Using Virtual Shops to Increase Real-life Sales During Social Distancing & Unrest PGCD#2

to wrap up our monetization our monetizer track sponsored by unity i'd like to introduce uh introduce uh tracy hudson from verse and we're going to learn about using virtual shops to increase real life sales during social distancing uh and other unrest so tracy are you are you ready to take it away hi can you see me okay yes and we can hear you just fine thank you hi um we're also waiting for neil from the team if he's here as well and we also have guy i believe but thank you for having us in these wild and crazy times um i'm here to oh there he is

there we go that's me and that's a guy on there as well hello hello everyone hey guys sorry i'm just gonna do a quick thing so we were just getting started neil so if you want to kick it off and say wow yeah um now go ahead tracy i mean our talk basically is about using gaming technology or verse to increase uh sales engagement in the quarantine and beyond and maybe you want to just start with kind of some background on on everything and yourself and everything like that sure um i am a part of team verse i'm a co-founder um i my background is an interior design and also entertainment i was on a show streaming extreme home makeover for over 10 years um picker sisters on lifetime and so on and so forth i have a show on

facebook right now hollywood diy but what really drew me to verse was seeing especially in this time that we're having right now on this crazy pandemic there's just been this void of um consumer to buyer even with my clients my interior design clients here in los angeles everyone is wanting to have the experience to really see what their homes or their businesses will look like before we pull the trigger and purchase so to have that capability which is what verse is working on and what we're able to offer and um and it's all coming together beautifully um but it's really bringing these two worlds together where you can have this virtual experience and really um feel comfortable with your purchases before you actually go the distance and buy them because who wants to return anything if you will so it's the fantasy of having this

virtual habitat your your whole world that you create and you can invite friends to come into and the capability to go forward and choose items fashion interiors which of course is what really drew me in as far as even artwork and accessories and really just bring your entire space together so that it reflects who you are and you also can move forward and purchase pieces um through these companies that we're starting to work with and partner with um so to me that is mind-blowing if you will that you can have this entire space here you can see on the screen right now is an example of a loft space so you really have these whole communities where again you can invite your friends to come over have these parties which i'm sure we all

missed and are just now start starting to do again um with distance but it gives us that um feeling of creating our own space and again going back to the decor and um the actual furnishings it's i just i mean i could do this all day clearly because this is how i'm hardwired but to me even for my clients to be able to show them what their space will look like is revolutionary but to just give a little bit more background um [Music] and why we this is a particularly apt time for this technology is that um you know i was in la just yesterday and it's been now over two months that the physical shopping experience has been um you know closed and uh on top of that

uh you know uh it looks like it's gonna be extended for um you know the the goal posts keep um the goal posts keep moving in terms of when things are going to be reopening now we are going through a bit of a reopening in different uh cities and states and uh right now i'm in uh vegas which has opened uh as of last week and uh there's still going to be some um some time before before consumer habits uh come back and if they even do uh to the same degree it's questionable um so the technology is basically giving us the ability to uh recreate and that's kind of why we're here at pgc

because we're not really a gaming company but we do use game technologies and game type assets to recreate that experience and that's essentially what what we've been doing now our background and how we got into this is through the through the hardware business and several years ago now our hardware side it started with um the 3d hardware and what was special about that i don't know where that background noise is coming from uh what was special about that was that um the um the the technology displayed the assets in stereoscopic 3d um i don't know what art what guy is playing right now

and it seems like you're going all over the place um [Music] but uh that's what that's that's an example of uh a a store that is the 3d recreation of a uh 3d of a website so there's the hardware that we sell it's called verseware and what's unique about the verseware hardware is that it delivers a stereoscopic 3d image what this is what this works really well with is the use of 3d models to um allow um the viewing of them as sort of stereoscopic objects so when you're looking at items as 3d objects on one of our devices they really kind of pop out of the screen and give you better visual acuity

of what it is you're buying as a 3d object now we can't convey this on this particular presentation because none of you that are watching or have you know have the technology and uh actually what we um are doing which is a little promo for our north american clients at the very least our viewers is that we are offering people the ability to get a free 3d viewer i don't have one with me here today maybe tracy do you have it wow great all right there you go ladies and gentlemen now what happened what that 3d viewer allows you to do and it's a free little giveaway from verse and what that 3d viewer allows you to do is that snaps on to any uh cell phone and basically it turns your your 2d cell phone into a 3d viewing device

and that's free for viewers of this track first for hanging around until the um very end of the day for those of you that um have stayed up all night from north america because this started at like what midnight uh it's a reward so what you do is you basically go you can either request it through pgc if you can figure out how to reach us on the pocket gamer site on our sponsorship page but the easiest way uh to get your free 3d viewer is to go to verse.com that's virse.com and request the download of verse and when you do that we will respond and get your physical mailing address from you so that you can um [Music] receive it in the mail this is snail mail we'll talk we're talking about not email

but it will get to you in a couple of days what we're really trying to do by giving away these devices and sharing with you is to and you know this is an audience that's um we're sort of preaching to the choir here because obviously many of you are game aficionados so you're very familiar with virtual goods virtual assets 3d models and things like that but it but with the device it allows you to see our inventory in uh which are virtual goods as as 3d stereoscopic 3d models so visit verse.com download the um or hit request the download we will respond asking you for your physical address and we will mail you one of those uh complimentary vr viewers as a thank you gift for attending our event or attending our talk and if you are in the uh obviously in

