LOUIS VUITTON METAVERSE
LOUIS: THE GAME
Luxury goods giant LVMH is almost one year into its innovative new venture in the NFT gaming world. Louis Vuitton launched its own Metaverse which already has over 200M downloads. The Metaverse game was launched on what would have been the founder’s 200th birthday. The inspiration behind the game is the story of the founder, Louis Vuitton, and his solo adventure leaving his family home at age fourteen to head to Paris.
Launched in August 2021, Louis: The Game takes its players through an adventure through six fantastical worlds. Louis Vuitton's mascot Vivienne is used as the player’s avatar. New game updates include new quests and rewards. Players can collect a certain number of free historical postcard NFTs. Louis Vuitton recently added new quests and new NFT rewards, further investing into its virtual platform as luxury’s relationship with gaming continues.
LVMH Metaverse Landscape
CAUTION AROUND THE METAVERSE
The game’s aim is to inform players on the brand’s long standing history and reward players who have reached certain levels by giving them the chance to enter a NFT raffle. The raffle, will give away a total of 10 new NFT’s featuring Vivienne in an array of looks that will be usable across platforms and as avatars on social media.
According to the brand, the game has been downloaded two million times making it an effective way to engage younger audiences. While largely successful, Louis Vuitton’s approach is comparatively cautious when it comes to adopting digital fashion and the Metaverse. By creating its own game, rewarding players for learning about its history and giving away NFTs for free, Louis Vuitton has ultimate control of the environment.
Bernard Arnault, the Chief Executive Officer of LVMH, has confirmed that he is “cautious of the Metaverse bubble”. Even with the caution, the company released several projects including the nonprofit Aura Blockchain Consortium. Even though Bernard Arnault has doubts about the Metaverse, his son Alexandre Arnault, the executive VP of Product and Communication at Tiffany & Co, has shown tremendous enthusiasm towards the Metaverse. Tiffany and Co has begun evaluating interest in creating physical custom pendants for cryptopunk owners and even purchasing a $380,000 NFT artwork.
Rebecaa Minkoff NFT collection one
ENTHUSIASTS AROUND THE METAVERSE
On the other hand, Kerring is fully committed to the Metaverse. Gucci, Kering’s biggest power brand, has led the way on experimentation with multiple NFT drops, virtual real estate and an internal Metaverse team. Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri sees the Metaverse as a “Very real place for Gucci due to its limitless imagination”.
With giants like Louis Vuitton creating ecosystems within the Metaverse, many other luxury brands are looking for ways to expand themselves in the Web3 world. Fashion brands are also looking for cost effective and efficient ways for buying wholesale. These needs became more apparent during the early days of covid; with buyers and retailers unable to travel to physical showrooms, the fashion industry suffered at the helm of this widespread pandemic. With more unknowns on the horizon, ORDRE Meta powered by JOOR Custom began creating immersive virtual spaces for luxury brands to connect with luxury clients on Web 3.0.
With ORDRE Meta, customers are able to customize their virtual showroom to mimic the look and feel of their physical space. Each buyer and/or retailer is able to navigate by pressing a plus sign in the direction they want to go to within the virtual showroom. These buttons also are linked to the showroom’s clothing racks where the plus signs are also used to pull up the latest season of clothing from the brand. The interface auto-populates images that can be either stills or videos including 360° images from the patented-imaging tool ORB360°.
ORDRE Meta Virtual Showroom
MOVING INTO THE FUTURE
Virtual spaces are part of the future of fashion and Louis Vuitton is a leader championing innovation and setting precedents for other luxury brands to follow. More and more, luxury brands are looking into ways for making their name synonymous with the Metaverse thus perpetuating accessibility in the virtual world. With a vast infinite space and $5-8 trillion being invested into the Metaverse by 2030, luxury brands must create these spaces to accommodate the move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0.
