Genies, a popular digital avatar startup, has officially announced the launch of its NFT marketplace called the warehouse.
The warehouse is an NFT marketplace for digital wearables. The newly launched Warehouse was previously only accessible by a group of invite-only beta users in December last year. The new marketplace is now available to the public.
Users can now access the marketplace via the Genies Studio app which allows functions like creating their avatars and purchasing digital wearables.
Genies chose a select group of initial creators to design the first batch of collections on the platform, which will be sold as NFTs. One of the company’s first partners is photographer and influencer Tati Bruening with over 327k followers on the popular photo-sharing platform, Instagram.
Warehouse Allows Creators To Have Property Rights
As per arrangements, creators will protect the intellectual property rights to their designs. Further, each time their item is resold, the creator will get a cut of the revenue while Genies takes a 5% cut from each sale.
The warehouse’s in-app tools also allow users to personalize the digital wearables they have purchased from The Warehouse.
Speaking at a recent interview, Genies CEO Akash Nigam said:
“Creators will be selling their own avatar fashion and the ones that they’ve customized over the past couple of months. And when they do sell out — let’s say someone sells like 100 items, and let’s say that if a fan or follower or anybody within the community decides to buy it for their own avatar, they also now have the rights to be able to edit it or DIY it within the studio platform, so they can use the tools and create a derivative collection, and then sell the derivative fashion line in The Warehouse.”
Genies Beats Competition With Formidable Partnerships
Genies currently stand tall among its competitors due to its high-profile celebrity partnerships secured with the likes of Migos. As avatar NFT fashion becomes crowded, similar companies are finding it difficult to stand out. Web3 fashion house, The Fabricant, has characterized itself through luxury brand coalitions, and many other brands including Adidas, Prada, and Gucci are beginning to use NFTs. Nike’s Dunk Genesis Cryptokicks even includes the use of augmented reality (AR) in its fashion NFTs.
Among the known high-profile celebrities Genies secured a partnership with include Justin Bieber, and Cardi B. These personalities have proven useful in Genies’ release of its long-anticipated NFT storefront, “The Warehouse.”
Arguably, a fundamental difficulty for the NFT fashion business in the future is ensuring that collections are able to function on avatars across different metaverses. Genies last amassed a $1 billion valuation from heavy-hitting tech investors including Silver Lake and Mary Meeker’s Bond Capital during its most recent raise, a $150 million Series C round announced in April.