on the development side or the artistic side um we are we are um expanding our uh our team in a sense and we are basically um looking for artists and designers and 3d assets that are licensed or that with the story that are authorized by the brand so we're looking for branded objects uh items like furniture that's why what that's why tracy is here tracy's been you know instrumental in our outreach um given her experience in extreme home makeover and as an interior designer as well as being a media celebrity in in you know in in the world really extreme makeover was syndicated into a global market uh am i not am i not correct tracy

well sure if i should gloat yeah we were in 69 countries at one point we had a billion viewers it was an amazing platform to have this incredible outreach and even though it hasn't been on air for i mean it is still on air it's still syndicated but um technology has changed so much so there's still that um those relationships that i have with certain vendors and favorite brands and watching these new and innovative brands come about but like you were saying neil i think this is just well it couldn't be more timely of course because of what we are going through and these relationships that we can create to have these 3d models on our platform to then go straight to the consumer i think that is the most important and having a variation of styles you know not everyone's going to be mid-century for instance or whatever it is but to really be able to curate your own style

exactly and what i think is different about verse and actually what tracy is uh sort of spearheading four verse which is sort of our technology platform is the division called shop verse and uh the differentiating factor between shop verse and the similar types of products that are out there which like for example this wayfarer ikea um some of these big brands all ours are migrating towards using 3d models and what we're trying to develop is sort of an agnostic marketplace because the reality is when you're shopping it's very unlikely that you're going to buy everything from one merchant uh for a particular use case right i mean um you may buy your table at one merchant and your um chairs at another and when you are

so too unto to sort of um facilitate that we're working with as many brands as possible so that users can get a very could create a very uh realistic uh room maybe maybe what you want to do is bring up a well you did show us the video of some of the product plate of the of the items being placed but we give you sort of some template we give users some templated show us rooms that they can use that resemble what they may be configuring and they can drop that they can drop those drop those in and there's there's something some different items that we have we've created this ui and we're expanding this um this inventory um what we are also um adding uh which is a current initiative because

we're still in beta we're actually we're we're not out in full um operation yet um but what we are adding is the ability to activate augmented reality that means you could obviously take any of these 3d assets and place them into and place them into a real life use case so you could put them into your um into your room now one of the uh realities of that is that in your current why we have also sort of focused on vr versus ar is because if you have an already outfitted room like an apartment you can't necessarily move your couch just to allow a 3d model of a couch there so we combine both we allow a user to use ar and vr

to be able to you know serve that need the best and i don't think we have any ar footage yet uh up because it's really in super early beta um but uh it's coming uh and that's that's gonna that's that's pretty exciting for us uh so yeah we're we're we are although this is a gaming conference we're also basically uh looking for brands we're looking for um designers and you know uh we will be you know running a larger outreach so this is the second time that we've been on pocket gamer digital as a sponsor and a huge thank you to this um event because some of the uh content has been tremendous and really echoes what we are preaching so to speak um about the item you know the use of virtual goods and sort of the affinity that people have to them so

uh that's great uh that everything is um uh is running really really well um tracy you know i'll let you maybe kind of finish up about how excited you are to be i am i mean just watching the development of you know the programs and everything um even in the last few months it's just accelerated in such a way in the look and feel of each product because again that's my specialty and that's what i do on a daily basis with my day job if you will um but being able to get the sense and the feel of what these products actually look like is so the fact that they're on an x y and z access access and you can really just move them around in your room with ease and sort of see what they look like to me it's just a game changer so that's

really exciting and i love that in this time of isolation i'm capable and able to invite friends to come along really share my space get their advice get their input watching our new products and our that are coming up are new things that you can add to your room the artist that we're putting into our arsenal that you can really pull from and customize your space it's just you see where it's headed and it's happening um in a fast rate so it's really just fun to watch it from sort of the ground up and um and the sky is the limit it's just yeah it's really exciting we're talking about furniture to start but ultimately we do believe that this can work for multiple verticals and multiple industries um obviously um as game developers you know that [Music] rigid virtual goods are easier to

sort of replicate than items like clothing so there's a lot of a lot of room for innovation to be able to expand this concept into you know more areas but we both see this working on a b2b level business to business at a corporate level as well as business to consumer although we are a consumer-facing product initially so we have great hopes for uh what verse can do we're we're rolling out um our rollout has sort of been accelerated by the recent um sort of pandemic and um uh in the sense that there's more of a need for it now but we are continuing to move forward we're very excited about the future hi michael hey thank you very much guys that's some pretty exciting cutting edge technology um i really like the fact that you're

willing to send us out some of those uh uh really great attachments to the phone so that i can actually try getting that great stereoscopic view uh into the into the products that you've got modeled um hey if we wanted to become partners of yours as you've suggested how could we do that who should we contact um probably the easiest way is if you go to our siteverse.com and when you hit the request download button because it is beta it actually opens up an email um and you can you can um introduce yourself and we would love to reach back out to you and as we develop our our ecosystem we will have a actual sort of forum or portal for partners to to connect with us and that's part of the rollout fantastic v-i-r-s-e and go ahead and click download now if you'd like to get in touch with them

guys thank you very much for closing out our monetizer track sponsored by unity thank you