Today’s [beauty] brands rely on intermediaries to acquire and retain customers. Social media platforms and their ad-marketplace counterparts [Meta, YouTube, TikTok], fueled by KOLs and other creative stars of the day, have become the key beneficiaries of brand spend, and strategic focus for the consumer industry, leaving customers to be passive consumers of brand content via third party curation. This results in poorer customer experiences, less innovative products and reliance on intermediaries, who are the focal point of capital allocation and effectiveness.

KIKI launches with the mission of giving power to the passionate – customers i.e. the most important participants in the value chain, customers, by converting them to brand co-creators and co-owners. Outlining new principles for consumer commerce, where creativity, participation and customer advocacy are rewarded. On-chain product ownership creates built-in revenue streams linked to product sales, and these mechanisms result in  market leading consumer innovation, loyalty, capital efficiency and brand value that can be shared by all key stakeholders.

KIKI does this in three primary ways:

1. First party data — customer and community input in the form of voting [as an input on product and its attributes], and actual physical product use. This then informs which products will be manufactured and builds the customer and community stake therein.

2. Allowing customers to own their individual expressive identities and preferences on chain, via the minting of a personalized personal KIKI World Pass, a soul bound non-transferrable token [SBT]. Giving the customer agency over their personal data for the first time.

3. Offering virtual assets ownership linked to physical products and corresponding sales revenues; e.g. product colors and formulas, on-chain. Unlocking a fully decentralized model for anyone and everyone to be able to “mint” and therefore own, unique colors and formulas they love,benefit from the sales and brand success of these products.

By contrast, the current ecosystem of web2 platforms creates brand and consumer dependency on 3rd party data [and influence], top down flow of communication, from brand to customer, which not only allocates funds to 3rd party publishing platforms instead of to products or in a product <> customer interface, but also results in product preferences being predetermined by 3rd party publisher algorithms as primary first inputs rather than customers themselves.

In the current world;

CUSTOMERS –Although  customer choice has increased thanks to targeting and listening algorithms, customers are still only participating at the last point of the value chain, with binary purchase/non-purchase decisions. The value of customer attention and engagement with a brand is captured by the platforms, who charge brands, leaving customers’ time and input worthless and unrewarded, leaving [unverified and often web-scattered] customer reviews and a purchase as the only brand <> customer interface. With  zero value created for the customer if non-purchase is the outcome.

In KIKI World;

CUSTOMERS – earn points for doing things they’re already naturally doing, i.e. using products in real life,  sharing product experiences on social media, making product recommendations to friends, and most importantly, the customer is the first not the last port of call for product inception. Each product and its attributes that KIKI launches is the result of customer voting, and therefore effectively customers staking the products’ existence into being from the beginning . KIKI Customers and members are rewarded for being engaged, not only in return for being purchasers.

Customers will vote on key product decisions based on the KIKI World NFTs they hold. Every SBT holder will be eligible to vote, and the weight of their vote will scale based on the other KIKI World NFTs held in their wallet. To ensure an accessible voting process for everybody, initial voting will happen off-chain, after users verify their on-chain KIKI World holdings. Additional points earned through user participation will be accrued in a database tied to the user’s SBT, and point totals will be publically available on the KIKI World website.

As KIKI World progressively decentralizes operations, token holders will get decision-making power at a high level. Some examples of future actions we want users to take are: propose and develop new products, create a suite of tools on top of KIKI World data, and support other creators building in the web3 x beauty space.

In the current world;

BRANDS –spend on marketing efforts is often reactionary to platform trends and customer data model innovation suggestions, often at the cost of investing in true innovation.

Furthermore, brand dependency on third party data, cookies and other intermediary technology subject to strategic or regulatory shifts makes the existing consumer brand business model, and associated metrics such as CAC, LTV or Revenue extremely volatile and fragile[as demonstrated by the collapse of D2C brand valuations and overall viability, initiated via iOS privacy updates].

