Coach’s big metaverse test

This article on Coach is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Technology Edit, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis and our NFT Tracker, sign up for membership here. Even as fashion’s metaverse moment continues its quiet streak, Coach is embarking on a large-scale project that brings its ‘Find Your Courage’ campaign to metaverse worlds Roblox and Zepeto, starting on 19 July. It celebrated the launch with a party on Wednesday night at its New York Fifth Avenue store, dubbed ‘Coach House’, inviting gaming influencers who have also been tapped to promote the appearances on their socials, along with their gifted physical goods. Coach will have month-long integrations in Roblox fashion styling experiences Fashion Klossette (created by supermodel Karlie Kloss) and Fashion Famous 2, alongside an ongoing experience within Zepeto, where users can buy and wear Coach items developed in collaboration with creator Nova to produce short-form videos that can be posted on Zepeto’s in-game social feed. Both Roblox integrations invite players to compete in styling challenges, including a cross-experience scavenger hunt that rewards players with a virtual Coach piece. People playing the Roblox games can acquire and wear both free and paid-for limited-edition digital Coach apparel, which has been largely modelled after Coach’s Spring/Summer 2024 campaign — plus a few digital-only embellishments. The quilted Tabby bag will be a hero item, similar to in the physical campaign, and items such as a leather jacket will take advantage of Roblox’s improved lighting effects. Each experience is inspired by three of the five ‘themes’ that make up the house’s SS24 campaign — colourful world, summer world and floral world — which saw ambassadors including Lil Nas X and Camila Mendes appear alongside Coach’s virtual ambassador Imma in scenes that were inspired by artificial intelligence-generated art. The project came at the end of the campaign, and took a year to develop, says Kimberly Wallengren, the brand’s North America VP of marketing. “We weren’t in a race for it; we wanted to do it right. It was done with intention and not with speed,” Wallengren says. Part of that process, she adds, was finding the right partners who could help advise and create an experience that was representative of Coach while also appealing to the endemic communities. Data plays a major role, says Giovanni Zaccariello, Coach’s SVP of global visual experience, who oversees both physical and digital projects. “It’s a test-and-learn agenda,” he says. Going forward, the team will be closely looking at how people behave, and how much time they spend, to inform future direction in terms of gaming platform, gameplay and items available. Dwell time will be a key metric of success; they will also hope to learn if the community prefers direct digital twins of physical items, or if Roblox-specific quirks like wings or headdresses and other accessories will be most popular. Coach will sell around 30 digital pieces on Roblox. The prices are on a scale that mimics the real world, converted to Robux. So while a $100 item might be 100 Robux, the dollar conversion is much lower. The team worked with metaverse analytics agency Geeiq to identify the best experiences for Coach to convey a sentiment of self-expression, as well as Sandbox Studios to digitise the garments and more. Going forward, there could be the option to expand to other regions or build on the campaign, Zaccariello says. Of course, there is the assumption that affinity for Coach among Roblox users will also convert into sales outside of the games. Roblox reports that 84 per cent of Gen Z say their avatar style influences their physical-world fashion choices, and 84 per cent also say they are at least somewhat likely to consider trying a brand in the physical world after wearing or trying on an item virtually. While this is billed as Coach’s first big metaverse play, it’s not the first time the brand has appeared in a metaverse world or created digital goods. In April of last year, it developed an experience within Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), centred around the Tabby bag campaign. It was a leader among the brands in terms of time spent, totalling more than 31,000 minutes over the four-day period (jeweller Ben Bridge was highest at 47,695 minutes), and kept people engaged via a series of challenges and artist collaborations, according to Geeiq data. Its free Tabby wearable was claimed 553 times out of a total 100,000 available (rewarded after visitors successfully completed the challenges). The brand also tested an augmented reality mirror, created with AR tech startup Zero10, in a New York store last May. These experiments revealed untapped potential, says Zaccariello. “There are a lot of Gen Z we aren’t talking to today,” he continues. The Zero10 mirror, of course, only reached those passing by on the street, while MVFW garnered somewhere between approximately 9,000 and 26,000 visits over the four-day period, according to differing reports from Geeiq and host Decentraland; by comparison, Roblox sees approximately 70 million daily active users. Coach will also be hosting demonstrations in its Fifth Avenue store this weekend to help drive awareness of the new metaverse worlds. Integrations offer a somewhat fresh approach to appearing on Roblox in which a brand pays to have a presence in an existing popular experience for a specific amount of time; integrations, meanwhile, enable the brand to maximise an existing engaged audience — and collect data on preferences — while deferring to the game creators on mechanics and other nuts and bolts that require endemic expertise. Coach also has the opportunity to earn partial revenue on any sales of their items that are sold on both platforms. A multi-pronged metaverse platform approach is also trending among brands. Gucci created three corresponding metaverse gaming experiences to coincide with the debut show from creative director Sabato De Sarno, and Tommy Hilfiger has recently aired live Roblox footage during New York Fashion Week. Fashion Famous 2 is launching at the same time as the Coach experience debuts; earlier than planned, but worthwhile to launch alongside Coach, says Sandbox Studios studio director Elisha Trice, who worked on building Fashion Famous 2. The Fashion Famous 1 version, the most-visited fashion experience on Roblox, has attracted more than 2.2 billion visitors since it opened more than four years ago, says Geeiq’s Carolina Nasr, who worked with Coach on this project. Trice anticipates that the audience will respond well to the bags, the improved fidelity of the items and the fact that it’s the game’s first luxury partner. “Engagement time goes up with brands that resonate,” she adds. (Past collaborators include L’Oréal.) Fashion Klossette, helmed by supermodel Karlie Kloss, opened in March of last year and has attracted more than 30 million visitors since. Additional integrations, a standalone experience within Roblox or other platforms, more digital wearables, expansion into other markets or even a standalone gaming app could be down the line, says Zaccariello, outside of this current campaign. Player behaviour will be key. “We don’t do anything the consumer doesn’t direct us to do — that’s really how we make our choices,” Wallengren says. “If the consumer loves it, we will play in it, no matter what the noise is.” Wallengren adds that the key question for any innovation like this is: can it scale? “If it can be scaled, it’s a great opportunity.” Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

Make better business decisions

More technology stories from Vogue Business

Make better business decisions