If a hype culture has taught us anything about the fashion industry, no matter what comes and goes, sneakers would always remain the priority for people. Baggy sweatpants, oversized t-shirts, loose jeans, and fluorescent colored tracks pants have gained huge traction among buyers, but the base for any such cool looks has always been funky shoes or sneakers that provide comfort as well as style. Our custom shoe designing, a customization solution that allows footwear brands and retailers to let their buyers unleash their creative side and use the tool as a canvas to paint their imagination and create a unique pair of shoes. Additionally, they can also preview the product in 3d before they head for the final payment and make any changes they wish to make to turn the heads around and get asked, "from where did you buy these?"
Shoe Designer Online Offers Solutions to Leverage the Latest Digital Footwear Trends
As online shopping continues to be one of the finest ways for buyers to purchase, engage, and know more about their favorite brand, it also serves as the means to experiment with more services and offer a top-notch customer experience to buyers. Various latest developments incorporated by brands, such as the augmented reality that lets customers "try on" various pairs of sneakers and ensures that being a sneakerhead is the realm of possibility for consumers. These features are added to a brand's app that constantly notifies buyers about the latest editions and enables them to add their photos wearing sneakers. However, in certain situations, these features have deceived people, forcing brands to implement artificial intelligence (AR) in helping ensure that what customers see is what they get.
The new-age technology is blowing the footwear industry as it opened the door for various possibilities to experiment with. These innovative technologies enable brands to engage in an arms race to make constantly wearable sneakers lighter, faster, or more comfortable. Retailers and resellers are in a never-ending tug-of-war to fix and game the system. Recently, other players have entered the market with digital innovations: sneakers you can't wear IRL. Sneaker sales soared in 2021. Leading brands and many emerging footwear companies are trying to fish in the same pool and tap on the new trends to scale their businesses and boost their online presence. In the current blog, we have amalgamated the success stories of various brands that will inspire other footwear companies to replicate these trends and expand their customer base in the online marketplace.
Let us look at the various trends and ways footwear brands and retailers have capitalized on the latest digital assets to flourish in the market:
1. RTFKT Intends to Become Sneaker Brand of the Metaverse
It is not that just typical start-ups are willing to tap on the latest trends in digital technology and manufacture exceptional shoes with mind-boggling solutions. The London-based NFT brand RTFKT is working on unique digital shoes and says it wants to become the "sneaker brand of the metaverse". The company has been quietly operating for a few years now as it prepared itself to enter the public sphere in early 2020. It has used game engines and blockchain authentication tech to sell sneaker designs as NFTs. The company allows its buyers to use augmented reality technology to wear their shoes and try them out before they purchase the preferred sneakers. As consumers are more involved in the virtual facet of the fashion industry, the brand hopes to capture more of their attention in the digital space and also well intends to place emphasis on physical designs of the shoes as much as they do it for its digital counterpart. It's a vision that investor Andreessen Horowitz backs: the firm led an $8m round into RTFKT in May.
The start-up has already been making headlines from the beginning of 2021 after partnering with an 18-year-old artist Fewocious to design a range of NFT sneakers. The collection line sold out in seven minutes and thus making $3.1m. The footwear company has also collaborated with retro games company Atari earlier this year, selling digital shoes that can be used in metaverse games The Sandbox and Decentraland. This strategy seems to have inspired other leading brands in the footwear industry, including Adidas and Vans, among many others.
2. Digitally Native Vertical Brands Carve Out the Success Paths
The competition in the footwear industry is extremely intense as brands and retailers are willing to go to any limit and invest limitless resources to leverage the current digital trends. However, amid the fierce competition, the digitally native vertical brands (DNVBs) in the sector have carved a path for success. Companies such as Allbirds, M.Gemi, and Rothy's are among the wave of companies born online within the past decade that have upended traditional retail practices, forged direct consumer relationships and crafted strong brand identities. Despite the turbulence in the broader shoe categories during the pandemic, the successful DNVBs have sustained in the market and thrived because of their eCommerce prowess and resilient supply chains. These attributes suggest that due to this, Coresight Research predicts sales by the US-based footwear and apparel DNVBs to reach $8.4 billion in 2021, registering an increase of 20 per cent year-on-year. The report further claims that US's footwear market and apparel market is rising 1.6 per cent overall for the year, which puts digital natives in the lead for their agile competition.
