Fashion’s next Web3 opportunity: Teaching customers about NFTs and crypto wallets

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Fashion brands that released NFTs are now finding a missing piece in their Web3 strategies: many customers don’t know how to use them.

Rebecca Minkoff’s next NFT will drop on 12 October alongside a series of educational Zoom sessions that walk people through topics including how to set up a crypto wallet. She learned from her first drops that there’s a learning curve among her customers. “We need to give women more time to open their wallets and do the verification, the licences and all that,” Minkoff told Vogue Business during New York Fashion Week.

“What is a digital wallet?”, and, “What is an NFT?” are among the questions answered on the FAQ section of Prada’s Prada Crypted Discord server. Over on Gucci Vault, which is Gucci’s experimental space, FAQs address quandaries such as, “Can you tell me more about cryptocurrency?” and, “Which are the most used blockchains and what is gas?” In a section addressing questions about Gucci’s partnership with 10KTF, it answers more than 20 questions about how to acquire NFTs associated with the project. Boohoo has an entire Twitter account dedicated to the “Boohooverse”, that is designed to be “accessible, inclusive, empowering” for women entering the space.

Many fashion customers are not endemic to the communities that have had more exposure to NFTs, digital clothing and other Web3 technologies, like gamers or crypto enthusiasts. Web3 and blockchain-based projects tend to be less intuitive, given the complexity and nascency of the tech, and the risk of scamming. Some hand-holding may be necessary, unlike when brands jumped into new Web2 platforms such as Instagram.

So, to truly evolve into the next stage of the internet — and emerge from the crypto downturn with a strategy in place — brands have begun educating their existing customer base, which is often far larger and more invested in the brand than the relatively niche group of existing fashion-conscious Web3 denizens.

“It’s almost, like, what’s the point of this? What is the customer missing? Why do they need to do this? And it’s a very natural question because right now, there isn’t a lot for women. Women are totally capable of understanding Web3, but they’re not coming here to learn about goblins and gorillas. That doesn’t add value to their lives,” says Michelle Reeves, CEO and co-founder of Mavion, an NFT platform that partnered with Rebecca Minkoff.