Digital Fashion Houses

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fashion in the metaverse some of the largest games in the world run on pure cosmetic economies and the ever-present lifestyle choices of the next generation of Gamers um basically exhorts a total re-examination of what identity means in the digital space players have pumped hours into games like second life and the Sims and now more than ever focus on who you are in a game um on Instagram on Tick Tock or whatever social gaming platform that you might use and to this point gaming companies like Riot and Roblox have begun catering towards bringing physical fashion um to the digital world so Riot has had Partnerships with like Louis Vuitton which as a company itself like generates around 80 billion of rep generated like around 80 billion of Revenue in 2022 well ahead of any other fashion competitor I think like Gucci trails at like 13 billion or something like that and Roblox as many of us know sold a virtual Gucci bag for more than the bags actual IRL railroad price the tldr's drip is going digital um and to discuss why how and what needs to be done we have two fantastic guests on the Pod Emily ah is the head of

Business Development and Ashley Hopkins Chief creative officer both at the house of blueberry a digital fashion house that's been outfitting avatars in games like Roblox and The Sims so welcome to the Pod you guys thank you happy to be here it's awesome it's a great time to have you both on and I'm so glad that we've finally gotten around to recording this one it has been again a long time in the making many reschedulings and and we're finally here so um before we dive in I would love for you guys to both introduce yourself to the audience um Ashley why don't we start with you tell us how you came to join the house of blueberry and also if there's a favorite game that you have that appeals to the digital fashion space okay um that's a loaded question so we'll talk about me first I have been doing digital fashion for around 15 years um I've been in multiple platforms um I met our company's founder on Second Life

um where we created alongside each other for about 10 years um and then 2021 we decided to kind of join forces and link up and that's when I joined blueberry um since joining blueberry we went from one platform to now across multiple platforms and gaining momentum all the time um and I'm just kind of in charge of most of what the customer sees um from creation to marketing um coming up with the Design Concepts etc for that so that's what I do with blueberry um but I would have to say favorite game right now would probably be zapedo because I'm spending so much time on it and just fashionably it's it's really cool and a lot of fun um but if I'm gaming for Gaming's sake it's definitely Call of Duty not a lot on the on the female fashion front there though okay but definitely a fun game yeah

nice nice and how about you Emily yeah so my background in digital fashion is a little bit more recent than Ashley I don't think I know anyone who has as much expertise in the space as Ashley she's been doing it 15 years so I come from more of the traditional luxury and fashion space I was most recently at Tory Burch um so yeah so it you know it is interesting and I'm sure we'll get into it more there are so many parallels between IRL fashion real world fashion and what we see in some of these digital places it's really interesting um so I think in terms of fashion game I gotta go with the Sims which was you know one of the first games I played when I was growing up and I I just loved dressing up my avatar so when I first started talking to Ashley and the um the team at Blueberry the first thing I thought of when I thought of digital fashion was actually addressing an avatar for The Sims um but there's another game called project makeover uh it's a mobile game

and it's a lot of fun uh you just kind of got it you you give your avatar different hairstyles different looks different outfits and it's very similar to the things that we're doing on Roblox and zapedo very cool nice I think um it's been a long time since I've played any kind of like some a game that's like remote or actually you know I think there's like elements of customization for every single video game now at this point but I guess I would say like it's been a long time since I've played one that like had more of that dedicated feel to it um one of my favorite was actually this game called Mary Kate and Ashley Winner's Circle um in so long it's a show jumping game I used to ride horses competitively for 13 years and oh my gosh like customizing my horse the best the best I was like oh I'm gonna have this horse for this and this horse for that and I have all my like britches and my riding helmet and everything

um so super excited to dive in to talk about like the business potential of games that have such a that have digital fashion as such a strong point um uh of their like a guest business strategy um and so but before we dive in there for specifically to blueberry and thanks for the intros and the color around your guys's background um I'd love to start with the landscape of self-expression and Brands and online communities um and so I guess I'm gonna start out just giving my example of Mary Kate and Ashley Winner's Circle about how I see self-expression and I guess like to be honest in Canada I've spent a lot of my life I hadn't spent a lot of my life in sandbox worlds where I see a lot of this taking place recently um but the way that I see self-expression and I want you guys to chime in as experts because I'm sure I have like one-fourth of the picture um is mostly on character customization via costumes and avatars in games in digital communities where you are seen right and so I might wear XYZ outfit and an MMO or multiplayer game and this might be to flex on others um or highlight some sort of

self-actualization of values or change my icon to show that I'm a fan or a supporter of something or do a specific dance move that shows my personality but how do you guys Define self-expression in the digital world or through what other aspects does a game show or just self-expression manifest um and maybe actually we'll start with you yeah I mean it's kind of like any other like even on the MMOs you know so when I'm when I'm putting my character together it's it's self-expression for that game right so if I'm doing Call of Duty and I want to pick a character with you know I would always pick a female character smaller hitbox um but when I'm customizing my character I'm going for a certain look and feel that fits to that game and when you reach into other platforms things like Roblox Second Life stuff like that you're more self-expression about just like who you not necessarily who you are but who you want to be right because when you go into a space like Roblox for

