There’s a shift happening in the consumer brand space. Fashion in particular has become a commodity-driven industry where customers are yearning for originality, beyond the typical brand aesthetics and advertising that is fed to them and thousands of others.
Brands are struggling to balance maintaining their authenticity with following trends as they pursue curation, taste, and a sense of cultural belonging. Many are tempted to ignore fads to focus on creating something that speaks to a particular identity or subculture, but avoiding trends or traditional collection-based production cycles can be a risky endeavor in the high-cost online retail environment. In such a competitive and demanding industry, how can designers and brands create products that speak to their audience, while not simply surviving, but thriving?
We have seen experiments emerge that could, if successful, in theory, mitigate or drastically reduce upfront costs and dead stock waste including demand-driven production, new forms of e-commerce visual merchandising, and connected products. Creating these more direct commerce links could not just reduce waste, but build stronger connections between the brand, designer, and customer. This can happen through -
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Push vs pull systems in manufacturing: Oftentimes brands design and produce pieces without a guarantee of sales - this current “push model” often requires between $2,000 and $20,000 or more to cover upfront production costs. This comes without any guarantee that the stock will be sold. A “pull model” aligns production with customer demand. Producers only order material and begin production after an order is made and minimums hit i.e. pre-order, presale, or made-to-order methods. These methods subvert inventory challenges, reduce dead stock, and better serve the limited demand for a specific product.
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3D renders and generative AI models for visual merchandising: Visual merchandising is one of the most important factors in setting up an online shop. Showcasing products is essential when we consider that 30% of online purchases result in returns, a persistent and expensive challenge (source). Often, though, showcasing relies on having samples ready for a dedicated photoshoot that can cost anywhere from $500 to $1000 up to $20k, or more. With these challenges, using 3D digital renders or virtual try-on models of a product for presale could soon become far more common, like how 3D renders are used for showcasing on these drop examples here and here. Cutting-edge generative AI models and studios that generate digital product showcasing like Flux, Daisy and CALA provide more flexibility, could reduce upfront costs and coordination, and allow designers and brands to sell a product concept to their customers immediately.
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Customer/community opt-in during the design phase: With co-creation, customers actively contribute to a product’s outcome. We have seen this from traditional brands like Nike and Lego that have co-created designs with customers. Some platforms such as Offscript are experimenting with community-led voting (through “likes”) to determine final product designs and concepts. Designers can upload designs or use Offscript’s in-app generative AI studio to draft a submission. Once a submitted design passes a threshold of community likes or preorders, production into a physical piece can commence. According to their website, their community contests are seeing between 5k to 10k submissions per month on average.
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Chipped connect product experiences: Chips using NFC and RFID technology are commonly used to verify product authentication for counterfeit prevention, provenance, and tracking for retail, supply chain management, marketing, and access campaigns. “Connected products” are consumer goods with chips used to house product metadata useful for things like Digital Product Passports, and helping track production sustainability. More and more, though, these chips in consumer products are being used as a marketing tool to connect customers to a brand through interactive advertising, loyalty programs, event marketing, and data transfer.
At Crowdmuse, we’ve worked with our network of fashion designers, 3D designers, and culture brands to experiment across the above areas. Now, as part of a contest in collaboration IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency we want to experiment with you. Just submit your product design or brand concept. Here is how it works -
Contest overview
(1) Submit your design concepts
Whether you have a concept for a brand, or your existing brand has a concept for a new drop, submit the designs, concept and story on a one-page Figma file. Leave the scraps and references in the file too - we love the scraps! :)
To qualify each submission needs a Figma file prepared and promo image(s) minted on Crowdmuse via the Create page - see example here. To get a head start you can submit your design concept proposal here. Check out the Contest Handbook for more information.
You have 10 days to submit, from 30th Sept to 9th Oct 2024.
(2) Community vote on Jokerace and points on Stack Leaderboard
Qualified profiles can enter their submission mint link and Figma concept proposal onto the Jokerace contest page. The contest page will be made available to contestants via the Notion contest handbook 3 days before the submission window closes. The Crowdmuse community will vote on the submissions.
Top-voted concepts will have a higher likelihood of bringing their designs to life, with only one contestant titled the winner of the contest and a cash prize of $2,000.
Participants, including submitters and voters, will also earn points that will be tracked on a Stack leaderboard.
Crowdmuse community vote window will be over 3 days until a winner is announced.
(3) Preorder product on Crowdmuse using digital visual merchandising
The winning creator will be asked to use their digital skills to visualize the winning concept and design to be showcased on a t-shirt (or a blank of relatively similar product spec). This will be sold via preorder on Crowdmuse marketplace, where it will need to hit a minimum threshold to kickstart production.
For example, see how 3D designer CU3D digitally showcased a physical product for an Optimism limited edition drop.
All proceeds from sales will go to the creator/brand with our baseline fixed marketplace fee of 2.5%. We ask that you add contest collaborators to the ‘Creator Splits’ for visibility.
(4) Work with Crowdmuse curation team and partners for physical production and fulfilment
We have allocated our manufacturing and chip partners; Everywhere Apparel and Arx to support the creator in getting the final product produced, printed, and chipped. Everywhere Apparel, based in Los Angeles, is one of Crowdmuse’s premium sustainable manufacturing and print suppliers providing high-quality products to streetwear and luxury brands. Arx NFC-powered chips are the best in the market for connected product solutions trusted by brands.
(5) Online distribution campaign
The winning contestant drop and profile will be promoted via Crowdmuse and partner marketing channels to highlight the creator with a chance to be interviewed as part of our ORBIT Creator Editions series.
Look out for a Notion Contest Handbook that will be shared on @Crowdmuse X account with a breakdown of the contest rules and support user docs.
Contest theme
In our last announcement post ‘Crowdmuse teams up with IDEO CoLab Ventures Creative Residency to play onchain’ published Aug 20th. We shared a rough overview of the contest and a theme mapped out below -
We invited creators to explore how creation/monetization and access/ownership interact. Are they forces in opposition? Different quadrants on the same map? Isolated pillars? Are they static, rapidly and constantly changing, or perhaps influences united through some other means? Considering these interactions, developments, and power dynamics, we welcome people to consider their impacts on the creative economy, individual agents, and collaborative and iterative design.
Since then, we have refined the contest scope to encourage creators to submit designs for a conceptual brand, a design from an existing brand they own, or a concept of a brand or alternate reality they want to see in the world utilizing digital tools and merch to tell the story.
With today’s novel tools that help accelerate the design and concept phases, we thought this contest offered an exciting challenge to give the winning creator a full brand experience: from design through production and distribution with access to our community, network of apparel manufacturers, and chip suppliers.
Along the way, this will allow us to explore themes in these emerging and developing markets, including how cyberphysical goods move us from perception to experience, how onchain mechanics give our ideas strong foundations from which to expand upward and outward, how we archive and explore our diverging creative choices, and the world we create between our digital and physical spaces. Follow the Crowdmuse Curation profile as we mint digital artifacts throughout the contest.
Contest archive and resources
Follow for updates
@crowdmuse (X and Lens) crowdmuse.xyz
@IDEOVC (X) @design (Lens) ideocolab.com/residency
Crowdmuse Curation Profile to check updates on contest mints
Contest Handbook for more information on contest requirements and timelines