The UK-based luxury fashion brand Burberry has launched a line of virtual handbags through Roblox. The Block spoke with Samuel Jordan, a digital fashion designer who created the collection. He is 22 years old and has sold digital attire worth millions of dollars on Roblox.
Burberry, a British luxury fashion brand, announced Wednesday that it launched virtual handbags via Roblox. They were inspired by one of its physical handbag designs.
Roblox community members can buy and use bags to dress up their avatars. Roblox users are on average one-in-five who update their avatar every day.
The physical bag is more expensive than $1000 but the virtual bags are only a few dollars. These virtual bags can be purchased in Robux, the platform’s currency. Every handbag comes with an exclusive emote. This refers to an action avatars can perform on Roblox such as dancing or levitation.
Rachel Waller, Burberry’s vice president of channel innovation, stated that “The expression of digital personas” is an intriguing concept.
Roblox Burberry bags will look like real-life pieces. [Credit: Burberry]
This isn’t Burberry’s first venture into gaming. B Bounce, Burberry’s first online game, was launched in October 2019. Burberry has announced a new non-fungible token (NFT), in June. This was done with Mythical Games. The brand had previously collaborated with Mythical Games last August to launch NFTs.
However, this is the first time that it has partnered with Roblox. Roblox supports more than 50 million active users per day. Roblox has already seen brands like Nike and Gucci open stores.
These bags were designed in partnership with Samuel Jordan, a digital fashion designer who has sold over 25 million units of his work on the platform since he was 22 years old. Based on the developer economics page, Roblox pays developers an average of 28 cents per dollar. However, this number can vary depending on where the product is sold. After $10 million in sales, Jordan has earned around $1 million.
“I was 12 years old when I first began playing Roblox. Zack, my older brother, asked me to play Roblox just to have fun with him. I was home-schooled as a child, so I didn’t have many social friends. Jordan spoke with The Block about Roblox as the place where he found community.
After much trial and error, Jordan was accepted into Roblox’s avatar accessory program in 2019. This is the platform’s user-generated material program. He was then able to upload Roblox items.
Jordan now consults with luxury and fashion brands like Stella McCartney, Burberry and others on how to get into the space.
Jordan says, “Every client I’ve had has completely different interests.”
He says that some people want to reach a younger audience. Roblox has a community of just under half that is older than 13 years old, with the fastest growing age group being 17-24 year-olds. Jordan is also a popular choice because they believe creating a digital product that looks similar to a physical item will increase sales.
The topic of digital fashion ownership has become a major topic in the digital fashion industry. This question is being addressed by both fashion brands and tech companies.
Meta last month announced a partnership between Balenciaga and Thom Browne. Snapchat also offers augmented reality filters to brands such as Tiffany’s. Fashion brands are expected to double the amount they invest in technology by 2030. A chunk of that will go to the so-called “metaverse”.
Even though there are signs of a bearish market, fashion brands don’t back down from Web3 experiments. Jordan is not the same. Jordan has not seen any decline in the platform’s sales.
“Of course you worry about consumer spending dropping when there are negative economic times. He says that he hasn’t yet seen this happen in my sales. You buy it because you love it. It doesn’t matter if the value goes up or down. You are not predicting what the future will look like. This is what you’re saying: Right now, in this video, I want this feeling. This is how I want to portray myself.”
Jordan was asked about his plans to stay afloat in a difficult economic time. He said that he didn’t have any aggressive plans but that he would continue to focus on the consumer journey. Jordan said, “I want to make things people love and will use.”