example you can literally be anything I could be a cat I could be a lizard I could be a fun alien girl like I could literally be anything that I want to be and as a brand like our main focus is giving each individual player the tools to express themselves in whatever way it is so whether it's you know just like a normal hairstyle or it's antennas or you know whatever you want to do or be on any given Tuesday you can do that through any kind of unique character customization and it's so much more open in platforms like we're working with than on other digital like other gaming platforms where it's kind of like preset um that's just kind of the beauty of user generated content is bringing you know more self-expression to the space for sure interesting and Emily um does that do you use your view complement or contrast to that um no I mean I think the one thing I would just add here is that there definitely is some generational um changes I would note too so for Gen Z

and gen Alpha and even younger than that um I think Roblox came out with a study that 40 of gen Z says that their digital identity is just as important as their physical identity and anecdotally and the data will show that one in five or even more than that Roblox users are updating their Avatar nearly daily so some avatars are changing more often than uh you know their human counterparts so I think that there's definitely just um this kind of element of expression and also the novelty factor of changing what you're wearing depending on the day depending on your mood the same way you would uh in real life yeah yeah I think that that's something someone said that to me the other day about the way that gen Z interacts and it's almost they're almost kind of going at least from from my childhood we tried to like Escape stereotypes you were like oh no I'm not goth or I'm not the

athlete or I'm not the gamer whereas I feel like gen Z is actually going back more towards the sis the binning system of who do they represent and maybe that's a little bit like more modular but you know that people are leaning into the themes of like oh do you dress as a gamer or do you dress as um an athlete or stuff like that so with that said I I definitely think there must be there definitely is something there where people are kind of fitting into these more modular uh stereotypes but there's also a huge Freedom with digital fashion that you don't have with regular fashion so you don't have to ascribe to a gender you don't even have to walk you could fly your clothing can have sparkles and um Wings you can wear a cat literally a pet as a hat so I think there's also there's that liberating Factor here too where you can be incredibly expressive and not fit into just a few kind of predetermined molds got it and then I

guess like in in that vein right um you know you mentioned that your background is actually from Tory Burch right so a very physical IRL brand right where do you think how important are physical Brands to be represented in the digital Escape um and what's the balance between yeah being able to wear this cat on your head versus being able to wear or like carry a Gucci handbag yeah I think that's a really good question and I think it depends on the brand I think certain brands have more cachet to these younger audiences than others um though not just younger audiences I mean Ashley has been working on Second Life a lot and I'll let you speak to that Ashley but just how different brands show up on second life which is traditionally an older audience but I think that um the relationship with Brands is very similar to what it is in physical world where you might really like a brand but you might not necessarily want to wear their logo all over the place

um so it might just be how that brain makes you feel or being part of that Community more than it is about wearing you know say like a Nike logo but at the same time we do see certain brands are kind of showing up a little bit more and you know is it a chicken or an egg situation I'll take Nike Gucci bands they all have really great experiences on Roblox and then you also see that those Brands resonate more with those generate those younger audiences too got it interesting so it is a balance of the logo presence as well as like how the brand makes you feel but as well as also being able to customize and Swap and do all that sorts of stuff yeah and I think another interesting thing about the logo is that in certain platforms you have different Fidelity so you might not even see a logo if you think of like a Gucci print that is where you see a g all over a t-shirt that might not even show up in certain platforms the way that you would want it

to hmm really interesting um and then I guess Ashley to your experience with with second life where you said that it's a generation of people that are typically older right we just spent a little bit of time talking about gen Z do you find that this level of like habituation of the changing my fashion you know whatever you said it was more like four times a day or something like that it does is that happening in an older generation of Gamers as well or is that more like absolutely probably more so honestly um with the older Generations they're they're getting out there they're shopping more they're they're changing up their characters more they're actually like whereas in Roblox and the younger generation they play games on Roblox a lot on places like Second Life they're hosting events they're going to parties they're hanging out with their friends so I feel like they probably change their outfit just as much if not more than the younger audience um just to kind of like fit each and every occasion wow interesting uh yeah and it's a it's

a lot easier and like less stressful to get changed in the metaverse than it is that there's hours long about like character customization and character building and stuff like that um it can take me just as long or longer to get dressed in the digital fashion world because I have so many more options I mean it took me 20 minutes to do my hair to come in here and talk to you but in the digital world it might take me an hour to go through that hair folder and pick something cute to match my outfit so yeah that's fair that's fair you know what actually I have been stuck at the beginning of the Character Creator and RPGs for probably four hours you're like oh I'm gonna start Divinity the original sin and then it's like you start at like 2 p.m and it's like eight o'clock and you have not left the screen yeah blue yeah because then by the time that I picked my hair I have this on-screen pop-up which we would call like a HUD

um we would have that on the screen and I would have to go through hundreds of hair color options so it's like not only did I have to pick a style that I have to pick a color and then I have to make sure it matches the outfit and sometimes that changes a few times so character customization is like one of the biggest parts of the game for me not to mention the layering and the different Avatar shapes and bodies it takes me a long time to get dressed sometimes I I sometimes ask for styling advice from Ashley I was gonna say sometimes she has to tag team it too she still attempted for a few hours and then she's like uh um and then I guess uh one more macro question is do you guys often see things going the reverse way um taking in-game digital cosmetics and making them into Real World clothing um I've known that a lot of web 3 brands have tried to make their digital nft lines into some sort of physical representation whether that be like a pudgy Penguins making pudgy penguin stuffed animals or board ape making

