Online platforms that are precursors of the metaverse vision for the internet’s future are already serving as workrooms to develop products destined for real-life sale.
January 13,2022 Online platforms that are precursors of the metaverse vision for the internet’s future are already serving as workrooms to develop products destined for real-life sale. From sneakers sketched in the virtual world but produced in the real one, to designers who preview clothes on avatars before making them—the barrier between digital and tangible is thinning. “In real life, it’s extremely expensive to make any product,” said French couture designer Julien Fournie, who runs his own eponymous fashion house. Online is “a place of openness to test things virtually and recreate an extremely precise connection with the real-life experience,” he added. The clamor over virtual goods comes amid feverish predictions that the metaverse—a virtual reality version of the internet—will eventually replace the web of today. In recent months, a growing number of brands have been trying to establish a presence on buzzed-about platforms from Roblox to Fortnite, for fear of missing a major tech and societal shift. How users interact with online goods—what they flock to and what they ignore—offers a relatively low-risk and low-cost opportunity for firms to develop products. This is part of an underlying trend of exploiting data collected online “to develop better collections, to do better forecasting” said Achim Berg, partner at McKinsey & Company consulting.
