Dusseldorf, New York At first glance, it all seems like a lot of fun: the supermarket chain Kaufland has named an island “Kaufisland” that it acquired for the successful game world “Animal Crossing”. The googly-eyed avatar “Phil Leita” (read like “branch manager”) briefly enlightens the players about sustainability in the food trade.
This first virtual branch is more than just a gimmick, it is a strategic decision. Because the appearance in “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”, one of Nintendo’s most successful video games with over seven million sales in Europe alone, is the first step into the Metaverse for the subsidiary of the retail group Schwarz. This is a buzzword and collective term for digital worlds of experience that are created by games, artists, but also companies as virtual networking spaces for fans, customers and players.
Retailers and brands have great expectations of this. The fashion brand H&M already has its own island in “Animal Crossing”. On the game platform Roblox, which is considered one of the early prototypes of the Metaverse, both luxury retailers like Ralph Lauren and sporting goods companies like Nike with their own shops cavort. The US retailer Walmart has now protected its brands for the start in the Metaverse. They all hope not only for good marketing, but also for concrete sales.
“The Metaverse also offers sales potential for brands and retailers,” says Helge Ruff, CEO of the digital marketing agency OneTwoSocial, which organized Kaufland’s appearance at “Animal Crossing”. He is convinced that there will be new business models there. “People used to think that nobody would buy shoes online – and then along came Zalando.”
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The example of Adidas shows that money is already at stake. The sporting goods company is said to have paid millions for virtual land in the online game The Sandbox, on which it is building its own world Adiverse. Adidas also acquired its own avatar from the currently most popular NFT series, Bored Ape Yacht Club. The digital works of art are created using individual encryption using blockchain technology.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) often look like simple graphics. However, the technology behind it certifies all ownership rights. This makes NFTs interesting, among other things, as a digital format for sales contracts, for example.
According to the OpenSea marketplace, where the bored monkeys are traded, Adidas’ copy cost 46 Ether – at the exchange rate at the time, the equivalent of around 130,000 euros. The avatar was christened Indigo Heart and is now being used for marketing, dressed in Adidas Originals of course. Because the expensive avatars are traded in the scene, which is driven by US sports stars and musicians, among others, as a sign of identification and status symbol – like branded shoes, clothing or an expensive watch.
Virtual Gucci handbag sold for $4000
Morgan Stanley predicts that luxury brands alone will make around $50 billion in sales in the Metaverse by 2030. They are still a long way from that. Ralph Lauren, for example, sells virtual clothing in his shop on Roblox at prices between three and five dollars. However, Gucci is said to have already sold a virtual handbag for more than $4,000. Whether as a virtual accessory for digital images of the buyer or simply as a collector’s item, the possibilities are diverse.
“Metaverse is the closest and most serious attempt to create an all-digital world after the failure of Second Life in the early 2000s,” said Martin Schulte, partner and consumer products expert at Oliver Wyman. The investments are huge and Metaverse has the potential to be as influential as the development of the Internet over the next 15 years.
Without any official announcement, Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, filed a total of 30 different applications with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) at the end of December to protect its brands for the virtual world. Apparently, the supermarket giant is also considering offering services to third parties in the virtual world, according to filings with the USPTO. The group, which has long been known primarily for its cheap giant supermarkets on the edge of the highway, has already turned into a serious competitor to Amazon in recent years. And wants to further expand this attacking position.
Walmart also wants to build showrooms for other retailers
In trademark application 97197301 of December 30, Walmart wants to secure its own name for financial services, cryptocurrencies, digital tokens, blockchains and NFTs, among other things. There has been a real hype about NFTs in the past year.
On the same day, Walmart also applied for its own trademark under number 97197305 for telecommunications services, in particular for the electronic transmission of “virtual reality” content and data. A whole list of virtual trading services can be found at number 97197298.
The group also included the “Walmart Connect” brand in three applications: Among other things, it is intended to develop and design “virtual shops and virtual showrooms for others”. Walmart could thus position itself as a developer of store concepts for other retailers.
“Walmart is continually exploring how new technologies could shape future shopping experiences,” said a spokeswoman for the US company. Trademark registrations are routinely part of this innovation process. The approach is similar to that of Amazon. The US company is known for launching many test balloons at the same time to see what works.
Experts see “completely new revenue streams”
“It makes 100 percent sense for Walmart to explore this space and adapt as a company,” said Chris Walton, editor-in-chief of renowned retail blog Omni Talk. The Metaverse will give people a new way to interact socially. “And where there is human interaction, there is commerce, because as human beings, we care about how we appear to others.” He assumes that there will be “completely new revenue streams”.
“The retailers that get in there first and understand how this is evolving will have a head start, much like those who jumped onto e-commerce 20 years ago and did better than the laggards,” Walton said.
Digital marketing expert Ruff also thinks it is very important for companies to experiment with these new channels. “The presences that we see today definitely have the goal of gaining experience early on,” he emphasizes. This means that retailers are very close to the living environment of their young target group.
However, consumer goods expert Schulte is convinced that, apart from pioneers such as Adidas or Ralph Lauren, many manufacturers initially focus less on virtual goods and instead focus on marketing their products for the real world. “Retailers who, for example, are thinning out their store network and increasingly relying on delivery services and e-commerce, expect a much higher market penetration for their offers in the Metaverse,” the consultant expects.
Only in the next step would it then also be a matter of really virtual trade on a broad basis. “In five to ten years it is quite possible that purely digital products will also be sold via e-commerce shops,” he predicts.
More: Up to 300,000 euros salary – seven job profiles that could be created in the metaverse.