t-shirts or azuki making skateboards right um where do you guys see that as a part of the entire self-expression strategory of taking your digital identity and bringing it we're very focused on like brand first and what we do first right now so it's not really something that we're kind of diving into I mean there are plenty of other brands in the space that have done it right um I know like Forever 21 on Roblox created a beanie that said forever and then Forever 21 in the physical world sold the beanie um and it did really well I know that like it's definitely something that the brands are reaching out doing it's not really like a direction that we've headed yet um as we're so about like the Avatar and really creating that special look for your avatar in the digital space we just haven't really branched into that yet but yeah I think it's a good point Ashley um we are just really focused on being a digital brand first and not having the physical clothing and all of the headaches that go with that and that is

kind of our unique positioning within this space but it is a great opportunity there's a huge opportunity between digital and physical for other brands and um so some businesses will sometimes test in the metaverse so if something does well they may actually end up creating a new product category like that forever fascinating beanie that we just mentioned our friends at Forever 21 ended up having like a bestseller from something that they tested in Roblox and I think that was kind of a great opportunity for them and then this is not something that blueberry is doing but there is also a lot of just great technology around digital fashion and we do see that sometimes that technology is used in the physical fashion worlds um to kind of improve the processes there maybe it's a quick recipe to Market maybe it's relying Less on samples because you could do so much more digitally that Innovation is really exciting too got it yeah I've definitely um I've

always been super curious about that because also just like running the testing environment is something really interesting about being able to kind of like run almost like uh like sentiment tests with a certain piece of clothing before you actually spin it up but like the cpg business and the games economy online digital Goods business are substantially different so flexing into retail versus digital I'm sure is like not necessarily like super easy um someone who's a data oriented like our team but it is it is just such a great place to test things because you have such volume here we're talking about 210 plus million Mau on Roblox um so you're able to really test with a significant sample size got it yeah and it sounds like this is actually like a perfect opportunity to to dive into you know you just said you guys are really focusing on being a digital only only fashion brand um to talk about what the house of blueberry is it's business and kind of how it came to be it sounds like you

guys call it blueberry but um I would love to know about the name for house of blueberry to me the first thing that comes out who comes up is burberry so I'm like wondering if there's any relation to Burberry versus blueberry um so whoever wants to take a stab at this one um feel free Ashley you got it okay so funny story I worked with blueberry for several years like I said I worked alongside the founder of blueberry for 10 years and when I finally joined the company I said why blueberry because I mean that was my question too like I I thought maybe the same thing maybe the Burberry play and she says to me well because strawberry was already taken and that's it that's it we ended up blueberry because strawberry was taken we were a couple of seconds and a decision away from being great or being like plums you know um and said we're blueberries and I I couldn't love it more um being just blueberry but yeah we've

we've had a couple of people um in the comment section on our group on Roblox you know and it's it's mostly like a younger audience we've had a couple of them be like did you mean Burberry we're like no no we were absolutely just blueberry that's it interesting oh that's super funny like just thinking like house of pineapple house of House of peach like yeah yeah I was a pineapple maybe it's been awesome um I know I don't know pineapple might be like trademarked or something by SpongeBob oh yeah SpongeBob or the or or you could get a little pineapple expressy not sure if that's like the really the right direction you want to be going um right okay very cool so literally just another Berry strawberry yeah strawberry blueberry was the next cute fruit so the name has a blueberry um let's talk about the product right um what is it specifically that you guys do I noticed for example that you've built out several Partnerships with fashion

houses um you know one might presume that you bring physical High fashion stuff to the virtual or do you guys design clothes yourselves so about 90 of what we do I would say is like our own like we're coming up with Concepts we're creating designs we're putting those in um we're we have teamed up with other companies uh we did a digital fashion show the first metaverse fashion show in Second Life for Jonathan simkai um that was a lot different than what we typically do you know where we're creating our own designs and we're coming up with things um plays off of you know Trends in real life and things like that whereas when we did something like that it was taking Jonathan Sim Kai's designs and translating that real-life Runway Fashion into the digital space um we did the same thing with Natori to a degree um with Natori it was a really fun project because they entrusted with us to take their designs their iconic

prints and kind of um gear them towards the digital space so we kind of took their designs matched with what we know works and sells in the digital space and kind of like fused the two together um so that's that's like a small portion of what we do is taking real life fashion and bringing it in um but the biggest portion is just kind of like our creative team coming up with what they think the audience whether it's an older audience or in Second Life or a younger audience on Roblox like what's going to really resonate with them um and that's that's kind of the core of what we do it's just like our own creation based off of our community based off of the data what we see in the space um and kind of like Trend forecasting based off of like real life and what we think will be hitting the digital fashion space next and sometimes that's backwards even like sometimes we see we see things really taking off in the digital space and we're like okay this is going to be a big thing you know coming soon like early last year we were

