Unraveling the Net-a-Porter of NFTs

NFTs are all the rage right now. Several fashion and beauty businesses, including Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Nars Cosmetics, have started releasing NFTs in the last few months. A flurry of platforms is now vying for the title of "go-to" for fashion and beauty marketers.

Gucci collaborated on an art video with Christie's, Louis Vuitton collaborated with Wenew on NFT integrations, and Nars collaborated with Truesy. “It feels like a new marketplace pops up every five minutes,” says Cathy Hackl, a metaverse consultant who advises luxury businesses, “but not in luxury, where there is a lot of opportunity.”

She contrasts it to other areas, like sports, where NFTs have a monopoly on the marketplace. “Right now, it's so disjointed. There are a lot of lesser markets that offer art and perhaps fashion, but there isn't a maison or a marketplace in the metaverse that has thrown its flag down and said, 'We are the place,'” she says.

Jamie Burke, the founder and CEO of Outlier Ventures, a blockchain and metaverse venture capital firm, agrees. “There is no clear victor in NFT platforms in general or in any single sector, whether it is art, fashion, or beauty. It is essentially an open field. However, a significant amount of venture money is concentrating into a few more broad platforms.”

Burke recommends that anyone creating an NFT fashion brand be "pretty flexible" about the blockchain, they are using. “The NFT ecosystem is viewed as a new distribution platform by most premium fashion manufacturers. They want to be connected to the metaverse population and expand their brands into those spaces,” Burke explains. “NFTs are ideal for luxury products since they have a pedigree, are permanent, do not degrade, and can be exhibited in a native metaverse environment.”

While there are a number of established generic NFT marketplaces, the industry considers the same factors that apply to e-commerce and department stores when choosing partners, such as meticulous curation and an attractive user experience.

“When you go to [certain] markets, it looks a lot more like a regular shop, like a Macy's or a Walmart,” adds Hackl. “For luxury, these markets must be attractive – they must reflect the environment into which they sell. For luxury companies to come to them, whomever the NFT Net-a-Porter is, they must have it visually.”

Here are a few of the most promising fashion players:

Bitsky

Bitsky, a four-year-old company located in San Francisco, is known as the "Shopify for NFTs". It allows companies to construct their own storefronts to sell or auction NFTs. Elf Cosmetics, Levi's with tennis champion Naomi Osaka, Adidas, and digital company Rtfkt in conjunction with sneakerhead Jeff Staple have all had sales there, with the latter selling a "few $100,000 worth of stuff in a couple minutes," according to CEO Donnie Dinch.

Superrare

Superrare, a digital art market launched in 2018 requires pieces to go through an application and approval procedure before they can be sold or auctioned. Digital hoverboards from Rtfkt and a puffer coat created by a collaboration between 3D artist Antoni Tudisco and Yeezy fashion designer Ding Yun Zhang made the cut. According to CEO and co-founder John Crain, each item is one-of-a-kind, and the platform has made $100 million in sales, with $80 million of it coming in the last year alone.

Rarible

Rarible, a Moscow-based “creator-centric” marketplace for art, music, and video, was founded in 2019 and has collaborated with rapper Tyga and actress Lindsay Lohan. According to the business, it has issued over 27,000 NFTs, with 150,000 buyers and sellers and a monthly trading volume of $40 million.

In May, it conducted an auction for Rimowa, a luxury luggage manufacturer that developed real and digital copies of four aircraft "artefacts." Cybr magazine used Rarible to publish its first 100-page issue as an NFT earlier this year. “We aim to keep NFTs accessible, which for us means keeping costs cheap and offering several copies of each NFT,” explains James Joseph, the company's creator and editor.

Exclusible

Exclusible is a platform designed particularly for premium companies to sell NFTs, as well as for users to buy, exchange, and exhibit them. It will launch this autumn with selected drops. An NFT can be exhibited in the user's gallery, shared on social media, or sold on the secondary market once acquired. According to Thibault Launay, co-founder and CEO, the objective is to attract both NFT aficionados and regular luxury customers by allowing users to pay with crypto and credit cards.