virtual stores emulate the interactive, engaging, and personalized nature of brick-and-mortar stores. Virtual stores enable brands to serve photorealistic 3D stores with full e-commerce integration.

With the help of the Obsess virtual store platform, Ralph Lauren has released several virtual stores as part of its RL Virtual Experience. Each virtual store is a photographic rendering of a real Ralph Lauren flagship store that users can visit to browse a wide range of Ralph Lauren products as they appear IRL. Not only do users get the convenience of shopping online for their favorite products, but they also get to experience stunning Ralph Lauren stores from around the world they otherwise would not have easy access to.

Augmented and Virtual Reality Selling Technologies

Many brands that understand the potential of VR and AR, are heavily investing in these technologies as their relevance continues to climb. Dyson, for example, released a VR app available through the Oculus Quest 2 VR headset. In the app, users can browse through a virtual store containing various Dyson products with the ability to interact with them as if they were browsing physical products in a real store.  

Obsess has partnered with several brands in a variety of industries to design fully immersive virtual stores that combine elements of VR and AR. A great example is the beauty brand NARS’ virtual store. The store’s interior, while inspired by one of the brand’s physical flagship stores, is entirely 3D-rendered and virtually browsable. With the help of Perfect Corp’s AR technology, the store also contains AR try-on features that enhance the overall shopping experience. As users browse NARS’ vast collection of makeup products, they are given the option to use their device’s camera to virtually try on different NARS products. The technology can read users’ faces and superimpose makeup, in real-time onto their self-view, mimicking what products would look like IRL. The exciting virtual technology again helps users with their purchase decisions by giving them an idea of how the product will appear on them and can lead to a more likely purchase and a less likely return. For fashion and beauty brands, virtual try-on AR technology is especially important: how products fit each individual is vital to each product’s offering.

Livestream Shopping Platforms

According to McKinsey, “​​Live commerce combines instant purchasing of a featured product and audience participation through a chat function or reaction buttons.” This idea had already revolutionized e-commerce in China with shopping platforms such as Alibaba’s Taobao, while other parts of the world are now adopting similar technologies.

Many online shoppers are likely already familiar with now commonplace technologies such as website chatbots that automate customer support. However, a closer manifestation of the idea of live commerce platforms is live stream shopping platforms. These platforms allow vendors to live-stream themselves to the platform’s e-commerce shoppers to give deeper insights about the products. The shopping platform allows users to shop on an e-commerce site while viewing commentary from a live streamer that mimics the experience of an in-store sales associate. Several brands such as Rebecca Minkoff, Marni, and Anna Sui have adopted this platform to improve their e-commerce conversion. 

Another example of a live commerce application can be found in Charlotte Tilbury’s newest Pillow Talk Party virtual store. This store, created with the Obsess virtual store platform, features some of the most advanced virtual selling features available today. In addition to being an immersive and virtual e-commerce experience, the store features a brand new “shop with friends” feature. The Obsess functionality allows users to shop with their friends within the virtual store via a live video chat. The store allows users to invite up to 10 other shoppers as they browse the store and its products, creating an enriching social experience. This innovation comes as a greater number of retailers begin to push into the metaverse, aiming to capture the convenience of online retail with the social experience of in-store shopping. Live commerce technologies such as “shop with friends” allow organizations to further immerse consumers in their stores and provide their consumers with the best of both online and offline worlds.

3D Digital Products

Several brands are also leveraging 3D digital product models as another tool in their virtual selling arsenal, through various channels like gaming platforms and their own branded virtual stores. Roblox and Fortnite are popular channels through which many brands have promoted a real-world clothing item by translating it into a digital in-game item. For brands investing in this strategy such as Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Balenciaga, this strategy has served the dual purpose of achieving sales for their digital merchandise while promoting their physical clothing collection and brand to the future generation of shoppers. 

