Welcome to another episode of The Edge of NFT coming straight to you from Seoul, Korea, for METACON. We bring you the latest insights on companies doing incredible stuff and building out the metaverse for Web2 and Web3 brands. Listen in to hear insights from today’s esteemed panel: Andrew Ku of Altava Group, Phillipp A. Sostmann of PwC Germany, Emanuel Erdem of Exclusible, and Kyoja Hwang of LG U+[1] . Hear them speak on the developing luxury NFT marketplace, metaverse-enabled agility through VR technology, luxury metaverse commerce, and heightened customer experiences through NFTs.
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EdgeOf Asia 5: Andrew Ku, Phillipp A. Sostmann, Emanuel Erdem & Kyoja Hwang
Welcome to the episode. We're bringing you a very special one filled with content curated from our travels to Southeast Asia and beyond. Stay tuned for some amazing interviews with incredible folks. We will cut from one conversation to the next, introducing each guest as they arrive to give you the feeling like you're right there with us, jumping into each engaging conversation as it emerges. Stay tuned.
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I am here in Seoul, Korea at METACON. I finished moderating a fascinating panel with four different companies doing incredible stuff and building out the metaverse for Web2 brands as well as Web3 brands. I was able to snag Andrew for a moment to tell us a little bit more about what he's doing at ALTAVA Group. Andrew, it's great to have you on the show. It's great to have been on that panel with you. It's incredible what you've been doing. You guys have been busy.
We have been very busy. First of all, thanks for inviting me for this wonderful interview. It was a great job on the panel. I enjoyed having the panel with you. We have been extremely busy. As a product company, we begin our focus with luxury fashion but it's not just luxury fashion. It's about all possible product companies out there trying to get into the Web3 domain. To be honest with you, they are all clueless at the moment about exactly what to do, but they all know that they have to get into this space now than later. We have been busy helping them with providing the full ideas and consulting, as well as the development, and operating the virtual Web3-related projects.
You're based in Seoul but you have a global company. You put a PowerPoint slide up that had dozens of brands that you work with. Give us a little sense of the size of your operation and some of the collaborations you've worked on.
In Korea, we have 60 engineers and developers all located in Seoul, Korea. My co-founder, Elizabeth, is located in Paris. She does all the communications and brand relations in Paris.
That's a good place for her to be.
She comes from the luxury fashion side. We have a CBO or Chief Business Officer, Chiara, who joined from Balmain Group. She is in Singapore. We are a Singapore-registered company, having Korea as our R&D center. We have business units all over the world in Europe and Singapore, and two people doing the creative artwork based in London.
What about North America? Are you going to come over there at some point soon?
It's the most important market for us. That's our next focus. We would love to discuss a lot more with you how we can better approach and get into the US market.
Why don't you tell us about some of the exciting partnerships you've done in 2022? Give our audience a sense of what luxury brands can do in the metaverse that works. There's a lot of skepticism about this space still, but you have done some projects that have been quite successful.
There's a lot of confusion out there with the brands. There are so many people approaching brands and telling them all different things. There's an NFT project. There's a virtual pop-up store. There's a metaverse integration. There are so many. They are all different. The companies out there specialize in different categories within the realm of Web3, the metaverse or virtual worlds. We are the one rare company that produced a full spectrum of services where we have our own 3D digitization technology. We have one of the best avatar technologies.
We pioneered running and building virtual popup stores for brands. We come from a gaming background. We know how to put it all together to gamify a system. We have our own metaverse. We act as an A to Z total solution company. We can offer a holistic view and approach to how brands can penetrate into and take advantage of what's happening in the world now where everything is shifting to Web3. It's not just about one detached idea. What we offer to brands is one holistic idea.
You've worked with some pretty big brands. You mentioned LVMH. Did I see Burberry?
In June 2021, we have created LVMH's first official virtual ambassador. Her name is Livi. She was introduced during Viva Tech in Paris. She was at the center stage speaking to the chairman of LVMH directly. We are the creators behind Livi. We will continuously manage Livi for the LVMH group. We have also launched the very first luxury metaverse commerce with Fendi in 2021. We integrated their Summer 2021 Vertigo Collection into the metaverse where users will come in. Instead of clicking pictures and purchasing the product, they will go into the metaverse environment, engage with the avatar, and view everything in 3D. With a single click, they can purchase the real product.