In KIKI World;

While we certainly leverage the existing ecosystem for new consumer prospecting; KIKI invests in its community, and builds products based on KIKI member input through voting, product use, and product engagement and recommendations, focusing both on commercial and physical product innovation. Ultimately KIKI is building a world where KIKI co-owns its products with its customers; and platform spend is downstream from customer buy-in.

On-chain data and KIKI member traits will give KIKI world and other beauty brands unparalleled access and  understanding of  their customer base. KIKI member traits will be queryable from the blockchain, enabling anyone interested to understand subsets of the beauty market. This is invaluable insight for  future product development and launches.

Initial KIKI World user data will live mostly off-chain, enabling KIKI to move quickly building accessibility with web2 users in mind. Initially sers’ SBTs will be the single source of truth connecting digital identities to personal information within KIKI World. Over time, KIKI  will transition all non-PII information to on-chain. Users’ SBTs will however always remain their connection point to their PII (e.g., name, email address, mailing address) in the KIKI World database.

In current world;

CONTENT CREATORS/COLLABORATORS – who have fueled brand success of much of current consumer brand landscape through their audiences or their creative work, are remunerated as a function of brand marketing budgets or platform models, having their efforts capped arbitrarily, and without benefiting from the value they create for brands [and their customers]. This second class IP / Talent Collaboration has suffered a historical heritage of complex partnership and / or IP contract negotiations contracted on a one-by-one basis that has never been  realistically equally transparent or accessible to digital creators. Additionally, KOLs today rely on third party or brand owned data, and their sharing threshold for any understanding of their audience at all, making creator monetization a tedious “platform by platform” experience.

In KIKI World;

Customers, content creators and corporate collaborators are all on an equal playing ground, with equal opportunity to stake products being made through voting, and in product ownership by owning virtual assets that correspond to physical product sales. This way anyone who loves a KIKI product they enjoy using can benefit from its success, by participating in royalty sharing  through on-chain ownership, being rewarded for its promotion with KIKI points,regardless of  whether they opt-in for blockchain asset ownership or not

Certain traits of KIKI World projects (e.g., colors and textures) will live as ERC-721 NFTs that can be owned, sold, and traded by KIKI members. Anytime a product is purchased with a given trait, the wallet holding the corresponding NFT will be rewarded with KIKI points and/or royalties from that product sale. While KIKI World products will be sold on a standard web2 storefront, sales will trigger a smart contract to pull cryptocurrency from a KIKI-owned treasury to the NFT-holder’s wallet.

In current world;

CAPITAL/RESOURCE EFFICIENCY –  Traditionally, because of supply chain latency in physical product purchases, combined with immediate customer satisfaction expectations in the category en masse, product purchases and physical product delivery are  immediate, or occur during a maximum a week long cycle. This requires significant capital outlays in product development and inventory purchases 9-24 months ahead of realizing sales, thus resulting in a commercial focus of marketing existing products, rather than developing  that customers currently want. This affects customer acquisition costs, and ultimately results in suboptimal capital allocation, inventory waste, and or unrealized sales potential, inherent in long-lead-time forecasting

In KIKI World,

We’re building the platform for community staked products, resulting in 1 unit of capital being deployed against 1 unit of previously demanded product, with built in rewards for repeat sales. We are laying the foundation for a value creation flywheel, with maximum capital efficiency and customer wants being met at the same time, resulting in both product and participation efficiencies and upside.

In conclusion, KIKI revolutionizes the beauty industry by empowering customers as co-creators and co-owners through on-chain ownership and decision-making, fostering unparalleled innovation, loyalty, and capital efficiency, and ultimately transforming the customer-brand relationship into a mutually rewarding, decentralized experience

In essence, KIKI World pioneers a new era in the beauty landscape, uniting customers, creators, and brands in a synergistic, decentralized ecosystem that transcends the sum of its parts and paves the way for shared success, innovation, and value.