Similarly, brands that have built virtual experiences with Obsess have showcased some of their product line-ups through realistic 3D product models. Charlotte Tilbury, within its Pillow Talk Party virtual store, capitalizes on this virtual selling technology, allowing users browsing the store to view and rotate products in 3D space. With these immersive 3D product interactions, users can unbox products, open them, and do custom actions such as twisting a lipstick or refilling a reusable bottle. While being an immersive and exciting feature that engages users, the 3D product models also solve e-commerce stores’ biggest problem: what do the products purchased online actually look and feel like. 3D product models enable consumers to envision how the physical product will look before it’s shipped to them and can provide extra incentive to make a purchase. In the near future, virtual stores with features like these will become even more immersive as virtual reality (VR) headsets become more mainstream.

Virtual Selling for Your Brand

Since the pandemic, virtual selling tools have shown effectiveness when compared to standalone e-commerce solutions. As the landscape of e-commerce continues to evolve, use cases for virtual selling technologies will continue to grow in number. While these technologies began simply as a solution to navigate the pandemic economy, they now will set the foundation for the coming metaverse economy. By partnering with Obsess, you will gain a roadmap for your metaverse presence and strategy.

Learn more about how your brand can capitalize on conversion-increasing virtual selling technology to engage customers as part of interactive, immersive virtual experiences, using the Obsess Metaverse Shopping Platform.

What are Digital 3D Assets?

Digital 3D assets, also referred to as virtual fashion or digital fashion, are at the root of fashion in the metaverse. Vogue Business notes these assets are: “created using fashion-specific 3D design software, [they] can be photorealistic or stylized to suit specific environments. They can be used throughout a product’s supply chain, from design, sampling, and wholesale to AR experiences, digital fashion, and virtual worlds.” 

How Brands Are Employing Digital 3D Assets

Digital 3D assets have far more impact than just being used as clothing for digital avatars. Brands are using them in creative ways to drive conversions, sustainability, and a faster time-to-market. By using digital 3D assets as opposed to 2D clothing images on product pages, brands can make more life-like online images of products and provide additional context; users can twist, turn, and inspect photorealistic 3D images of the product. Additional use cases for digital 3D assets include visualizing how products will look on a display wall or virtually merchandising a retailer’s purchase order. 

Since digital 3D assets can be displayed and showroomed for marketing purposes before the production of the product, costs and time-to-market for physical products are reduced. The presence of digital 3D assets has shown early success with enhanced customer engagement and higher conversion rates. Rebecca Minkoff saw a 27% increase in conversions when it added 3D product imagery for their products to their e-commerce site. The brand also found that users who interacted with a 3D product image on their e-commerce site were up to 44% more likely to add a product to the cart and 27% more likely to convert an order. Consumers are starting to expect 3D models on e-commerce sites, and companies such as Facebook, Snapchat, and Shopify are already approving partners and rolling out plans to create 3D assets for brands’ products. 

Digital 3D assets also play a vital role in helping the fashion industry meet its sustainability goals, lessening the number of items produced and minimizing the number of resources needed to develop collections. Fashion brands are scaling back on the physical production of items before they are purchased or hit runways, leveraging 3D digital assets towards this effort. As an example of this shift in behavior, Tommy Hilfiger has altered their design process to move away from sketching on paper and iterating on physical samples before sending them to showrooms. According to Vogue Business, “The vast majority of Tommy Hilfiger clothing will not be physically produced until it appears on the runway or is sold.” Tommy Hilfiger, for example, now relies on 3D design for its entire design process. Digital 3D assets have decreased Tommy Hilfiger’s collection development process by two weeks. Daniel Grieder, former CEO of Tommy Hilfiger Global and its parent company PVH Europe, has said, “The potential of 3D design is limitless, allowing us to meet consumer needs faster and in a more sustainable way… [it] has become a fundamental tool in our collection design and has the potential to significantly accelerate our speed-to-market.” Digital 3D assets will equip the Tommy Hilfiger brand with the foundational, necessary marketing and retailing tools it needs to meet its sustainability endeavors and stay competitive in today’s marketplace. 