We worked with Bulgari also and organized their virtual popups and exhibitions for users because high-end jewelry is only made by one piece. It's rare that even though the office has that high-end jewelry, the presence is in local markets. Digitizing the highest fidelity manner possible and showcasing it through the virtual world was the choice for Bulgari. We managed that process. We also worked with Balmain and launched numerous different fashion NFTs. The fashion NFT came with physical goods as a utility. In this case, in collaborating with The Dogpound, we had a special edition of sneakers. When you buy an NFT, the sneaker comes with it.
There are so many other virtual pop-up stores as well. We are also expanding our reach beyond luxury fashion. We launched the French car company Renault's digital campaign and NFT project. We are managing the digital campaign with the gamified system and then the NFT project that links to the digital campaign, and plugs the user experience directly into our metaverse as well as Sandbox going forward. When we speak to brands, we're not just selling or pitching to work only with us or within our metaverse only, but we offer full access to other metaverse projects as well.
That's exciting. Being a pioneer in this space and working with so many folks, you think about the future of fashion a lot. I love your perspective as we are in this "bear market." Someone told me that it's a bull market trap in a global bear market. Regardless, there are a lot of questions about how the traditional fashion industry and virtual fashion will coexist. You called it Commerce 3.0. What is your vision of Commerce 3.0? Where is this all going?
In the Web2 era, which is internet-based and eCommerce-based, everything was focused on the direct-to-consumer or D2C experience. There's only a single business model out of it, which is transaction-focused, "Buy or sell." From that, now going into Web3, everything is also shifting to the metaverse and the user experience becoming more 3D, and the user experience becoming more through your own avatar. We call it D2A or direct-to-avatar.
We are betting that, especially for younger generations, the first-ever product experience will happen first within the metaverse instead of the physical store. The D2A experience is becoming more important and then moving away from a single business model, which is transaction-focused. Going forward, how much is 3.0? It's about the community but also sharing our creativity and the economy with contributors, creators and whatnot.
What does a community mean to you? We use the word community a lot. It's becoming so common that it has lost some of its luster. When you think about the Web3 community, are there any specifics that you can pinpoint that are different from communities that existed years ago in clubs, membership groups, and local community gatherings? It can be a little bit nebulous for some people.
For example, we have a very active community on Discord and Twitter. As NFT holders, they know that if we do well, they get the benefit. In our community, we are 100% aligned.
It's like co-ownership almost.
If we do good, they do better. There's a co-ownership stance in a way. They become active marketers. Whenever we launch a new project or do something, they're the first ones to come, test, and provide us feedback. They know that as NFT holders, they will continuously receive benefits, whether through the staking model, getting white-listed for the next big NFT projects, or sharing some revenue opportunity with the holders. Our interest is 100% aligned.
Before, in Web2, it was a one-way direction. Oftentimes, we make important decisions by listening to the community. The community has enough power that we listen to them and make important decisions based on that. That's our case but there's also a DAO. It's a completely decentralized organization. All the decision-making and everything is done in a trustless way.
Are you doing that as well?
We are going in that direction. In Web3, communities are always going to play such a big role. Your efforts should be focused on not generating extra profit but building more communities going forward.
InWeb3, communities are always going to play such a big role. Click To Tweet
That's exciting. It's great to spend a little time with you. We will have to unpack this more at NFT LA. We will get you over there to LA and talk to all the folks in the US about all the exciting things you're doing because I do think that's a market that could benefit from the product suite that you're bringing to the market. Meanwhile, how can folks stay in touch with you and tap into your community?
We have over 70,000 Discord members on our Discord channel. We have active Twitter members. Those are the two major community channels where you can find us and hear about us on a daily basis.
What's your Twitter handle?
@ALTAVAGroup. You can also log into ALTAVA.com. You will see the latest NFT projects that are happening and then updates and everything about us on a daily basis.
That's exciting. Thanks for spending a little time with me. You have to get back to the office and keep building the future but I'm glad we could chat a little bit more about what you're up to.
Thank you.
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I'm excited to be here with my new friend, Philipp Sostmann from PwC Germany, who came this way to talk about the future of the metaverse in collaboration. Philipp, it's great to have you here on the show.
It's my honor.
You gave a keynote here about the real utility of the metaverse that PwC is utilizing not only for your clients but also internally. I would love for you to share what your observations have been on productivity, especially given the challenges with COVID, remote working and everything, and what you've done to increase productivity using the metaverse.
We see a big potential here. We realized in the last few years that we lack social distance. The social distance increased by so much. Normally as consultants, you work together next to each other. You are trying to create value for your clients and learning on the job. There was a study released by the Harvard Business Review or Harvard Business Manager talking about how the consulting industry has changed. Normally, you went into consulting to learn on the job, sit next to each other, and be there as a team. All that was gone from one day to another.
