Forever 21 sells clothing inspired by best-selling avatars | Popgen Tech
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A year after launching on Roblox, Forever 21 has expanded its Roblox affiliation by launching the F21 Metaverse Collection on its e-commerce site and in stores. The collection, released on December 1, is the first inspired its digital fashion that can be purchased on Roblox, pointing to new possibilities for fashion brands playing in metaworld spaces.
The physical collection includes a number of “Forever” hoodies, t-shirts, and caps, the latter of which is the best-selling Forever 21 Shop City on Roblox. Prices start at $14.99. Forever 21 will promote the collection on its own social channels, with an emphasis on Instagram, but not through Shop City.
Forever 21 launched its digital fashion offering on Roblox in late 2021. Black Hat has sold 1.5 million units in the game and up to 2,000 per day.
“As more people engage in the virtual world, it becomes even more important for us to continue to meet our customers where they are and provide them with affordable, on-trend fashion,” said Jacob Hawkins, director of marketing, digital and omnichannel at Forever . 21. “In addition to social games, we were able to use Roblox as a testing ground to better understand what our customers want from products.” Since last year, 250,000 people have visited the world of Forever 21 Shop City in Roblox. This is a relatively low number compared to other brand universes such as Nikeland with 28 million visits and Tommy Hilfiger’s Tommy Play with 26.5 million visits.
Last year, Forever 21 partnered with virtual world company Virtual Brand Group to create a Roblox shopping experience. VBG has also collaborated with Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and PacSun to create a meta universe.
Overall, the metaworld game is part of Forever 21’s rebranding to attract younger customers, including the new CEO destination in January and new strategies for the entire brand. Since filing for bankruptcy and closing stores in 2019, Forever 21 has been owned by SPARC, a joint venture between Authentic Brands Group and Simon Property Group. With VBG, Forever 21 hopes to grow its meta universe-focused business to $20 million in the next 12-24 months.
With the rollout of the physical collection, Forever 21 is getting into fashion elevated holiday focus on virtual worlds. Throughout December, the Roblox shopping experience will offer a limited-edition virtual accessory collection with one item per day available for just 24 hours. According to the Metaverse 2022 Fashion Trend by Roblox the report70% Gen-Z users are said to borrow ideas for their physical persona from their avatars.
Hawkins said the brand now has the ability to create a physical collection and adapt that collection for the meta universe, and vice versa. “A year ago, we hypothesized the combination of virtual and physical products into one cycle, and now we can act on it. We have an endless loop of innovation to build on as we move forward,” he said.
For sustainable digital fashion brands like DressX and The Dematerialized in the digital fashion space, researching and developing a physical fashion brand is only part of the appeal of digital fashion. The ultimate goal is to move away from parts of the mass market production need, as Gen Z consumers spend their time getting dressed online rather than in real life. This can be an attractive factor for fast fashion brands, which face a lot of public backlash for their wasteful practices. For its part, Zara launched Metaverse Lime Glam, a digital fashion and beauty collection in March 2022. Meanwhile, Pacsun settled into Roblox, catering to a younger demographic with mini-games and digital items.
“One of the biggest potentials of digital fashion in terms of widespread adoption is the absorption of a large part [waste from the] the fast fashion market,” said Marjorie Hernandez, co-founder of digital fashion company The Dematerialised. “We want to satisfy users’ desire for something cool and new through digital fashion so they can [avoid] fast fashion.”
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