Diane von Furstenberg is also transitioning their design process from the production of two-dimensional sketches into three-dimensional renderings. This transition will enable the brand to visualize design changes before going into production, helping the brand’s sustainability efforts by eliminating waste. While the project was created in part to enhance the brand’s sustainability initiatives, it has the added benefit of an improved customer buying experience. The brand is working towards a platform in which users can personalize their own wrap dress, adjusting the length of the dress and alternating the colors. Instantly, the customer can view the personalization of the dress via a 3D model and purchase it. This method resolves the problem of unsold goods, as the dress is only produced after the personalized 3D model is created.   

On a similar note, Farfetch leveraged digital renders in partnership with digital fashion marketplace DressX to dress influencers before its pre-sale offerings. New, digital-only fashion brands and platforms like DressX and Fabricant are emerging as brands’ interest in digital fashion increases. “By going digital we were able to save 346,698 liters of water, that is enough for 20 people to drink for 24 years. We also saved 2,525 kg CO2 eq, which accounts for 97.86% of CO2 emissions produced by a similar campaign in the physical space and equals 29 years of using a smartphone for 10 hours a day,” Farfetch stated. The Farfetch and DressX pre-sale campaign was considered a success, as it was the “first carbon-neutral fashion campaign in the world” (RTIH). From helping reach sustainability efforts to providing a more engaging, interactive shopping experience, digital 3D assets are proving their value for brands.

Digital 3D Assets as the Backbone of the Metaverse

Digital assets are key to brands wanting to enter into the metaverse, as most metaverse environments only permit the selling of digital assets. Digital items are readily being purchased in metaverse environments; according to the Metaverse Mindset: Consumer Shopping Insights Survey nearly three-quarters (74%) of Gen Zers have purchased a digital item such as an accessory, skin, or garment for their avatar within an online video game. The metaverse is taking shape as the next generation of the internet, and retailers and brands will need to establish their presence in it to keep up with consumer adoption. Early movers experimenting with 3D digital assets will have a natural advantage. Obsess, a Metaverse Shopping platform, enables leading brands to enter the metaverse and start utilizing and selling 3D digital assets. Our highly customized, 3D virtual experiences live on brands’ websites and are currently the only metaverse environment where brands can sell both 3D digital assets and physical products. As your strategic partner, Obsess helps shape your metaverse strategy and assists with the execution of your metaverse plan. Learn more about how Obsess can help you establish your presence in the metaverse.

Brands are moving fast to leverage technology that will empower them with 360-degree, immersive digital experiences. These 3D experiences offer a natural opportunity for brands to enter into the metaverse. 

Immersive digital experiences are powered by Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). AR and VR, while used interchangeably, have distinct differences. Typically, AR uses aspects of real-world settings and environments enhanced by computer-generated graphics, whereas VR is entirely virtual. A way to think about the distinction, as Wunderman Thompson reports, is “Augmented reality is when you’re still within your current environment, and you’re just overlaying computer graphics on top of what you’re seeing—whereas with virtual reality you’re taken to a different world.” Most people have their first interaction with AR through filters on Snapchat and Instagram and with virtual try-on technologies on beauty sites. Whereas, most people have their first interaction with VR on the web via games, virtual tours, and virtual stores.

Snap, Meta and Apple Invest in VR and AR Technology

The rapid rise of immersive technology has prompted the world’s most powerful tech and social media companies to invest significant capital and resources towards the research and development of AR and VR products. 

Meta, as part of its October 2021 rebrand, invested $10 billion in VR and AR in an attempt to pivot the firm’s focus from social media to the metaverse. This transition has been in the works for a number of years, beginning when Facebook acquired VR-headset startup Oculus for $2 billion in 2014. According to a March 2021 report from The Information, nearly a fifth of all Meta employees — about 10,000 people — are working on VR/AR in the company’s Facebook Reality Labs (FRL) division. FRL is responsible for developing the software that will lay the foundation for Meta’s virtual platform.