What we needed is a collaboration platform, which is better or has more opportunities than simply always collaborating on a screen size that is 20×30 centimeters diagonal, which in the end led to us implementing VR technology. What we did is we rolled out headsets for our teams, specifically my team. We are working daily in VR. We're doing our dailies, retros, and plannings. Even though we are just working on gaming devices or those big and bulky headsets, we see already the advantages at this early stage, which is super interesting.
What was the reaction of your team when you were like, "We're going to do this." Were they gung-ho or skeptical? What has been the feedback so far?
There are two sides. There was one part of the team which was super excited and open and saying, "I want to be there at the forefront. I want to try hiking Everest. I want to be the first one," and the other side which was very skeptical.
It's a natural change curve.
We have a university that's doing checks in parallel to have it scientifically proven what the results are. We have recorded that social distance is getting better and reducing. We have higher creativity and focus on relevant content. We have a stronger team feeling and enhanced communication, which is amazing. We're now working on big headsets. The next generation of comfortable headsets without the exhaustion effect is just about to come out.
That's pretty cool to have that type of empirical data so early. They offer so much promise. What's the opportunity for your clients in terms of collaboration, especially when you mentioned a smaller team environment? Back in the day when I was a consultant, there were usually 3 to 10-people teams, but when you're working on clients' projects, there can be as many as 50 to 100 people involved in different divisions of large companies. What do you see as the possibility there?
We have a lighthouse project in that area. We are working with a German ministry. We have a program with 150 employees working on a digitization initiative. We conducted our first program increment planning with over 70 people wearing VR headsets. We gave those people headsets and figured out that when we have the right virtual spaces arranged, we could conduct agile meetings in a perfect manner. We have our Kanban boards. We start together with 70 people. We split up and do our retros in smaller teams which are guided. We come back together, which is a super immersive feeling. It brings people back together without everyone needing to travel and spend time in a train, a plane or a car, reducing CO2 and travel costs.
The germaphobes are happy too.
It is indeed at the moment an issue.
You don't have colds or anything spreading around the office. How long are people wearing these headsets? Are they typing at the same time that they're having these meetings? I wear one of these headsets for a while. I get a little bit of a headache. What has been your experience on the ground here?
We still see this exhaustion effect, but that's also a reason why we always plan the sessions with a lot of breaks. I must admit it. Roughly 45 minutes is the max we can go, and then we take a 5 to 10-minute break to make a bio break, take a coffee, or simply do some other work. We get back into virtual reality. It's important to always charge your headset because the headset's performance is at the moment maxed out at 2 or 3 hours per charging. You always need to connect your headset again. We see some progress there but indeed, we need to always limit and time box very well our sessions. With the next generation of headsets, I hope and I'm very convinced that we will be able to endure longer without headaches.
That's exciting. Are other divisions of PwC and locations adopting this yet? Is your particular office the pioneer?
It depends on the region. In Germany, yes. In the UK and the US, PwC is having significant efforts. They're also thought leaders in the implementation and adoption of VR at work. We're doing a lot. I know that we have quite some initiatives going on parallel to stay at the forefront of it.
That's exciting. You don't hear too many stories of real-world business applications in the metaverse where there have been some proven empirical results. Hearing this for me is very encouraging about what is possible. I love that you are taking a very iterative and methodical approach with some outside research to back up what you're doing. I'm excited to follow along with what you're up to. I wish you the best. If anyone wants to learn more about this project, where do they go?
We have a website. If you simply google metaverse-enabled agility. There is a website from PwC where we have all the information. That's the right spot to go.
Philipp, thanks for hanging out with us. I'm excited to keep track of what you're up to in the metaverse to increase productivity.
Thanks.
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It has been exciting learning about everything happening in the metaverse, not only in Asia but also companies that have come here from Europe, including my new friend, Emanuel Erdem who's the Head of Metaverse for Exclusible. He came all the way from Brussels. It's great to have you on the show. It was great to have that panel together.
It was a great panel. It's nice to be on your show. Thank you for welcoming me.
I'm sure our two co-founders, Jeff and Eathan, would have loved to have been here with you. For them and the audience at home, tell us a little bit about what Exclusible is up to in this space.
We have been known for launching the luxury marketplace for NFTs. We wanted to build the far-fetch of NFTs or the meta party of NFTs. We first started with our NFT drop with 3,000-plus memberships. You can see it that way.
What was that called?