all in on the 90s stuff we were like 90s is going to be a big thing you know we're thinking like clueless school girl looks um and then you know here we are a year later doing a clueless collaboration in Roblox so it's it's definitely it's definitely a fun space to be in but um it's kind of like 90 US 10 other fashion brand collaborations I see and so on the clueless collaboration which I also did see also I'm a huge I love the movie um what what an iconic 90s film um yeah it's one of my favorite baby Paul Rudd it's so cute he looks the same though he doesn't but uh so to walk me through kind of like how that partnership came to be right so you know you said 90 of the time you guys are doing your own fashion so is this more of like did you reach out to the people who you know own the clueless IP and do something um more branded or did you guys were

like we're gonna do a 90s theme and then we're gonna kind of pay for the trademark of Clueless and then kind of move from there um and you're talking about serving customers and you said uh Second Life and Roblox um I assume that then you're building clothing with specific skeleton rigs for those games right now right so those are like your main platforms Okay so so with Partnerships I would say generally um they will come to Blueberry or they'll come to the platform and the platform will connect us to the IP partner or the fashion partner whoever it may be and oftentimes they come in with a strategy in mind or an opportunity in mind so for example we want to reach a younger audience or we want to age up our IP we want to reach an older audience or it might just be a commercial like a revenue play so oftentimes I would say 100 of the time it's inbound but oftentimes we do play a little bit of a matchmaking game

well we're we will connect an IP or a brand to a platform depending on what their goals are for that partnership got it so with the case of Clueless we you know partnered with them to bring um the iconic clueless fashion into Roblox and it was actually just coincidental that we had such success with 90s really the summer before we had a very successful 90s summer girl collection and it you know oftentimes we do see those Trends um where 90s is super popular probably for a couple of Seasons now um but in in some ways it predated the physical Trends as well and so for again I guess that's a again that's a brand approaching you guys should like a lot of it's inbound so they're like okay we wanna we wanna make some traction um with uh the Roblox audience so we're

coming to go find a digital fashion house like you guys to plug in to Roblox specifically um and in that regard you're like almost like a little bit of like you know you are a B2 like B2B company because like you're really serving you're making your fashion available to Roblox as opposed to necessarily like direct to the consumers themselves um where they're not downloading House of blueberry packages and then going to the game and like using those as mods right they are literally your stuff is available directly in the Roblox right right so there's a Marketplace um and most of the platforms that we're on so second life zapedo and Roblox there is a Marketplace that is direct to Avatar direct consumer but we are using the platform themselves as the marketplace I got it I got it and is there some sort of like you know right now you're sticking with zapedo um Roblox and second life

um would you guys how do you guys consider sort of which um gaming companies to sort of partnership or like integrate with um you know a question that immediately comes into my mind is you know what about like uefn um and other stuff like that uh or even like the Sims um how do you guys think about your strategy in terms of like Warehouse of blueberry um clothing is available so we do actually have assets available for The Sims um already it's kind of a historically it's been what upcoming platforms do we see um how do we resonate with that platform like how do we connect with the platform if I go in and I say you know there's like there's a little bit of digital fashion here but there's not really like a big play on it yet I don't really feel like we're gonna be connecting with the consumer here um you know like some of the digital spaces are more about like um like digital land real estate type stuff that's not really a space for us

yet um some games are more like focused on like the actual gameplay versus more on the ugc side so we kind of like go into the space figure out where we connect with it if it's if it's something that we feel like will fit in with or even if it's not yet there it's something can we set the trend here like can we make digital fashion like the Forefront of this space so we go in and we figure out like the logistics of of the platform um what kind of softwares they use for creating there if it's something that fits with us like stepetto um ended up being a really good fit Roblox was kind of a no-brainer it's it's a huge platform um it was very big on the ugc we came in right as layered like the 3D mesh clothing was really becoming a thing um and we knew that like that would be a good space for us then zapedo it's a mobile game um I literally was looking at fashion games on like on the App Store and I come across the pedo and I was like oh this is really cute the characters are really

cute the fashion is there like they're really customizing their characters got into the game started playing it if I can love it and be passionate about it our customers will too so that's kind of like the front stage of it and then it's like getting our creative team on board and they're going in and they're learning the space and then you know it's just kind of like a whole launch process from there so as we're like onto pedo we're stable we're really loving it that is always there like what's the next where do we want to be next um so it just kind of like that's kind of the process for it yeah I would definitely say like Ashley said first we want to make sure it's that fit um so the first kind of criteria would be is there a fit is there an audience for it does Ashley like it Ashley is her you know Chief creative officer and really the creative and art director of the of the of the brand and then we do look at the mechanical side the mechanics the technical side what softwares are needed and then lastly would just be kind of the commercial side of this is there a

