Burberry Bridges NFT With Physical Limited-Edition Scarf Ahead Of Alibaba Singles’ Day

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Sin­gles’ Day, China’s annu­al shop­ping phe­nom­e­non makes a return this year with new prod­ucts and ser­vices to re-ener­gize con­sumers’ appetite. In 2020, the Chi­nese e‑commerce plat­form raked in $74 bil­lion in Gross Mer­chan­dis­ing Vol­ume and is expect­ed to achieve a size­able rev­enue once again. Tak­ing last year’s learn­ings pow­ered by fail­proof livestream­ing strate­gies and the new NFT (non-fun­gi­ble token) trend, Chi­na is set to break anoth­er record success.

Just shy of a month away from the cyber fes­ti­val, Alibaba’s Tmall mar­ket­place has kicked off its ‘Tmall Super Brand Day’. A mega-sale cam­paign dri­ven to spot­light select brands for Chi­nese con­sumers, for­eign brands flock towards the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cement their foot­print in the lucra­tive Chi­na mar­ket and at the doorsteps of 1.4 bil­lion consumers.

Tmall Enters the Metaverse

This year, Tmall launched a ‘Dou­ble 11 Meta­verse Art Exhi­bi­tion’ with­in its mobile app, pre­sent­ed by meta-human vir­tu­al idol Ayayi. Devel­oped by Ran­mai tech­nol­o­gy, the avatar is a hyper-real­is­tic dig­i­tal­ized per­son who has an appear­ance com­pa­ra­ble to a real human. With Chi­nese con­sumers increas­ing inter­est to engage with new tech­nolo­gies and flaw­less vir­tu­al idols, Ayayi has already amassed near 114,000 fol­low­ers and attract­ed the atten­tion of top lux­u­ry brands includ­ing Guerlain.

The exhi­bi­tion acts as a cam­paign lead­ing up to the Dou­ble 11 event, show­ing eight lim­it­ed col­lec­tions from dif­fer­ent brands in the form of NFTs, with British lux­u­ry label Burber­ry being a part of it. The NFTs are sold at afford­able price points remov­ing the bar­ri­ers of entry to improve con­sumer accep­tance and par­tic­i­pa­tion of the new dig­i­tal art form.

Being a pio­neer in inno­v­a­tive dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy with­in the fash­ion realm, it comes as no sur­prise Burber­ry is involved. Hav­ing debuted luxury’s first-ever social retail store in Shen­zhen equipped with social com­merce and a gam­i­fied AR expe­ri­ence, the label this time has for­ayed into the blockchain scene. Pre­vi­ous­ly, the brand part­nered with Myth­i­cal Games and cre­at­ed a vinyl NFT toy of its sig­na­ture Sharky B char­ac­ter clad in Burberry’s mono­gram print, and sold out all 750 NFT units with­in 30 seconds.

For Sin­gles’ Day, Burber­ry unveiled a 3D ani­ma­tion of its deer mas­cot. Users can inter­act with the dig­i­tal piece, click­ing into the muse­um gallery to view the deer don­ning a Burber­ry scarf. As per the gallery’s descrip­tion, the design con­cept of the NFT was ideat­ed from Ayayi’s friend­ship with Burberry’s deer, who plays the part of being her fash­ion advisor.

In pro­mo­tion of Sin­gles Day, Burber­ry will be launch­ing 1000 units of the deer NFT with a lim­it­ed-edi­tion scarf at RMB2900 ($454). Each with a unique iden­ti­fi­er, the piece is guar­an­teed to be one-of-a-kind. Upon pur­chase, buy­ers will also receive the scarf phys­i­cal­ly and can access their NFT col­lec­tion with­in an Ali­pay mini pro­gram. As of cur­rent, Tmall only accepts a RMB100 deposit before the piece is open for sale on Novem­ber 11. 

Trading NFT’s in Crypto-less China

Since May, China’s cen­tral bank and the Nation­al Devel­op­ment and Reform Com­mis­sion out­lawed cryp­tocur­ren­cy min­ing and declared all trans­ac­tions ille­gal. The June pub­li­ca­tion of Com­mu­nist Par­ty-owned People’s Dai­ly stat­ed that the NFT Mar­ket “can be hyped up, lead­ing to chaos, while decen­tral­i­sa­tion may lead to secu­ri­ty con­cerns.”. Despite so, China’s recent 14th Five-Year Plan which runs from 2021 to 2025 has pin­point­ed blockchain to be a key tech­nol­o­gy and pri­or­i­ty in the build of its dig­i­tal econ­o­my. The only dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy cur­rent­ly legal for ten­der is China’s own dig­i­tal yuan (e‑CNY) pegged to the renminbi. 

How­ev­er, even China’s largest tech­nol­o­gy play­ers can­not dis­re­gard the NFT trend. Despite the ongo­ing crack­down on Big Tech firms in an attempt to reg­u­late the finan­cial mar­ket, this has not stopped the BAT (Baidu, Aliba­ba and Ten­cent) trio from build­ing their own semi-pri­vate blockchain infra­struc­ture as a workaround of the sys­tem. The token­less blockchain infra­struc­ture is adapt­ed in com­pli­ance with the local reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment, fur­ther mon­i­tored by a select­ed group of mem­bers includ­ing gov­ern­ment bodies. 

Aliba­ba has since launched its own NFT mar­ket­place, invit­ing bud­ding cre­atives to tokenise their intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty on its plat­form. How­ev­er, users are unable to sell or trans­fer pur­chas­es with­out vio­lat­ing the nation’s finan­cial law. While typ­i­cal­ly NFT trans­ac­tions are bound with cryp­tocur­ren­cy, the tech giants have been able to decou­ple the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy by allow­ing con­sumers to make pay­ments direct­ly with Chi­nese yuan as paid through Ali­pay and WeChat pay.

The Future of China’s NFT Landscape

Among Chi­nese con­sumers, the own­er­ship of an NFT is not to make mon­ey, but a sta­tus sym­bol for the new gen­er­a­tion of Chi­nese who are well-versed in tech­nol­o­gy with an appre­ci­a­tion for the arts – valu­ing expe­ri­ences and intan­gi­bles over the mate­ri­al­is­tic goods they are known for. 

Despite NFT trad­ing being pro­hib­it­ed, Chi­na has shown inno­v­a­tive ways to bypass the ban with a unique blockchain sys­tem that does not require cryp­to to trade. For this, cre­ators can con­tin­ue to mon­e­tize their work and brands will lever­age NFTs to gen­er­ate engage­ment with new expe­ri­ences. Many brands are also tra­vers­ing the dig­i­tal ledgers into tan­gi­ble items as an exten­sion of their engage­ment with the buy­er in the real world. 

The con­nec­tion between the vir­tu­al and real-world is no longer restrict­ed with­in a game, a show­case of how soci­ety is evolv­ing towards a hybrid meta­verse future. Despite the strin­gent sur­veil­lance on cryp­tocur­ren­cy move­ments, the NFT mar­ket will still be rapid­ly devel­op­ing with con­tin­ued high val­u­a­tion among the arts, gam­ing and invest­ment field in China.

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