It was the Alpha drop or the genesis NFT drop off Exclusible that we sold on our landing page on our website. It sold out in 48 hours. Out of that, we created a community of enthusiasts for affluent lifestyles and luxury NFT collections. Out of that, we then started doing NFT drops with luxurious brands. We started with different brands like Hogan with the shoes and Christian Lacroix. We have done Asprey Bugatti, which was our biggest success.
We had 261 NFTs. We sold it at 3 ETH. The floor price went up to 20 ETH or even 25-something. There were many people who did a lot of money there but also fans and collectors of this NFT, which is seen as a luxurious car NFT. You have La Voiture Noire, which is a figure. You have a real physical asset that you can put on your wall and this actual statue is worth 60,000 pounds. People could receive it physically.
That's exciting. In some ways, the synergy between luxury goods and Web3 is very obvious because this idea of exclusivity in membership and being part of something special is synergistic with the luxury goods lifestyle. I'm curious about what the background of your team was and why you chose this niche, as well as what you've learned along the way in doing all these types of drops.
Many of the founders of Exclusible, especially our Chief Commercial Officer, Olivier Moingeon, come from twenty years of careers in luxury. Other members of the team have worked at different luxury groups. We have this DNA of luxury. What you mentioned about NFTs being very close to the DNA of luxury is true because NFT collections are exclusive. They're not unlimited. They are scarce, between 1,000 to sometimes 10,000 per collection, but there's an aspect of scarcity, exclusivity, and hype also created around a drop. These are also things that luxury brands try to create in the Web2 industry. You can bring that into Web3 by doing NFTs, which is perfect. That's why we see so many luxury brands that enter the NFT space.
That makes sense but even if you have a great brand in the traditional Web2 market, it's not easy to do a successful NFT drop. What have you attributed as the keys to the success of these drops that you advise luxury brands that want to get into this space?
We advise but we also act as a distributor and launchpad for them. That helps a lot. We have a lot of experience there. The difficult part is selling. Everyone can do an NFT but the difficult part is to sell. Where we brought a lot of value is that we have a community of 76,000 on Discord who are looking for luxurious products. Let's say it that way. That was very successful a few months ago but now the volume of NFTs has dropped. Any brand has difficulties now selling NFTs. We have a $10 million volume globally now. It was $1 billion. It’s a 95% drop.
Do you see a sustainable future for digital goods? If so, what does that look like?
NFTs are here to stay. It's just that we will not call these NFTs anymore. We will not probably use the word NFTs. The PFP NFT collection is the past. We are going more towards something with utilities in the digital aspect. Are there going to be collections that you sell for millions of euros? I don't know. It's more that we will use NFT technology to enhance and unlock the powers of Web3. For example, we are developing a Web3 CRM. That's the perfect tool for any brand to create a new audience, manage and do specific campaigns, and reach out to the audience with NFTs. I believe this is the future. That's also a new trend.
That sounds exciting. You displayed some beautiful Penthouses. Did you launch them? Are you launching them soon?
We launched them. That's more my expertise because they're luxury NFTs. Exclusible is divided into the luxury team with drop managers managing all the NFT drops. I'm more on the metaverse side, for example, digital real estate and Penthouses. That was my product. We launched these on the 18th of June, the day when we had the biggest crash in Ethereum in two years' time.
I remember that day.
We had everything pre-programmed. We couldn't back off. We went for it. We still made a great success out of it because we managed to sell 2,500 Penthouses. We are giving 1,000 to the community. This was a huge success that went viral beyond our expectations.
Congratulations. What are some of the features of these Penthouses?
They're built on Spatial.io, which is the platform. First of all, on Spatial, when you create a space, these do not come as NFTs but we transformed the ownership of the space into an NFT, meaning that you buy the NFT and connect your MetaMask wallet to Spatial. Spatial recognizes that you have the NFT. The space appears in your space. You can access your Penthouse.
You then benefit from all the advantages of Spatial, which is an integrated avatar for Ready Player Me, and then you have all the different features that you have on Spatial where you can decorate, look at, and feel the Penthouse. You can upload NFTs on the walls. You can have QR codes and JPEGs. You can stream it. You can have many different use cases. We have companies that established their HQ there. Maybe you will launch your show in the metaverse in one of our Penthouses.
It's possible.
I'm happy to make that happen by offering you a Penthouse for that reason.
That is very generous. It's hard to say no to a Penthouse, especially with all the perks that you are throwing in. Is there anything else on your roadmap that you're particularly excited about and you're inspired by?
We acquired a studio, which allows us to become the most premium metaverse builders on the more photo-realistic metaverses. We have many big projects. We have also four very big IPs that we closed. I cannot disclose them now. They are big projects coming first on the NFT side but also on the metaverse in terms of activations. We're also working with other platforms like Journee, for example. We have projects with DAO.
