[ad_1]
Genie, the digital avatar startup known for its high-profile partnerships with celebrities like Justin Bieber, Migos and Cardi B, has released its long-awaited NFT storefront, “The Warehouse.” Genie last received a $1 billion valuation from heavyweight tech investors including Silver Lake and Mary Maker Bond Capital in its most recent $150 million Series C round, announced in April.
The Los Angeles-based company partnered with NBA Top Shot NFT creator Dapper Labs to develop a storefront on the Dapper Flow blockchain and released it to an invite-only beta group of users in December last year, TechCrunch reported at the time. Now, The Warehouse is available to the general public, meaning users can download the Genie Studio app to create their own avatars and wear digital fashion items, Genie CEO and founder Akash Nigam told TechCrush in an interview.
According to Nigam, Genies collaborated with a hand-picked team of designers to design the first collection available on the platform. One of the first collections comes from fashion photographer and influencer Tati Bruing, known as @illuminatati on Instagram, who went viral for her plea to “Make Instagram Great Again.”
Akash Nigam, CEO and founder of Genes Image Credits: Genies
Users can use in-app tools to enhance the clothes they buy, allowing them to personalize the items they buy from these collections, he added.
“Creators will be selling their own avatar fashions and those they’ve customized over the last couple of months. And when they sell – let’s say someone sells like 100 items and if a fan or a follower or anyone in the community decides to buy an avatar for themselves, now they have the right to edit it. Or do it yourself in the studio platform, so you can use the tools and create an initial collection and then sell the initial fashion line in the warehouse,” Nigam explained.
Because each item is an NFT, each time the item is resold, the original creator gets a cut of the revenue and owns the intellectual property behind the design, he added. Genies charge a 5% fee on each sale, which allows creators to keep most of their revenue on each transaction, Nigam said, compared to the 50%+ fee for NFTs in Horizon World’s Metaverse. (Meta is also moving forward with its NFT plans, announcing earlier this week that it will allow users to post NFTs on both Facebook and Instagram after submitting their NFTs in June).
Meta isn’t the only tech company looking to carve out its own identity by helping people do their jobs using digital avatars. Reddit launched its own NFT token marketplace in July, and Estonian startup GamerMe raised $56 million earlier this month, led by a16z, for a similar vision. Genie says it’s firmly entrenched in the space with celebrity partnerships and its own team — the startup counts former Disney CEO Bob Iger as an investor and board member.
On Genie, only authorized sellers on the platform can launch collections, though the company says it eventually wants to encourage all its users to create unique 1-of-1 fashion items. Genies have ventured into fashion before — the startup partnered with Gucci in 2020 to allow retail customers to try on new virtual designs and purchase digital collectibles.
An image of Genie’s stage showing a fashion collection designed by creator Ian Charms Image Credits: Genies
NFT sales are slowing and crypto prices remain depressed, but Nigam expressed his belief in the long-term interest in digital avatars, likening their importance to mobile apps and the Internet.
“The reason I think avatar ecosystems are going to be Web3 mobile apps is because you see two huge consumer trends taking off right now. There’s one trend, which is the virtual trend, which is… I mean, obviously. Everyone wants to live in a 3D spatial world,” Nigam said. He said.
Second, he added, avatars allow people to have ownership and individuality in the digital world.
“I think a lot of creators understand that they’re contributing a lot to all these different platforms, but they’re not reaping the benefits enough,” Nigam said.
However, he expressed reluctance to pitch and market the startup as an NFT company, even though NFTs are central to his business model. Rather than crypto-native users who see NFTs as financial assets, Genie’s target demographic is defined as Gen Z, the cool kids of the internet, with 85% of users on the warehouse’s waiting list being women.
“The mindset around this is very different, like people are obsessed with the true digital fashion itself and creating a dream wardrobe,” says Nigam.
Ultimately, Nigam sees the company expanding into a full social network, which Gen Z says is “hungry.” He sees Facebook and Snapchat primarily as messaging apps, while Instagram is experiencing an “identity crisis,” he said. Meanwhile, Genie hopes it will become a place where people can meet like-minded friends on the Internet in a relaxed atmosphere — a vision the company is one step closer to with the launch of the app and storefront.
“I don’t think people think, oh, if I buy this as an asset, I can unlock X, Y, and Z, and it’s worth it, and I can sell it one day?” Nigam said. “They’re like, I want to do dope shit, and then I want to switch it up and collaborate with my friends and do it too.”
[ad_2]
Source link