Marketplace what um you know what are the economics of this platform um what is the average cost of a wearable asset I see yeah and maybe that's actually a good a good pivot um I wanted to ask about what some of the economics are uh on this platform for you guys right um so obviously Roblox for a developer is around 50 50 right now um it's pretty severe actually um zapedo I'm completely unfamiliar with their economics um but I'm wondering whether or not it sounds like there's three parties involved right like you're sharing with the platform your platform partner that's like a zapeto or Roblox and then you're also sharing with your consumer so sort of walk me through sort of the business model for how you guys evaluate whether or not it's worth it to go onto a specific platform oh boy I feel like that's another question that's another podcast um yeah so I think I mean one other thing that is also really interesting is that there is different currencies on

each of these platforms um so it's funny actually and I have these spreadsheets and we have like five different letters that equate to different currencies so I think we definitely want to look at what the take-home rate is so what percentage of each sale is um you know is House of blueberry actually taking home and then we also do want to look at the conversion from the local currency into US dollar or into you know fiat currency because I think that's important too and that's something that we find is a little bit different in practice than what you might see you know on the website uh in terms of service yeah definitely yeah I mean it's also really Blended um I remember doing this project for the OverWatch currency SKU bundles basically like you have a different conversion rate depending on the size of the bundle that's most often chosen so if you're right you're selling 100 gems for 5.99 you're selling 1000 gems for you know 15.99 right there's a discount on the gems right then your exchange rate from Fiat to gems is weighted by the actual

like every day it actually changes based on like how much system is entering um via what's currency SKU so I definitely hear you it can be incredibly complicated and also like managing on multiple platforms like PC is the easiest in terms of like what their web shop is but if you're doing any kind of stuff with console um um so that that's really interesting and so it's like do you guys have like in that weight like a I'm about to use a really big Finance term here but like a hurdle rate for what you guys like need to clear um in order to to release to a specific platform uh we we actually don't um that's a maybe that's good homework for me and Ashley to take but we are incredibly kind of data oriented um so we will try to model out what we think our projected Revenue might be for a collection using historicals from other platforms or what we can get from that platform too yeah I think another thing to consider also is how things are

praised on each platform so we might be able to sell something um you know converting to Fiat converting to us we might be able to sell an asset for more on second life than on Roblox that's because the audience is a little bit older they might have more discretionary income the quality of the asset might be a little higher too so it's it's not even just apples to oranges to pineapples it's also you know the cost of the Apple versus the cost of the orange on each of these these platforms sure sure yeah you're just making sure that your contribution margins for all of your uh assets are positive and um I would love to talk actually a little bit about like your production pipeline um of how you guys are making the asset or how the studio is sort of situated to make assets for all different sorts of sorts of games but before we go there you know we've talked about like the Ashley test a bunch of times like oh Ashley likes it the consumer's gonna like it [Music] [Laughter] um so before we shift over to some of

the the the production stuff um I would love to to talk about how you think about who your customers are if they are passing the Ashley test well you know maybe one might presume they're predominantly female um and wondering whether or not that's that's true for your guys's specific lines in general we've talked a lot about like female clothing um and so I was wondering if you could talk maybe a little bit about some of the demographics that you guys feel like you serve in terms of players sure um on secondly like platform um our audience was primarily a female or female identifying on game um because like Emily stated earlier like you can literally you could choose your gender you can be genderless you could do whatever so um are clothing like leans more female um on Second Life and then as we went into Roblox we felt okay that's going to be the same thing on second life like the female audience is the audience that's buying the most obviously and that I felt would be true everywhere

right um Roblox we learned that it's a little bit different like we are starting to kind of Branch out and create more unisex items um on Roblox and even some male leading items just because the the gameplay there is so much different the audience is so much different on Roblox like you have the younger audience we have a lot of boys coming into this space and they're like where's our clothes we're like oh you know we've never really done that before but maybe we should and it's kind of like us as a brand like growing and evolving like we still want to be very focused and very dedicated to what we do but maybe we need to Branch out a little so we're doing that in Roblox um and then in zapedo once again it's primarily female focused for us so it kind of depends on the audience it's a lot of getting in there and seeing what what like our customer base actually wants I spend hours in Roblox like running around in our game um playing with I like to refer to them as the kids because they are typically a

really young audience in Roblox but like running around and playing in there with them talking to them they tell us what they want they're very vocal about like oh you should come out with wings next or you should come out with antlers next or we really love your hair maybe you could do some short hairstyles um you know and so it's just it's really about the community honestly as as much as it's about the designs and the creation it's about the community and connecting with your community because the community will tell you exactly what you want I mean they don't leave you guessing they don't they don't you know um leave much to the imagination like they'll come in and they'll say I want a hoodie that has cat ears and also a tail and it should be this color and you're like okay and if you create that you know they they love it and it's just it's one more way that we connect with our community is finding out how what they're wanting how they want it um and then kind of bringing that Vision to life for them with our own unique

