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The IADS’ role as an expert platform is to be aware, explore, and inform its department store members about every aspect of innovation in retail, in order to help them address the future challenges with the best cards in hand. This involves taking a step back from fads and fashion, and addressing innovation with a cold head to report what is going on.

This is the reason why the IADS invited Sandra Gasmi, founder of Demain Beauty, an innovative clean beauty brand, to present the Metaverse initiative she has developed with her team in partnership with Chafik Studio, an architect company founded by Chafik Gasmi, her husband, that has worked with Sephora, Lancôme, LVMH, in addition to having experiences in the hospitality sector.

Is the Metaverse still relevant in 2023?

While the Metaverse was such a hot topic in 2022, the hype has died down a bit as AI technologies steal the limelight. But this does not mean focusing on the Metaverse as an extension of a retailer’s brand is to be completely set aside. According to Coresight Research, retail spending on technology is expected to reach USD 229 billion in 2023, a slight increase from 2022. The Metaverse is still seen as a place for growth as an extension of the omnichannel offer.

While the Metaverse is still in its early stages, it represents new revenue channels and opportunities for retailers, which is why many of them are continuing to invest in it in 2023.  For instance, L’Oréal’s venture capital fund, BOLD, participated in a USD 4 million funding round for French metaverse developer Digital Village as the technology enables a 3D world for brands to engage with customers. Also, a retail survey conducted by retail solution company Avalara found that omnichannel investments are top of mind for retailers, and the metaverse is seen as a priority in strategies going forward.

The Metaverse, applied business case: Demain Beauty

In order to get a first-hand look at what retailers can do with the Metaverse, IADS welcomed Sandra Gasmi, CEO of Demain Beauty, and her architect husband Chafik Gasmi, founder of Chafik Studio to showcase a brand experience in the Metaverse which trains and informs employees and consumers about the various products offered and active ingredients through an immersive and interactive experience.

Chafik and Sandra Gasmi brought their two worlds together of brands and architecture to offer an immersive experience that can help people discover the brand in new and fun ways. The tools and experiences that were developed are meant to create brand engagement and brand loyalty, as well as increase the conversion rate because consumers will better understand the brand.

Using the Metaverse to educate

If a person sees and feels a product, they will remember 20% of what they have seen. But if they have the opportunity to interact with the information in the real world, they will memorize 75%. This is what the Demain Beauty Metaverse experience aims to do. Users are fully immersed in a world that requires their full attention allowing them to be fully focused on what they are doing and what is going on in their surroundings. The Demain Beauty Metaverse experience has incorporated gamification tools to boost the attention of the user even further so that as they learn they feel a sense of pleasure that positively impacts the learning experience. The tool can be imagined in two ways: as a retail animation tool and as a training tool.

The Demain Beauty Metaverse experience

Within the Demain Beauty Metaverse experience, customers start their journey in a lobby, from where they can shop and learn more about the products. They always have a shopping cart attached to their avatar in this space so that they can continuously increase their basket size when desired.

The lobby is in the centre of a circular structure that is suspended in the air. Around the circle, there are various galleries that have games the user can interact with. The games are focused on educating the consumer about pollutants, good and bad bacteria, and that Demain Beauty does not use single-use plastics as a way of respecting the oceans.

The Demain Beauty Metaverse experience is still in its early phase, but they hope to eventually have it online and, on an app. The total cost to build out the experience was EUR 200,000 and took 7 months to complete.

What makes the Metaverse attractive to retailers?

While Web2 brought on major advancements in communication tools and social media outlets, Web3 has the potential to augment these applications even further. First, the new technology has the capacity to treat larger amounts of data. Second, this data all belongs to you which gives you more control over how you are seen or how your experience is dictated.

The Metaverse allows a brand to use the architecture and the offer of their experience to attract users to their brand. The difference between physical selling space and the Metaverse offering is that in the Metaverse, you can be more creative, not only in the physical build-out of the experience, but the brand can also be infused through communication, education, and the shopping experience. While inventing digital and immersive experiences that are meant to wow consumers, it is still important to focus on elevating physical experiences as well.

With the Metaverse, the technology can be used to create a “digital twin” of the physical store, which is something that has already been done in the hospitality industry, and which allows one to see and model any planned changes in the retail space in advance. It also significantly creates more fluid interactions between development teams and can even be used by marketing and communication teams for planning and simulation purposes.

The Metaverse can seem like an unknown technology that can easily suck up corporate research and development funds, but brands that act early gain the advantage of understanding how it works, which will be crucial once trends develop further. Brands that have tested the Metaverse so far see the potential, but warn that controlling brand image in the Metaverse is not easy and there can be higher risks of IP and trademark infringement. This proves that the relationship between the virtual and physical worlds for a brand is very important and must be carried out with caution.

Conclusion: The Metaverse is an experience worth experimenting with

Bringing customers and employees from the physical world into the metaverse might raise some challenges, especially in the sense that there is a learning curve when using new technologies, especially those as radical as the metaverse. Customers crave experience, and experience is centred around the senses. These sensory experiences are not as easy to capture in a virtual world as there are some limitations as to what can be mimicked online.

But what the Metaverse can offer is an out-of-world experience, one that consumers can only imagine. This is a great way for retailers to experiment with new ways of showcasing their products and educating their customers in a more memorable way. While the Metaverse offers some limitations, if executed well, it can transport customers into an immersive thought-provoking experience that can build up the brand power of a retailer.

Credits: IADS