Apple announced the expansion of its AR focus in January 2022, stating it has plans to grow the App Store’s current collection of 14,000 AR apps. The iOS 15 software update included AR-backed positioning and locating features on the Maps app. It is anticipated that the company will build AR tools for 1 billion devices around the world. Recently, CEO Tim Cook responded to a question regarding the company’s metaverse plans, saying, “We see a lot of potential in this space and are investing accordingly.” On the hardware side, Apple is working to introduce an AR headset with glasses in either 2022 or 2023, according to Bloomberg.

The most innovative element of Snap Inc.’s business is arguably in its augmented reality lenses, which were most of the world’s introduction to AR. Through these lenses — which today number at 2.5 million and have accumulated over 3.5 trillion views on the app — users are able to augment and alter their appearances from an extensive catalog of options that include fantastical and increasingly lifelike features. In addition, Snap has a global creative studio called Arcadia dedicated to helping brands develop augmented reality advertising and experiences. The studio has partnered with leading brands to grab the attention of Snapchat’s millennial and Gen Z audiences. Snap advanced further into the AR space in 2021 with its acquisition of WaveOptics, a company that makes lenses and other hardware that can be leveraged in AR glasses. With the acquisition, Snap can match its competitors and develop AR glasses that will allow users to see computer-generated imagery overlaid on top of the real world. One common goal of all these companies is to perfect easily-wearable AR glasses, which will allow people to see digital items overlaid on the world around them.

Oculus Quest is the Best-Selling VR Headset to Date

Currently, the Oculus Quest is the leader in wireless VR headsets. The first edition of Oculus Quest introduced immersive gaming to both newcomers and seasoned gamers across the world. The pandemic accelerated adoption of the Oculus Quest and its applications transcended from gaming to everyday lifestyle activities, like fitness workouts. According to Meta Quest news, Oculus Quest 2 “is the next generation of all-in-one VR with a redesigned all-in-one form factor, new Touch controllers, and a high-resolution display.” With the launch of Quest 2, users are able to “squad up with friends in different time zones, meet up with real people at virtual events, and create, play, [and] explore together from wherever.” The audience for Oculus Quest is still predominantly male, but female ownership is ever increasing. In the last three years, the Meta Quest store — which initially launched in 2019 and provides a platform for the headsets’ games — has more than quadrupled in revenue. In fact, total sales have surpassed $1 billion, marking a massive uptick in people buying VR software since the release of the Meta Quest 2 in late 2020 (PCGamer).

Headset-Based Experiences by Retailers

Retailers have ventured into headset-based experiences and have begun exploring the capabilities of immersive VR. One example of this is the global fast-food chain Wendy’s. Wendy’s created its virtual world, dubbed “Wendyverse”, in the metaverse in partnership with Meta’s Horizon Worlds. With Quest 2 VR headsets, users enter the Wendy’s 3D-world and walk through a virtual town that is entirely Wendy’s themed, replete with a virtual restaurant, a Fanta-filled park fountain, and an online arena where users can play basketball with a virtual Baconator burger. Wendyverse visitors also receive a coupon for a $1 breakfast sandwich to use in real life. The Dyson Demo VR is a 360-degree virtual reality environment that enables customers to style virtual hair and interact with 3D images of Dyson machines. The virtual experience is accessible through the Oculus store for Quest VR headset owners. Users enter a virtual showroom and can experiment with a range of products from the Corrale straightener to the Airwrap styler and test different styles on virtual hair. Sean Newmarch, Dyson’s e-commerce director, commented, “Covid-19 has presented the digital world with unprecedented opportunities, and we’re seeing a heightened focus on how companies are bringing their products to life for consumers virtually” (Glossy).