Flair on it so yes I'm gonna give you a Cat hoodie with a tail that's orange like your tabby cat from when you grow up but I'm also gonna make it leave paw prints as you walk because that's my Flair you know so it's it's just really it's just really about connecting with the audience um and that's actually really interesting that you guys are taking such so much receptive feedback from your community a question that I had had um and this is also where I was going a little bit with the you know if your audience is predominantly female it sounds like your audience is predominantly female identifying but there's actually a significant number of male Gamers that will play as female characters in lots of video games um because of reasons and um some of those reasons may be either really positive or some of those reasons might be not so positive um and so now we're you know streamers are discovering that in Baldur's Gate you can take off all your clothes um and they're like wow um and so you know I had done a study

um I had done a podcast on um competitive um Esports and examine some of the gender bias there and in that research you found at like you know only six percent of video games feature female characters as lead roles but there's lots of RPGs and stuff where you can play as a female uh how do you balance you know maybe the representation of women that it might be predominantly sexualized in games um and with the freedom of self-expression right so like what if someone in your game wants something that's really a piece of really suggestive clothing how does the house of blueberry Tango with those kinds of Dynamics in Roblox we would ignore because it's the younger audience and we we keep our stuff very tasteful there Roblox also does a really good job of moderating their content to make sure that things are kept tasteful um space is like second life where you have a very adult audience it does happen um our

our Creations for Second Life are very aged up compared to our Creations for zepeto and Roblox with the younger audience zapedo sits kind of in the middle of our audience age range where Roblox can be I mean six years old at the youngest to you know like there is a really growing audience there in like the 20s um for Roblox and like you know up to but then you've got second life where it's it's pretty predominantly like 25 to 60. and maybe even up from there you know so it's just a very like very wide age range there um so those assets would be a little more a little more aged up you know we're gonna have dresses that have slits that come up really high and like lower necklines and things like that um so again it's there's definitely connecting with Community go ahead I was going to say there's there's definitely the demand for that on second life so I think that one thing that house of

blueberry has done very very well is had such a strong uh commitment to the community so we have multiple Community managers per platform um we do have kind of basic standards um we have you know no tolerance for any form of discrimination or any hurtful language our community managers are so involved and so deeply um kind of entrenched in the community that we do regardless of what the Avatar assets look like we we do try our best and do an effective job at keeping it very safe I think that's something that's very very important to us is allowing people to express themselves but allowing it to be done in a way that is safe for all yeah yeah you know regardless of gender regardless of age regardless of uh you know whoever you might be in the real world we want to make it safe for you

yeah and I think that's a that's a beautiful Mission I think a lot of times like what I really appreciated in like at least the past couple of years at least like on Instagram and stuff like that I feel like there is a change in terms of like what female beauty is supposed to look like in terms of like that A Wider Global dispersion of like and I think this is actually like one of the great things about like Instagram and Tick Tock or whatever is that you have a more Universal perspective of like what women look like in different places and then that like really burdens this idea that like oh like they're every race everybody every skin tone has some sort of like element of beauty to it um but in that regards like you guys are probably delivering content you know for different skin tones different body sizes as well um different genders like you said and maybe this is an opportunity to Pivot back to the production angle but like if you're making a piece of clothing that's supposed to fit like nine different types of avatars how are you guys sort of optimized in your production at the actual company to be serving so many different platforms forms it's a pedo

Roblox or second life right to actually be turning out that number of Assets in such a different and such a variety of permutations for body size height whatever else there is so how we've done it is we've managed to function on very little sleep um the answer is Manpower yes um in spaces like like second life we have 15 bodies at this point that and that's just 15 female bodies that we service in this space um like we create clothes there are creators just dedicated to like body creation um all different sizes of bodies you know it's it's really that platform has so such good representation of like you can be anything you want to be um one of the most popular add-ons is cellulite in Second Life and you know it's something that you would think people are shying away from absolutely

not you've got cellulite you've got scars you have stretch marks um veins uh everything everything is represented there it's very very like open and inclusive it's such a great space it's something that Roblox is also currently working on um they have like more Avatar customization coming soon that's really exciting um there are several different Avatar Style bodies there as well but every piece so like every piece of clothing that we create for blueberry's second life has to be so it's first made around like our model body which is just standard female body and then once the the creation process of it is started then it goes off to someone who sizes it and so then he takes this one shirt and sizes it across all 15 bodies and then it goes from him to somebody who does the rigging and our rigor takes all of those sizes and make sure they move with each body and platforms like Roblox

really have figured that out they have one rig so it doesn't matter if I'm a cat it doesn't matter if I'm a snake it doesn't matter if I'm a T-rex or a person that one rig Works across all of these so I can take my tiny jacket that I'm wearing on my avatar now who's just a regular human and I can wear it on the giant T-rex fits just the same second life we don't really have that yet because the bodies are um created by a Creator Like Us Versus by the platform itself so we have to size to those different ones so like a creation for it's kind of like where Emily was saying like it can be apples to oranges a creation for a second life is going to take much more time because there's so many more like aspects to it um versus something for Roblox where we're creating it we're rigging it that could be the same person um so yeah it just kind of depends on the platform to what like the pipeline for creation looks like um but it's definitely Manpower

but one thing I think it is there's definitely um I think we've we've learned as we've expanded we're on kind of three and a half platforms right now and we are looking at new platforms like we mentioned um but we are alerting where there are efficiencies across the platforms and where there does need to be very specific team members dedicated to that one platform I think one thing we've done a good job at is getting these platforms to speak to one another so not just the design teams but then also the community uh the social uh the marketing so that we do take some of these best practices across the platforms and Ashley's done a really good job at kind of being this like I've said the the art director the creative director where she'll take some of the work she's doing on the style casting and Trend casting and kind of apply it across all the platforms got it yeah I think that's super interesting and I mean like such a huge solve on on the Roblox side and it's uh

