DressX raises $15M for digital style

DressX has raised $15 million for its mission of disrupting style with digital know-how.

Greenfield led the spherical with participation from Sluggish Ventures, Warner Music, The Artemis Fund, Crimson Dao and different traders.

The funds raised will assist the corporate to scale its imaginative and prescient of the way forward for style, guarantee interoperability of the digital style property supplied by DressX, and enhance the efficiency of the DressX app and non-fungible-token (NFT) market.

It additionally hopes to develop the group, and companion with social media, gaming, and different digital platforms to proceed being the principle supplier of digital style within the metaverse.

Because the launch in August 2020, the corporate has turn into a platform for digital-only style garments, with greater than 3,500 digital objects out there within the DressX library on the web site and on the DressX app. The style tech firm sells digital clothes and accessories designed by DressX and by exterior manufacturers. The consumers can put on the clothes in AR, picture dressing, video calls, and on avatars in Decentraland and Prepared Participant Me.

The clothes are additionally bought on exterior marketplaces in digital worlds akin to Roblox, Zepeto and in Meta (Fb, Instagram, WhatsApp and Horizon Worlds) and shortly Snapchat, the place consumers can put on the clothes on their avatars.

Avatars characterize visible digital identities and are an extension of self-expression and more and more essential for the following technology. Based on a survey 60% of Gen Z and 62% of Millennials within the US consider that the best way they current themselves on-line is extra essential than how they current themselves in particular person.

Based on a Barclay Card research, almost 10% of all U.Okay. buyers are shopping for garments for the only objective of posting styled photos on social media earlier than returning them — a development that performs into digital style’s hand, consultants consider. If the one objective of shopping for the bodily merchandise is utility inside a digital atmosphere, why not purchase a digital merchandise as a substitute?

Style manufacturers have began to acknowledge the chance, which is claimed to be a $50 billion market by 2030 based on Morgan Stanley, with the gaming trade already being an important indication of the potential for manufacturers and designers.

Roblox, a Web2 digital world with over 50 million Each day Lively Customers (DAU), is a working example: In 2022 alone, greater than 11.5 million creators designed over 62 million digital clothes and accent objects on Roblox. Primarily based on Roblox’s research, because of this at the very least 200 instances as many creators are designing clothes and accessories on Roblox because the estimated variety of style designers creating bodily collections in the USA.

“Digital style is one thing we now have turn into extraordinarily enthusiastic about as a agency,” Jascha Samadi, founding companion at Greenfield, stated in an announcement. “There’s a enormous design area and a brand new paradigm rising across the query, what we’re sporting inside the metaverse. Style has all the time been a core a part of somebody‘s id and a strategy to specific your self. As we spend increasingly time in digital environments, this can equally translate past the bodily sphere and NFTs and blockchain know-how will allow true digital possession to raise one’s id. We’re very excited to see how this area will evolve over the following 5-10 years and we consider DressX might be on the forefront of shaping and driving change.”

Though the trade continues to be in its infancy, DressX has partnered with quite a few main tech, style, and way of life corporations, together with Meta, Roblox, Snapchat, Google, Coca-Cola, Farfetch and extra. The corporate has been named one of many finalists of LVMH Innovation Award 2022 within the class 3D/Digital Product Expertise & Metaverse.

“We’re desperate to proceed constructing and scaling the DressX imaginative and prescient for the longer term and implementing new options and use-cases for digital style with the assist of Greenfield. Constructing DressX as an final vacation spot for creators, manufacturers, and customers, we’re proud to companion with this crypto investor, seeing this occasion as the following massive step in the direction of giving a meta closet to each particular person on the earth”, stated Daria Shapovalova, CEO of DressX, in an announcement.

As well as, DressX is a female-led and female-founded firm. The core staff of the start-up is predicated in Los Angeles. All founding staff members have huge expertise in style and in tech. Head of product at DressX Julie Krasnienko led advertising and marketing at Looksery (acquired by Snap Inc. in 2015).