METAVERSE FASHION COUNCIL

RWA TOKENIZATION SECTOR COULD SEE 5OX GROWTH BY 2030:REPORT Zoltan Vardai for Cointelegraph Key Takeaways: 💡 The real-world asset (RWA) tokenization sector has had a breakout year in 2024, paving the way for significant growth through the end of the decade. The RWA tokenization sector could see a more than 50-fold increase by 2030, according to predictions from some of the largest financial institutions and business consulting firms compiled in a Tren Finance research report. Most firms predict that the RWA sector may reach a market size of between $4 trillion and $30 trillion. 📽 If the sector achieves the median prediction of about $10 trillion, it would represent more than 54-times growth from its current value. Real-world assets offer substantial growth potential, given that the sector is currently valued at $185 billion, including stablecoins. The RWA sector may start encompassing more of the global financial markets as the industry matures. 💯 Bringing real-world assets to the blockchain can introduce significant benefits across numerous industries, especially in the financial sector. Tokenization can make transactions faster, cheaper and free from third-party intermediaries and geopolitical boundaries, wrote Christian Santagata, the product marketing manager at RWA protocol real. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/gZjP8F6D #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

ZALANDO UNVEILS MORE PERSONALISED FITTING TRIAL, LAUNCHES STREETWEAR PLATFORM Fashion Network Key Takeaways: 📈 First, that fit personalisation development. For the first time, it's integrating its body measurement technology with its virtual fitting room. Launching in 14 European markets, the new pilot allows customers to virtually try on a curated selection of Levi’s products for men and women. It said appetite for such innovations is supported by data showing “a growing dissatisfaction with changing rooms, poor size guides, and frequent returns among European customers”. 👾 It means customers can create a 3D avatar based on their body measurements, ensuring a better fit representation. The updated virtual fitting room is available in 14 European countries and will be tested for four weeks “with the aim of collecting the necessary learnings and insights to keep developing this technology”.  Since an initial pilot in 2022, over 80,000 customers have used Zalando's virtual fitting room. 👘 Pelin Anlu Bedirhanoglu, director of product size and fit, said: “In the early versions of our virtual fitting room, 3D avatars were based on statistical modelling. But every body is unique. By integrating our body measurement technology, customers can now create avatars that accurately reflect their individual body shape. "We have already observed up to a 40% reduction in return rates with our virtual fitting room technology. While these results are limited due to the testing phase of the technology, they are a promising indicator of its potential to enhance both customer and brand partner satisfaction.” 💎 Marius Brintrup, commercial director streetwear, said: “With nearly 50 million active customers across 25 markets, we’re at the forefront of current trends and anticipating future developments in fashion. But Streetwear as a movement begins locally, and our aim is to contribute and celebrate it with the community. We combined Zalando’s industry knowledge and data with insights from top streetwear trendsetters, to inspire our customers and showcase the rich diversity of streetwear culture across Europe.” LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/e7jiKUpw #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

LUXURY BRANDS FACE NEW LOW-GROWTH REALITY IN CHINA Jing Daily Key Takeaways: 📈 Once a beacon of growth for high-end brands, the Chinese market now reflects economic and social changes that have curtailed the once-voracious appetite for luxury goods. These shifts are reverberating globally, including in luxury giants’ third quarter sales performance. LVMH’s Q3 revenue in its Asia ex-Japan region dropped 16% YoY, and Kering, which releases its financial report on October 23, guides a 30% YoY drop in revenue for the second half of the year, partly attributable to slowing demand in China. 👾 Spencer Zhuang, a Hangzhou-based daigou (also known as a surrogate shopper) who specializes in high-end luxury brands, offers a front-line view of the changing landscape. “Beginning in February 2024, there was a sense of endless tightening and a fear of spending money,” Zhuang says. “Customers who once spent freely are now hesitant, and what was once a supply shortage has flipped to oversupply.” 👻 Only about 10% of Zhuang’s clientele is maintaining previous spending levels. Many former luxury buyers – who once purchased bags priced between 30,000 RMB ($4,279) to 50,000 RMB ($7,132) – have disappeared, and those who do return are buying less expensive items. “These loyal spenders tend to be wealthier individuals from smaller cities, such as third- and fourth-tier urban areas, who don’t carry significant debt. In contrast, high earners with heavy financial burdens, like mortgages and car loans, are cutting back due to pessimism about their future income and mounting debts,” she says. 🤖 Western luxury brands are particularly affected by these shifts. A recent survey of 2,000 Chinese consumers by Investment firm TD Cowen found that only 17% plan to increase their luxury spending, while 64% plan to spend more on travel. Many consumers are gravitating toward domestic brands or opting for more sustainable, personalized, and culturally relevant products. ♻ China’s luxury market is in a state of transformation rather than decline. While economic uncertainty and shifting consumer preferences are tempering growth, Chinese luxury consumers remain significant players in the global market. The resurgence of international travel and the rise of domestic brands underscore that this is more of a behavioral shift than a true market slowdown. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/d54DDVAu