We launched during the Immerse Global Summit in Madeira a project that's powered and recognized by the government of Madeira, which is the island of Madeira digitally replicated in the metaverse. It's a digital twin of the island. We are managing the sales of the lands. Anyone can build there virtually. You get a construction license from the government. You can build there anything you want. People travel and go to the island. You put on the AR there, and you can see what people have built. At the same time, it's a sustainable project. Ten percent of the profits go to sustain nature and the lands.
That's pretty cool. People can go to your website to learn more about that.
Go to www.Exclusible.com. You can see all the projects that we have. The Madalia project will be online. I'm also managing personally private sales of bigger plots of land. We have also another project that we're launching, which is IP. It's a sports car. This is also an NFT drop that we launched. You can check it out.
I can feel your passion for what you do. It sounds like you have a very awesome job that you enjoy.
I love my job. I've never had so much fun in my life since I joined Exclusible. It has been a hell of a ride in terms of everyone who works in Web3 and NFTs. These are long days. It's 24/7, seven days a week. When you go to sleep in Europe, the Asians and Americans wake up. It never ends. We have a community. You have to maintain them. It's a passionate industry that is probably the fastest evolving in the world. If you want to stay and keep up to date, you need to fit in yourself constantly with what's happening. That can be sometimes tiring. It also feels like it has been ten years but I love it.
That has been the new metaphor. One year in Web3 is like seven years like dog years or something like that. It certainly feels that way sometimes but it's great to meet entrepreneurs like you and companies like Exclusible that are doing so many exciting things. I'm glad I got a chance to learn more about what you're up to. We will be tracking all the goodness to come. Thanks for your time.
Thank you very much, Josh. I will give you a Penthouse. I would love to show you around the Penthouse so I can show you how you could potentially register for your next episode in it.
It sounds like fun. I'll take you up on that.
I hope to see you in NFT LA also.
I would love to have you there.
Thank you very much. Thank you for your time.
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We are in Seoul, Korea for this wonderful event. We are right by the Seoul Tower. We are here with Hwang from LG U+. Please tell us what you do.
I'm a team leader of a blockchain service design team. I made many business scenarios. We test use cases. My team is an R&D team.
Thank you for being with us on the show. First of all, I would like to ask you about what LG is doing around the metaverse and their involvement. What is their view of what is going on in the metaverse and the space in general?
We prepare metaverse services for hybrid work environments for companies. Next, we prepare AI through the metaverse. It's for the younger generation, children, their parents, and so on. We think that in the future, the metaverse will help us to enable customers' new experiences.
That's great. It seems to me that you are focusing closely on the new generation and their families to get them into a little bit more of the future of what is going to be here soon. I've heard that you also are a product manager for the Moono NFT project. Please tell me more about what this is about.
Moono is a character. It's an octopus. It's small and cute. We made it a PFP NFT. We're gathering fans of Moono. We talk with NFT holders on the Discord channel. We experience new conversations with customers.
That's great. When did you start working on that project?
In May 2022.
What got you into starting with the NFT project as well?
We studied the metaverse from 2021. We were taking NFT projects at the end of 2021.
That's great. Can I ask you a little bit more about the future of what LG U+ is doing in this space? What is next? What do you feel is coming in the future?
We prepared several metaverse studies. We are going to open in 2023. It's not easy to make a metaverse service because it's a 3D space with avatars. There are lots of techniques needed. We want to make a metaverse service step-by-step.
You want to take your time to build it pretty well and make sure that it's well done, and not rushed. That makes sense. Thank you so much for being with us. Can you please tell us where we can go to find out more about what LG U+ is doing? What kind of channels? Maybe Twitter or Discord. Where do we go to find out more?
I recommend you the Moono NFT website. It's MoonoNFT.com.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you being on the show. We can't wait to hear more. It's nice to meet you.
It's nice to meet you.
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We have reached the outer limit at The Edge of NFT. Thanks for exploring with us. We've got space for more adventures on this starship, so invite your friends and recruit some cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. How? Go to iTunes, rate us, and say something cool. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole.
Important Links
- METACON
- ALTAVA Group
- Sandbox
- Discord - ALTAVA
- Twitter - ALTAVA
- NFT LA
- PwC
- Exclusible
- Alpha
- La Voiture Noire
- Discord - Exclusible
- Penthouses
- Spatial.io
- Ready Player Me
- Journee
- Madalia
- LG U+
- Moono
- iTunes - Edge of NFT
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