PARIS — While brands are flocking to the buzzy metaverse known as The Sandbox, cofounder Arthur Madrid is looking the other way for his next investment — to real life.
The social-gaming entrepreneur is personally investing in Argentinian fashion label Àcheval, cofounded by Sofia Achaval de Montaigu and Lucila Sperber.
“Looking at how people create their new identity through their avatars, it makes sense to support fashion,” Madrid said on a call, crediting the brand’s strong identity and feeling of authenticity for convincing him to put his own money on the table.
While the deal’s financial terms were not disclosed, he described the brand as a “strong mix of polo, fashion and these amazing women” that was positioning itself as “probably the number-one polo brand for women.”
Related Galleries
And it’s not just his penchant for polo, or his IRL friendship with the Àcheval pair, talking. In his opinion, authenticity comes from being “built on the legacy of the culture [it is rooted in]” be it art, music or fashion, he said, drawing on his experience as an early NFT collector but also with the “creator-friendly platform” of The Sandbox, which already garnered the attention of Snoop Dogg, creative agency Al Dente or most recently Gucci, which last month revealed the purchase of a virtual plot to extend its Gucci Vault projects.
For the Àcheval duo, Madrid’s investment and arrival as a strategic partner represents an opportunity to merge the virtual and real worlds, by creating a space where consumers can experience their homeland’s pampa and equestrian culture with the idea of having “the virtual world enhances reality and vice versa,” according to Achaval de Montaigu.
But it also segues into the responsible approach they wanted from the get-go. “From the start, [we] tried to search for upcycled fabrics, work with communities and to be respectful [of humans and nature],” Sperber said, explaining that they would evolve toward limited collections that include physical products and their NFT twins.
That’s another reason why Madrid wanted to invest in Àcheval. The label is already on the path that The Sandbox’s cofounder sees fashion taking. “Brands are moving toward collectibles, building collections around scarcity and limited supplies of their pieces,” he noted. “The idea of the metaverse is to live virtually what you’re living in real life.”
FOR MORE, SEE ALSO:
EXCLUSIVE: Scalefast Research Unveils American Consumers’ Sentiment Toward the Metaverse
Year in Review: What Exactly Is the Metaverse? The Simplest Explanation of What It Means for Fashion
EXCLUSIVE: Creative Agency Buys Land in Metaverse Known As The Sandbox