um you know for them and maybe that's a point of like when you evaluate a platform you're like okay well like what kind of tools do they provide us to make our production floor flexible like if you only have to make if there's only one rig I mean that's huge and they have like such a variety of different bodies whereas like in Second Life it is a ton more a ton more work to develop all those skeletons um and uh obviously like part of that contribution merging process of saying the cost of the Apple versus the price of the apple and you actually deserve to charge you one second life more because it costs so much more to make um absolutely and the level of detail and an item that goes into second life versus the level of detail for something for Roblox it's just I mean night and day in comparison um because there are so many like limitations Roblox has so many users it's game based so like they they have limitations on each product so that you don't create lag in the game and things like that versus second life is a little more open um so we can just we can put the stitching

in the mesh if we want on second life so like you have a shirt but it's got like stitches in it versus in Roblox all of that's going to be done in like the flat texture in Photoshop so just a lot of differences there got it another great efficiency we have and though it's not always we're not always doing this but um we do have an asset library of over 10 000 assets I think that's even growing I don't I don't even know if that's the up-to-date number it's 20 000 yes so we do also have the ability to kind of look and see what we've done before and it's not as simple like people probably imagine just copy and pasting onto a new Avatar it's obviously much more complicated like Ashley was just explaining all the different body types but it is helpful to have that vast library of previous Collections and assets skus that we can always build upon yeah and I guess like you guys have a library of 20 000 assets I would wonder whether

or not you guys could talk a little bit about how you see like the competitive scene in digital fashion houses um I mean in the real world like my God this tooth and nail right like if I'm wearing Burberry or Louis or anything else like it's a massive um or all main like it's a massive competitive space over high-end digital fashion houses would you say that for you guys this space is hyper competitive um and if so like who are some of the competitors that you um that you feel like you have and what Niche and what separates you from that this is I want to let Ashley answer this but this is such an interesting question Alex and something we were just talking about as a team on Friday because the platforms themselves have played around with uh scarcity um and limiting items versus having a Marketplace that is entirely flooded because that is where actually digital fashion is different is that you there's a limit on the amount of assets or

inventory that you could even sell in a store there is less of a limit on uh you know on the Roblox Avatar Marketplace so I think I'll let Ashley speak to this one but such an interesting question so blueberry itself for like the last 10 12 years and second life has worked really hard at kind of taking the fact that like there is competition in the space I mean there's always going to be competition there's there's a customer pool and you want that customer pool but we have always strived to make it less competitive more collaborative um we as a company now are the same way as it was when it was just a single person running blueberry lifting up other creators always promoting other creators like that is something you see in the digital space that you don't see as much in this physical space right like I am going on Twitter and I am admiring all of the

work that all of the other Roblox creators are doing I'm going to retweet it I'm going to share it I'm gonna like I'm gonna post it I'm gonna wear it on our avatar for the blueberry account where other people are gonna see it we're very about like promoting each other um so while there is still a little bit of competition obviously there's a lot more like collaboration cohesiveness like everybody working together to kind of support one another um we do a lot of on platform collaborations so like it would be what like Gucci and balming collaborating in the real world that's the kind of thing that we do in the digital space all of the time we are taking our brand and another brand and saying hey how can we create a collection together that's going to really like fill the needs of both of our communities and that's kind of like something that's very important in the digital space is just working together and like creating this sense of like one big Community within the platform versus like having you know

digital fashion houses that compete against each other we're all kind of like finding ways that we can work together for the community I see yeah I think it's just such an interesting idea because like people do like you said like people can they change their outfits more often um they have such a higher like clip of things they can run through the price point is so much cheaper right like I people with three thousand dollars to spend on a bag you're buying one bag right like it's a you could buy an entire pool of you know gems for 20 20 bucks and then all of a sudden you could be I could shop at the house of blueberry I could shop at Muse Collective I could shop anywhere I wanted to I could shop directly from the platform itself right or the plethora of ugc content creators on the platform um and so it's sort of like how does that Dynamic often spin often go right and sort of um what kind of like difference in terms of like clothing style and aesthetic do you guys feel like you you know like you have um but it's something that I was just particularly interested in because it's obviously like it's you have such a

wide Market but they're also because it sounds like your consumers are a little bit um might be like less brand loyal maybe than some people are in in real life so to a degree yeah um like Emily was talking about with the logos like it's something in the digital space they don't care about the logos as much um like you know we did see like when Gucci came in that Gucci bag did really well um but you're gonna see someone with that Gucci bag actually wasn't a it wasn't just the print of the G everywhere it was actually the I believe it was the diagnosis bag which looks it's actually more of a vintage look so it didn't even look quintessential Gucci the way we think of Gucci that's what I'm saying is like while it sold really well it sold really well I believe for like the novelty of it for to a degree but you're not gonna see them running around exercises that say Gucci on it as much as you're gonna see them running around in a plain black crop top which is our number one seller just a plain

