Metaverse commerce gaining rapid momentum among brands and retailers globally

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E-commerce has changed the way consumers shop and consume products around the world. Over the last decade, the shift to online channels has forced all major retailers and brands to build their online presence. With the metaverse, consumer shopping trends are expected to again change significantly over the next three to four years. Consequently, to stay relevant in the ever-changing commerce industry, brands and retailers are forging strategic alliances with metaverse commerce infrastructure providers globally.

• In February 2023, Majid Al Futtaim, the Dubai-based retailer, announced the launch of the Mall of the Metaverse. The virtual shopping mall has been built in collaboration with Decentraland.  The Mall of the Metaverse will include virtual shopping stores for major brands such as Carrefour, Ghawali, That Concept Store, and Samsung, among others. Furthermore, the Mall of the Metaverse will also have a virtual reality VOX cinema space. More brands are expected to host virtual stores in the Mall of the Metaverse from the short to medium-term perspective.

Lacoste and Bloomingdale are among the other brands that have turned to offer a metaverse commerce experience to their shoppers. Both of these brands, for instance, entered into a strategic collaboration with Emperia, the United Kingdom-based virtual store software-as-a-service provider.

• Lacoste, the French fashion brand, launched the virtual store in November 2022. By leveraging the technology offered by Emperia, Lacoste has built a metaverse shopping experience that also includes gamification elements. The firm has also built an exclusive room in the metaverse store, which is accessible only to Lacoste NFT holders.
• Bloomingdale, on the other hand, developed a metaverse commerce experience that features themed spaces for specific brands. The department store retailer, through its extended partnership with Emperia, has introduced shopping spaces for Chanel, Ralph Lauren, and Nespresso. Furthermore, the firm has also included features such as a party room, beauty room, and gifting experience.

To bring the metaverse commerce capabilities to more brands across the world, virtual store software-as-a-service providers such as Emperia are also raising funding rounds to scale their platform. Emperia, for instance, announced that the firm had raised €9 million in January 2023. The funding round was led by Base10 Partners and included participation from other investors such as Sony Innovation Fund, Stanford Capital Partners, Concept Ventures, and Background Capital, among others.

Along with Lacoste and Bloomingdale, the innovative startup has also alliances with many more brands including Dior and Sunglass Hut. With the January 2023 funding round, the firm is planning to bring metaverse commerce capabilities to more retailers and brands around the world, and consequently, the number of collaborations is projected to increase significantly over the next 12 months.

With metaverse shopping projected to redefine the way consumers shop online, many of the leading e-commerce marketplaces have also launched metaverse commerce capabilities over the last 12 months. In China, Alibaba rolled out a luxury shopping experience in the metaverse on its Tmall platform. Taobao, another Alibaba online shopping platform, launched the metaverse livestream product in December 2022. JD.com, another e-commerce giant in China, has embraced the metaverse to drive sales and revenue figures in China.

The metaverse shopping trend has also gained momentum in India over the last 12 months. Flipkart, the leading e-commerce marketplace, launched Flipverse just before the holiday shopping season. The Flipverse platform enables shoppers to browse and shop for products in the metaverse. In India, even Amazon has experimented with the metaverse technology to capitalize on the growing awareness among shoppers in the country.

With more and more shoppers willing to complete purchases in the virtual world and experience immersive shopping capabilities, TechInsight360 expects more players to foray into the metaverse commerce space. This will further drive innovation in online shopping over the next three to four years, and will subsequently, assist the growth of the global metaverse industry from the medium to long-term perspective.

To know more and gain a deeper understanding of the global metaverse industry, click here.