Brands Leverage VR Tech and AR Try-On Tools

Beauty and fashion brands are harnessing the power of AR try-on tools to improve the customer’s buying journey and encourage purchasing decisions virtually. AR try-on tools allow customers to try on clothes, makeup, and skincare products, without physically being in a store. Two of the main players in the AR try-on space for beauty are ModiFace and Perfect Corp. ModiFace beauty try-ons track the facial features in precise detail to create an accurate, photo-realistic makeup simulation. Perfect Corp provides a range of virtual try-on technologies from AgileHand, AR hand–tracking technology to AgileFace, AR face–tracking technology. Brands are exploring virtual try-on within their websites to provide consumers with an accurate sense of the look, feel, and size of the product. NARS offers an interactive, AR try-on via their website where customers can “try everything once” through simulations on live video. The NARS virtual store powered by Obsess enables users to virtually try on over 500 shades of lip color and find their ideal foundation shade with Matchmaker AR technology.

Beauty brands are leveraging AR filters that enable augmentation and alteration of appearances to increase consumer engagement and interaction. Instagram AR filters help brands showcase their products in a fun, interactive way and engage worldwide audiences. The ‘Kylie Hearts’ Instagram AR filter by Kylie Cosmetics allows fans to create a fantastical heart-shape, blush makeup look. While the ‘Air Matte’ AR Instagram filter by NARS provides users with a more realistic view of how the blush colors from their Air Matte selection will appear on them; users can choose the shade that best suits their skin type. The Dior Makeup Instagram AR filter empowers users to lay gemstones over their faces, pushing beyond the boundaries of real-world makeup and “creating a new form of ‘homoinstagramus’ beauty.” With the ‘Norvina Arcade’ filter by Anastasia Beverly Hills, users can play with four different personalities and try on a purple unicorn teddy, bunny ears, a blue alien, or the Norvina eyeshadow palette filter. 

Fashion and jewelry pioneers of AR try-on tools include Farfetch, Prada, and Piaget, all of which leveraged Snapchat’s virtual try-on features “that [detect] and [respond] to body movements and facial dimensions” (Vogue Business). Users are encouraged to test the products on themselves through easy-to-use filters that can be both voice and gesture-controlled. Farfetch, for example, leveraged Snapchat’s technology to allow users to see clothing displayed on their bodies — a tool that is enabled by 3D Body Mesh which maps the human body and develops a cloth simulation that makes the clothing appear as if it is affected by gravity. Pieces from Off-White by Virgil Abloh were available for try-on, and voice-command features matched users’ words to items in the product catalog for a bespoke experience. Prada, as well, leveraged Snap’s hands-free try-on technology to detect hand gestures, enabling users to set down their phones and try on Prada handbags by using “swiping” gestures to switch the colors of the products. Piaget employed Snap’s AR technology to allow users to try on bracelets and watches — a perfect application for a brand specializing in just that.

Retailers Create VR Stores

Leading brands are leveraging VR and journeying into the metaverse with interactive, 3D virtual store experiences. Virtual stores enable retailers to offer new, unique experiences and elevate their traditional e-commerce sites. Obsess, the leading Virtual Store Platform, enables brands and retailers globally to offer interactive 3D virtual stores on their sites that can be accessed on a computer or smartphone, or with VR headsets. AR try-on technology can be integrated into virtual stores and as customers discover products in the virtual environment, and then seamlessly transition to AR to try the product on themselves.

These virtual shopping experiences serve as an entry point into the metaverse. Neha Singh, CEO, and Founder of Obsess, commented in Forbes, “The metaverse is just the next version of the internet. At first, it was just text, then images, then videos. Now hardware on our mobile devices and computers allows for much richer, virtual graphics.” These ‘virtual graphics’ allow Obsess to create realistic online adventures that mirror the highly interactive nature of in-person shopping experiences. Younger generations are growing up in the age of VR and AR-first. The virtual world will become their real world, and they will be — and to some extent already are — shopping, socializing, and hanging out in virtual experiences on a daily basis.

Learn more about how your brand can utilize VR/AR technology to engage customers with an interactive, immersive, 3D virtual store experience, using the Obsess platform.