black crop top and you're gonna see that more than anything because they can mix and match that with other things like they can make it goth by wearing it with our black leather jacket or they can make it preppy by wearing it with our pink puffer coat um so they they can mix and match things and kind of like create unique Styles and that's something that's like very at the core of what we are doing is we're creating pieces that can be made into multiple different outfit Styles and we do that in the second life we do that on Roblox everywhere we go we're creating like these basic staple pieces that you can then use like are very like specialized pieces to kind of create really unique looks but you're not going to see blueberry printed across the front of it because they just don't really care about that they care about the fashion and the look more than the name um but in the sense of like brand loyalty like that is it's a very big thing on Spaces like second life but the older audiences like they do have that sense of brand loyalty like they're gonna come back each week and see what we've created this week um but it's because they like the

quality and the look and the color options and the fit options it's definitely not because blueberry is printed on the front of the shirt the same way that I'm gonna go to a store and buy it you know for the brand printed across it in real life yeah it's a much different feel when it comes to that I think um generally uh and I've I've watched you know I'll watch my nieces go through the process of going to the Avatar Marketplace on Roblox and shopping I think generally there's actually not a lot of brand loyalty at least on Roblox and zapedo second life like Ashley said you know demographically excuse older psychographically you might see some differences though too but oftentimes on Roblox we don't see that there's loyalty to a specific brand um it's kind of about the experience just searching on the marketplace so someone might search for black crop top before they search for the house of blueberry black crop top but with that said one thing that is

really interesting is that we have a we have a pretty high number of unique customers on second on Roblox I mean close to our second life number and we've been on the platform for literally one tenth of the time we do see a significant number of repeat purchasers too and so I think some of that brand loyalty has to do with the community even more than it has to do with seeking out those specific assets I mean they know that they're going to get a high quality ugc asset but there's also that relationship to Ashley to the blueberry account to the blueberry shop experience that we've created on the platform to our group so um it's interesting to see how loyalty is different on these different platforms God yeah yeah and I would say it's the exact same way for second life as well like they've built a connection with us as the creators and that's why they continue to come back is because I mean they know about our children they know

about our pets they know about the fact that I just moved at the beginning of the month like we're very in tune with our community and they know you on like a personal level it's definitely not just about the brand or just about the logo it's it's about so much more than that in the digital space and that's that's something that I've spoke on a lot when like talking to up and coming creators who are like looking to dive into the space or like um end of last year or beginning of this year actually it's been a long year when I spoke at myself West and people were asking questions about like how did we get into the space I'm like the first and most important thing is the community always like in this space you can have a really really great product and not connect with the community and go nowhere or you can have you know a beginner level product but really be like into the community and be viral it's it's so much more community based here than it is about like the product or the logo or the price points or anything else absolutely and that's why a lot of brands have success or don't

depending on whether or not they engage with the community or work with endemic creators so Gucci and Forever 21 did a great job of actually working with creators including some you know some of our good friends people that we've collaborated with to work on the designs so that it's coming from the community it's not just like from the corporate offices at lvmh this is what we think we'll do well on Roblox it's actually much more um you know embedded in that local community guys that is very very cool um and it has been such an awesome episode listening to you guys talk about um digital self-expression building your community and honestly building also a bold vision for female well those that identify as female Gamers um by also female Gamers and so I guess um in our our last rapid fire question I would love to know very like off the cuff um lightning round what game or

Community you would love to design clothes for if you like immediately like the one that you don't design clothes for right now but which one would be like a dream to to do digital design for hotel Highway question what hotel Hideaway I'll hide Hotel Hideaway okay and Emily oh my God this is more controversial but I would want to get on meta because you just have access okay so many more people here let me explain Ashley for those who can't see Ashley's hands are covering her eyes hahaha So Meta has such a huge user base and if we could get on meta so many more people who don't identify as Gamers can see the opportunity with digital fashion yeah all right I buy it I buy it the corporate she wants to go to the program that's fine she's like meta

I want to know where the people are I've talked about this before I think there's also you know a lot of opportunity like why don't go on Zoom where we don't have to be wearing the clothes we're wearing right now we could have you know assets that help us so much easier for sure but yeah um if any of our listeners are interested in getting in touch with you guys um to either Rock the House of blueberry or um to get in touch with both you or your team you know how can they uh reach out um Ashley we'll start with you we are at where blueberry on Twitter at where blueberry um on Twitter and on Instagram um we also have a website where we take inbound stuff as well I only do you want to get that amazing awesome okay guys on that note um well I wish I could sit here and talk about digital fashion forever but we'll be concluding thank you Emily and Ashley for coming on and thank you to our listeners

um I'll be back in two weeks um and until next time friends feel free to hit me up at Alexandra novik.com if you've got any questions comments or concerns would love to hear your feedback um and yeah have a good week bye guys if you enjoyed today's episode whether on YouTube or your favorite podcast app make sure to like subscribe comment or give a five star review and if you want to reach out or provide feedback shoot us a note at podcast navic dot Co or find us on Twitter and Linkedin plus if you want to learn more about what novik has to offer make sure to check out our website www.navik.com there you can sign up for the number one games industry newsletter navic digest or contact us to learn about our wide-ranging Consulting and advisory Services again that is www.navic.com thanks for listening and we'll catch you in the next episode