Ralph Lauren x Zepeto
- A 28-year old Canadian woman is earning a “six-figure salary” selling digital clothes on the metaverse, the BBC reported Thursday.
- Monica Louise, who designs and sells apparel for avatars, makes her money on Zepeto, Asia’s biggest metaverse platform.
- More than 1.6 billion virtual fashion items have been sold on Zepeto, the BBC said.
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While luxury fashion names like Gucci and Ralph Lauren are stepping into the metaverse, the internet’s next iteration is also opening its doors to smaller creators — case in point, a 28-year-old digital clothing designer is making top dollar on the biggest metaverse platform in Asia, according to a BBC report.
South Korea-based Zepeto has nearly a quarter of a billion users, and its app allows people to create avatars, or digital representations of themselves. But avatars need clothes, and more than 1.6 billion virtual fashion items have been sold on Zepeto, the BBC reported.
Among the most well-known users in the platform’s fashion world is Monica Louise, a Canadian woman known as Monica Quin, who designs and sells digital apparel.
The BBC report published Thursday highlighted Louise in a broader story about the metaverse, saying she earns “an impressive six-figure salary” through her Zepeto avatar.
Louise’s dresses, tops, and other items are sold using Zepeto’s currency, called zems, and are priced from one to five zems each. Zepeto users purchase zems with real money, and creators receive $106 for every sale worth 5,000 zems.
“There are clothes that I cannot afford to wear in real life but in the digital world, I can buy all of them,” Louise told the BBC. “I think that’s one huge factor why I’m really drawn into this.”
Zepeto started three years ago and last month landed a $1 billion valuation in a funding round led by Japanese conglomerate Softbank. HYBE, the company that manages K-pop sensation BTS, was among the investors and poured in about $41 million.
About 70% of its users are female, including teenagers. Chief Strategy Officer Rudy Lee told the BBC that Zepeto is the first social network for a lot of its users.
Zepeto also has other partnerships that feature digital representations of clothes from Ralph Lauren and Gucci. And fashion has been the focus in other portions of the metaverse. Virtual land in the Fashion District on Decentraland recently sold for $2.4 million.
“We think the Fashion District purchase is like buying on Fifth Avenue back in the 1800s … or the creation of Rodeo Drive,” Lorne Sugarman, the CEO of Metaverse Group, told Insider, about his company’s deal announced in November.