LVMH RESULTS SPELL TROUBLE FOR LUXURY SECTOR Robert Williams for The Business of Fashion Key Takeaways: 💥 LVMH’s critical fashion and leather goods division reported third-quarter sales down 5 percent, missing the expectations of analysts who had predicted between 0 and 2 percent growth. With unrivalled marketing budgets and a global edge competing for retail estate and talent, the Louis Vuitton, Dior and Loewe owner typically outperforms the luxury sector. Slipping sales at the conglomerate could signal even tougher times ahead for smaller rivals. 💦 Group-wide, third-quarter sales fell 3 percent on an organic basis to €19.1 billion ($21 billion). LVMH said the numbers represented “good resilience in the current context.” 👾 After gradually cooling from post-pandemic highs, luxury demand has dropped sharply across key regions this year. Macroeconomic headwinds and aggressive price hikes that turned off less wealthy buyers have made it hard for fashion brands to keep up momentum, particularly as consumers shift their spending back to other priorities like health, wellness, and travel. 💎 LVMH’s retailing division, which operates Sephora, and the perfume and cosmetics division dominated by Parfums Christian Dior both eeked out modest growth, with sales rising 2 and 3 percent respectively. The wine and spirits division was hardest hit, as the group struggles to get cognac sales back on track in the key Chinese market. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/dHHj3dZf #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

EVERY BLOCKCHAIN PROJECT WILL 'HAVE A TTELEGRAM COMPLEMENT' ANIMOCA CEO SAYS Ryan S. Gladwin for Decrypt 🦄 Robby Yung, the CEO of crypto investment firm Animoca Brands, predicts that every Web3 project will soon have a Telegram experience. This is the result of Telegram gaming exploding this year with crypto projects like Hamster Kombat attracting over 300 million users. 💭 “Anybody with a Web3 app will have a Telegram strategy for user onboarding because it represents a distribution, advertising, and marketing vector. It represents the top of the funnel for user acquisition,” Yung told Decrypt at Zebu Live in London. “Everybody from DeFi through to gaming, regardless of where their core experience lies, will have a Telegram complement.” 🤖 In many ways, this is already happening. PiP World, for example, is an educational gaming ecosystem that created a tap-to-earn Telegram game to attract users they could onboard to its core experience. It’s Telegram announcement channel now has nearly 370,000 monthly users that can be redirected to other products. 📢 “If I'm making a browser based experience, there's no reason why I wouldn't have a Telegram complement,” Yung added, “just in the same way that the banking industry 15 years ago said: Now we should have a mobile app as well as our website for people to do online banking.” 📱 Telegram is a social media messaging app, similar to WhatsApp, that embraced Web3 this year by introducing a native wallet and supporting crypto projects. As a result, the app has 950 million total users. Crypto gaming projects have been flocking to it because it’s helped them amass audiences in the hundreds of millions. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/d7RbQpWM #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

OFF THE GRID MAY BE THE 'CATALYST' FOR NEW CRYPTO GAMING BULL RUN: WEB3 GAMER Ciaran Lyons for Cointelegraph Key Takeaways: 🎮 Gunzilla Games’ Off The Grid — a free-to-play, third-person battle royale game — just launched an early access release on major gaming consoles, and it’s already topped Epic Games’ free-to-play PC games list, ahead of Fortnite and Rocket League. Avalanche founder Emil Gun Sirer noted that over the first five days of release, the game grew growing at more than 1 million wallets per day and already notched up 53 million transactions. 🎯 After years of terrible game releases, the crypto community is speculating that finally having a popular and well-reviewed game that people enjoy playing may trigger the long-anticipated major Web3 gaming boom. “Off The Grid may finally be the catalyst we needed for a much bigger gaming run,” crypto analyst Miles Deutscher said in an Oct. 14 X post. “All it takes is one success story to kick off a larger wave,” he added. 📈 The respected tech publication’s Oct. 12 review was titled “Why You Should Be Playing Off The Grid, a New Battle Royale, Right Now,” in which the reviewer summed the game up as “part schlocky satire of streaming culture, part sendup of the gamers, all shrewd self-aware storytelling: Off The Grid is a fun time.” Interestingly, he didn’t even mention the crypto elements, which include a forthcoming token called GUN and in-game items can be minted and traded as NFTs. 📊 Pseudonymous Web3 commentator Loki The Bird asked if Off The Grid will become “the Axie Infinity” of this cycle. EllioTrades told his 765,700 X followers that the rise of Off The Grid has “people are just now realizing that Gaming is THE consumer app of crypto.” 👾 The success of Off The Grid shows that the days of finance execs pushing decent gameplay down the priority list for blockchain-based games are finally coming to an end.Web3 Gamer discussed this welcome development in general with Gods Unchained trading game designer Bryn Welch earlier in the week. “The time of random projects with nothing but a token plan and some finance bros on the board is coming to a close, and now the field is being saturated with quality projects people actually want to play,” he tells Web3 gamer. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/dMvtWw7S #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

