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The metaverse just got a little more interesting. On September 1, Vans announced that it would be launching a
digital experience located within a fictional world. The new “Vans World” will be within the confines of Roblox. It will offer skateboarding activities and sell digital merchandise to the millions of people who play Roblox on a regular basis. This development shows the growing importance of the digital world as an outlet for traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and famed brands that have been struggling over the past year.
The growth of the metaverse
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The metaverse is another term for the digital worlds that are created by video games and digital life simulators such as Second Life. In this world, people interact by using their digitally generated avatars. Roblox is a video game where they interact in order to go on missions and accomplish tasks. It is a massive, open game that has no set parameters and allows developers to add a wide variety of elements that practically create new games. The game has become incredibly popular over the last two years and has over one hundred million users. Some designers on Roblox are able to make a full-time salary designing clothes and other items for Roblox users. There is a defined culture of microtransactions that helps to power the Roblox system. As a free game, the companies and developers involved make money off of these purchases. Many of them are connected to fashion and to everyday items. There is clearly a niche that an established brand like Vans can fill.
What it means
There are a number of companies that have been harmed in the recent move to online shopping. As a company that has committed to malls, Vans is one of them. They have decided that online shopping is not the most profitable approach for a shoe company to dedicate completely. Therefore, they still have more than 400 stores in the United States. If Vans is particularly successful, they may be able to pave a new way forward for retailers.
They can pioneer a twin approach that focuses on traditional stores for some demographics and metaverse shops for others while also allowing for online orders. Such an approach could allow Vans to build brands for life and to also gain multiple sales from the same individual for real and digital shoe purchases. The lucrative possibilities of such a practice are endless for shoe retailers and for a wide variety of others.
Vans is also opening up the metaverse to settlement by a wide variety of other companies. They see the potential market that they can tap and know that expansion into Roblox is a way to prop up their struggling sales in the terrestrial world. There is also the possibility that Vans is gearing up for the imminent growth of virtual reality (VR) technology. VR has the possibility to exponentially increase the importance of the metaverse. Soon, it will be possible to buy thousands of products and pay for a native digital currency such as Bitcoin.
Conclusion
Roblox is one of the world’s most popular games. The number of players will only continue to grow as more people discover the platform. These players will have a new option for buying shoes that reminds them of their everyday trips to the mall and other retailers. The question is whether or not the Vans experiment will be successful enough to cover all of the time, planning, and expenses associated with such a launch. If it is, there is a good chance that it will be just one of a number of metaverse expansions over the next few years.