The standard practices by DNVBs, including fast, free shipping, courting customers with digital marketing campaigns, expanding into new categories and channels to grow the business, have helped brands play their best game. Despite these being extremely expansive business tactics, and have become more so during the pandemic due to choked supply chains and rising costs. And while these DNVBs are rooted in their eCommerce, their wide swath has also ventured into brick-and-mortar stores. This brings a lot of expenses to the table while also boosting brands' legitimacy and visibility and promoting their in-store sales. These costs have also led to questioning the notion of selling direct-to-consumer (DTC) as if provides a sure path to a higher profit margin. According to the report from BMO Capital Markets analyst Simeon Siegel, the DTC margins are about 1,000 basis points lower on average than wholesale gross margins.
Despite these obstacles, DTC offers some compelling advantages that continue to lure even traditional wholesale brands, including a high degree of control over branding, distribution and pricing, as well as a direct line of communication with customers. Likewise, the 3D shoe design online, a customization solution, allows brands to reconnect with buyers directly as they can customize their shoes from the comfort of their homes on their mobile phones. Moreover, the customization software also helps brands and their designers to sit back and relax and focus on the other essential business processes that need to be streamlined. And since it can be installed on brands' websites and a physical store and enable your customers to design their funky pair of shoes in the most seamless possible way.
3. Gucci Announces its First-Ever Digital-only Sneakers
Gucci has recently announced that it is all set to launch its first-ever, digital-only, hyper-exclusive sneaker. This marks a new feather being added to its cap as Gucci Virtual 25 makes its way to the digital platform. Neon colors define the sneaker's range and a dial that winds the high-top instead of laces and is named after Creative Director Alessandro Michele's favourite number and was also designed by him. Let us now get into the nitty-gritty of the platform as it provides a virtual pair of sneakers and shouldn't come as a surprise that the rise of NFTs has led to an increase in the demand for digital items, and it is just a matter of time when many high fashion brands can hop on the bandwagon of the metaverse. The Gucci sneakers are a notch above some of the NFT items, and while the Gucci kicks are usable playing Roblox or using VR chat. Since Gucci is a global brand having digital platforms means easy accessibility, the virtual space by the company allows buyers to purchase the product in their local currency, which is more flexible than the NFTs as they offer only cryptocurrency.
4. Collaborations Enabling Footwear to Tap on Strong Points
Venturing into unknown dimensions is always risky; therefore, many people depend on someone's expertise and gain more information about the market they are willing to tap into. And with virtual; space emerging as a strong business face for many footwear brands and retailers, it is always advisable to join forces. Buffalo London teamed up with The Fabricant recently to offer its consumers a virtual version of its popular Classic Low platform shoe, which can be worn on digital fashion platform DressX. The shoe, which also happens to be engulfed in flames, is only available online and can be "worn" in images on social media. As discussed above, many leading companies in the fashion sector are willing to tap on the new-age technology and make themselves more relevant to the buyers. Therefore, the fast-fashion retailer, Forever 21 is set to enter the metaverse by launching an exclusive partnership with Virtual Brand Group, a metaverse creation company. The collaboration will allow users to purchase and sell Forever 21 merchandise and customize their stores on the Roblox video game platform. Recently, it marked the first-ever Forever 21 Day, a monthly drop of content on Roblox. These drops will occur in a new virtual world on Roblox titled "Forever 21 Shop City".
Forever 21 and Virtual Brand Group launched this realm for users to build and manage their own Forever 21 store as well as participate in monthly drops. In addition to buying and selling Forever 21 accessories and clothing, users will be able to hire employees and customize their stores, all while vying to become the "top shop" in the virtual universe. Besides collaborations, brands can also start engaging with buyers by providing them with novel shopping experiences and some exceptional services that make them buy more products from the website. Brands can also take help from gaming experts and fashion-tech companies to attain the target. On similar lines, Aglet aims to gamify the sneaker experience by bringing the hunt for new kicks online in a PokémonGO-style app. It allows brands to earn virtual currency by walking around in the real world and finishing the in-app tasks. These currencies will enable them to purchase much-hyped sneakers, which otherwise comes at a premium price.
Offering a cult-above shopping experience to buyers with the help of digital solutions also enables brands to charge more and help buyers foster their imagination; if they can't wear a product, they always have the option of looking into the future. How it displays itself and shakes the fashion industry remains to be seen, but one thing is certain that innovation will manifest itself in different ways. The digital gamification of sneaker culture is one route, as Aglet and its partnership with Gucci have shown. Buffalo London has tapped into sneakerheads' almost perverse need to show off their sneakers on Instagram.
Closing Comments-
The success stories of several footwear brands and retailers mentioned in the blog indicate enormous scope in the digital space for whoever wants to tap on it and take their business to a new level. And for that to happen, they must first understand their business and based on their requirements and customer demands; they should mold their business model and align it with the virtual world. The custom shoe designing by iDesigniBuy will assist brands willing to hop on the bandwagon of digital technology and experiment with their bottom to serve their customers better.
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