FASHION'S SEARCH FOR A UNIVERSAL SOURCE OF TRUTH The Interline Key Takeaways: 🤖 Fashion’s high-flying, experimental side might capture the most attention, but brands’ biggest priorities today are much more grounded. With the economic contours of the industry being continuously redrawn by shrinking consumer buying power, rising input costs, and the drive to do more with less, fashion companies’ strategic objectives are less centred in experimentation than they are in basic business continuity and balance sheets that threaten to tilt into the red. 💎 Day-to-day, in late 2024, fashion brands and retailers have pricing and margin protection, efficiency and automation, and the various taps they can turn to control costs on top of their agendas. Alongside those, the same companies are also urgently seeking ways to forecast more accurately, to get faster to market to better compete with the dominance of ultra-speed heavyweights like Shein, and to generally cut the risk exposure inherent in everything they make. And compounding those core challenges further, these businesses also need to meet a rising bar for transparency and disclosure, at the same time as finding new ways to both diversify their supplier base and to better engage and collaborate with their closest upstream partners. 🚀 To really deploy those tools, though, brand and retail businesses will need to be able to reliably find them. And although the industry has tried for many years to put all the information, assets, and capabilities it needs into one place – and to have them effectively work together – the reality has often fallen short of the vision. That vision, though, has remained the driving force behind much of the software narrative in fashion for a decade or more. From technical specifications to transaction certificates, the industry has been told for years that essential product and process data resides in too many different, disconnected silos – and that the solution is to deploy a single system, with a set hierarchy and data schema, to centralise and consolidate it all. 💭 Solutions such as PLM have been effective at bringing essential product data into a single location, and into a fixed structure. But while developers and users have been pursuing that ambition, the nature of “essential product data” has been morphing and expanding to encompass digital materials, information required for digital product passports, and much, much more. As a result, while core product data can reside in one platform today, only in rare cases is that also the platform where 3D assets are stored, or where mission-critical communication with suppliers is managed.  LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/ez_NEcpF #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

INSIDE LUXURY'S SLOWDOWN Robert Williams and Simone Stern for The Business of Fashion Key Takeaways: 👠 Dior’s canvas bowling bags were popular throughout the 1990s and 2000s; you can still find them in vintage shops and resale sites for a few hundred dollars. The brand is currently working to bring back the style, having featured an updated version of the bag — now called “Groove” — on its September runway. The price? €2,900. Which is considered accessible for handbags at Dior these days, as the French couture brand has hiked up the cost of its flagship styles. A medium Lady Dior bag now retails for €5,900 ($6,500), 46 percent higher than in 2019. 👾 After gradually cooling off from post-pandemic highs, the global luxury market has slipped into a proper downturn, which could be both longer and more severe than initially forecast. What began as consumer fatigue with heavily logoed products and slowing sales to less-wealthy “aspirational” clients has since spread across price points and aesthetics. Sector leader LVMH saw sales fall 1 percent in the first half; Gucci owner Kering reported a 20 percent drop. 📈 Shares in luxury companies have rallied in recent weeks following positive macroeconomic cues: China announced a round of fiscal stimulus to revive its sluggish economy, while the US announced a round of interest-rate cuts. But analysts have warned that the rally is built on shaky ground. Retailers continue to order with caution as the collections from last September’s fashion month head to showrooms. In a recent interview, Kering deputy CEO Francesca Bellettini described the industry’s current situation as a “crisis.” 📉 A recent note by UBS analyst Zuzanna Pusz, CFA forecast third-quarter sales down 1 percent at LVMH’s fashion and leather goods division, which houses key brands Louis Vuitton and Dior, saying there was “no recovery in sight” for the group. “The estimated benefit … from the July price increase at Louis Vuitton could be offset by the negative impact of the recent Dior controversy,” Pusz said, citing an Italian investigation into sweatshop labour in the brand’s supply chain. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/ernNMbU5 #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

