In a monumental partnership ideated and developed by creative consultancy 5CRYPTO, The Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA), The Sandbox and Polygon Studios are collaborating to bring America’s fashion design talent into the metaverse with a mission to educate, innovate and create community and establish new revenue streams and opportunities for growth. We spoke with agency founder Akbar Hamid to learn more about the partnership and what it means for the future of fashion.
How did you develop the concept for the collaboration between the CFDA, The Sandbox and Polygon Studios?
The team at 5CRYPTO has had incredible foresight in understanding how to bridge the gap between consumer, fashion and web3 as we broke into the space almost three years ago. We see endless opportunities for brands to get involved with thoughtful partnerships in this new space, which is how we landed on placing our client The Sandbox and the CFDA together. Additionally, with a strong fashion practice at 5th Column, we were privy to the lack of education and awareness in the fashion community on how to enter web3 and utilize the technology to engage with a large American consumer population. We approached the CFDA as they are the leading voice in American fashion, and we felt their members could really benefit from understanding how to access this technology and solve for so many issues from supply chain to fundraising, engaging their community and creating a whole new wave of commerce ushering fashion forward into the future.
What are a few of the goals of this partnership?
The purpose of the partnership is to give companies a blueprint and a 101 plan on how to actually enter the metaverse and engage with NFTs, build and grow community and establish new revenue streams. We will:
Tell us a little about the role of fashion, and the opportunities for brands, in the metaverse.
It’s essentially a new frontier where designers will take control of their digital assets and monetize, create new revenue streams and new community engagement touch points and experiences.
I think the first thing the brands need to do is focus on education. Before you move into the space, educate your teams on all the different aspects of the metaverse and NFTs. If your teams don’t really understand the space, it’s going to be very hard for you to enter it, even if you work with an outside party.
The beautiful part of the metaverse is that small businesses and emerging brands have as much of a chance as big established businesses do, because the space is so new. The brand’s creator, designer and marketing expert need to understand and get well-versed, and I think it’s important for the designer and head of the house to take the lead.
A brand shouldn’t want to do the exact same thing they’re doing in the physical world in the metaverse, either. Think: creating an experience, such as a gaming experience, that allows you to play and earn and unlock tokens to redeem actual products. We’re still developing these technologies and it’s new, but that’s a great utility so a consumer can use their avatar or NFT to play a game and unlock an experience.
Considering supply chain issues, maybe a designer produces a collection of NFTs and engages their community, the community then buys the NFT pieces of the collection, and when they want to redeem them, that’s when the pieces are produced. Or, if a designer is creating a collection and doesn’t have the means to do it right away, they could community fundraise with an NFT collection and use that money to produce their first collection. I think it’s allowing people a new entry point.
