We have something a little bit different to talk to you about today. Actually, it is massively different from anything that we normally talk about on this website. We are in the business of talking about proper tennis shoes. Ones that you can put on your feet, head out onto the court, and perform surprisingly well with. Today, we are talking about a pair of tennis shoes that isn’t quite a pair of tennis shoes. In fact, it is just…well, you will see.
Gucci Launches Virtual Tennis Shoes
Yep. That is right. A virtual pair of tennis shoes.
Gucci realized that there are some people that cannot afford their shoes. In fact, they came right out and said that their shoes are unaffordable for many. However, they also admitted that people still want to wear their shoes. So, they came up with the next best alternative; virtual tennis shoes [1]. Well, we suppose the next best alternative would have been creating an affordable line of shoes, but virtual tennis shoes come close, right?
Using the app ‘Wanna’, users are able to purchase the Gucci virtual tennis shoes for roughly $9. All that you need to do after that is point the camera at your feet and, bam, you can see what it would look like if you were wearing an actual pair of Gucci shoes.
Whether this is something that interests you or not, we don’t know. In recent years, a lot of companies have actually started to introduce virtual shoes. However, they mostly do it with the intention of encouraging people to buy their product. The virtual shoes, essentially, allow the companies to market themselves. If they show you what their shoes will look like on your feet, then you are probably more likely to be parting with your cash, right? Gucci isn’t doing this. They are not creating these virtual tennis shoes with the intention of selling shoes to people. They are creating them to put a bit of extra cash in the bank and make their brand seem a little bit more ‘unique’ against the masses of other companies around there.
These are NFT Shoes
If you don’t know what NFT is (or a non-fungible token), then perhaps the best way to explain it is a ‘unique digital product’. If you know what cryptocurrency is, then each component of a cryptocurrency has a unique identifier. This allows that particular piece of cryptocurrency to be sold to somebody else.
NFT works in much the same way. However, you don’t have a cryptocurrency, you have a digital product. In recent months, people have been selling their old tweets for several hundred thousand to millions of dollars. You may have seen it. They are really selling the unique identifier that somebody owns that tweet.
Anyway, each of the shoes that Gucci launches will be an NFT shoe. This means that they will all have their own unique identifier, much like a real pair of expensive shoes. The intention is to allow people to trade their virtual shoes with other people. Gucci are trying to make their virtual reality shoes limited edition, basically.
Now, we are going to say that this probably won’t be taking off in the way that Gucci probably hopes that it will take off. This is mostly marketing for them. We doubt that there is ever going to be a major market, or any market, for tradeable virtual reality clothing. Although, we suppose that stranger things have happened.
Digital Luxury Tennis Shoes
That being said, the Wanna app, where these shoes are listed, believes that in 10-years, the virtual reality market for digital clothing will form a substantial chunk of the income that some of the luxury brands make. Since this guy is probably doing a lot of studies on the digital clothing trend since his whole business is based upon it, we are sure that he is probably telling the truth. There is certainly a future in the market. A lot of people have already started to download these NFT shoes.
If you want to try on and own a pair of these Gucci virtual reality shoes yourself, then you can download the Wanna app. You never know, you may just end up loving walking around with a camera pointed at your feet, thinking about just how good you look wearing a pair of Gucci shoes, right?
References
- https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/367425
- https://www.instagram.com/p/B7ylxvJDsnw/ [Gucci Instagram – Image Source]