20VC CLOSES NEWS $400 FUND TO 'MAKE EUROPE GREAT AGAIN' SAYS HARRY STEBBINGS Ingrid Lunden for TechCrunch Key Takeaways: 💥 Harry Stebbings, the U.K. podcaster who broke into the world of tech with his 20-minute interviews of venture capitalists and founders, parlayed that fame into becoming a VC himself. Now, Stebbings has closed his third investment vehicle, and it’s his biggest yet: 20VC, the firm named after the podcast series, has closed a $400 million fund.  👾 At a time when European technology companies continue to lag behind their U.S. counterparts at almost every stage of investment, 20VC’s new fund will focus on backing startups in the region, using Stebbings’ media nous and connections to bring more attention to them. 💡 About $125 million of the fund will be dedicated to seed investments, and $275 million will go to Series A rounds. The fund is yet to be deployed, Stebbings said, as 20VC is still investing out of its second fund, which raised $140 million in 2021. The new fund was raised in four weeks, which is a relatively quick turnaround considering the constraints that continue to swirl around venture capital.  💹 Venture capitalist firms like Accel, as well as successful founders who have become investors, have an established presence in London and the wider region. Yet, a number of such investors are still putting money into 20VC. Why? Stebbings has put a very personal face onto his firm, and he helps investors hedge their bets. 💦 In all, 20VC said 40 founders from companies like Atlassian, Candy Crush, Canva, Capital One, Datadog, Deliveroo, Eventbrite, Iconiq, Procore, Spotify, UiPath and Vinted invested in the fund. Also investing were general partners from Accel, Benchmark, Coatue, Cyberstarts, Founder Collective, Founders Fund, Khosla, NEA and TCV and Thrive.  LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/d6WKFtKt #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse

AS THE LUXURY SECTOR STRUGGLES, BRANDS ARE REFOCUSING ON TIMELESSNESS Danny Parisi for Glossy Key Takeaways: 💥 The latest brand to replace its top creative role is Fendi. The brand announced on Friday afternoon that Kim Jones is stepping down from the brand after a four-year run as its artistic director of haute couture, ready-to-wear and fur collections for women. A joint statement from Jones and Fendi said his work “reinvented [Fendi’s] ready-to-wear and couture collections, offering an inclusive and innovative approach to fashion that constantly renewed Fendi’s Italian codes.” 👾 Jones joins several luxury creative directors and executives who have left their brands in recent months. In the last two weeks, Hedi Slimane was replaced at Celine by Michael Rider and Stefano Cantino took over as the new CEO of Gucci. Zooming out further, Burberry, Mulberry, Alberta Ferretti, Chanel, Missoni, Dries van Noten, Balmain, Selfridges and Victoria Beckham have all lost or replaced creative directors or CEOs in the last six months. Some of those brands, most notably Chanel, are still without a new creative director. 🤖 What’s driving this ongoing upheaval? Luxury experts told Glossy it’s because brand leaders are contending with the ongoing industry slowdown and looking for ways to shake their companies out of the funk that has affected the rest of the sector. Gucci, which makes up more than a third of parent company Kering, for example, has seen its sales sharply decline. In the second quarter of the year, Gucci’s sales fell nearly 20%, significantly eating into Kering’s profits. Even the mighty LVMH saw its sales drop in its most recent earnings report. 📉 Some in the luxury industry believe we’re currently at the bottom point for luxury brands. Breitling CEO Georges K. said he believes a slowdown in China is the primary culprit in luxury’s slump, which he expects will bounce back soon. China made up about 16% of all luxury spending last year, and the slowed growth of its economy has made luxury investors nervous about the sector’s ability to recover quickly. 💹 One clear trend in the luxury leadership shakeup is the move toward a more timeless style. Hedi Slimane, known for his bold and edgy takes on womenswear, was replaced at Celine by Michael Rider, a designer with a more traditional background. The same has happened at Gucci, where Alessandro Michele’s maximalist style gave way to Sabato de Sarna’s more subdued looks. LEARN MORE: https://lnkd.in/gYw96AFx #web3 #investment #fashion #ai #metaverse