With extensive reception and conference suite, super king bedroom, private cinema, wrap around sky lounge boasting disco, jacuzzi and helipad — not to mention panoramic views of Paris, Miami and Dubai — the property spec reads like a high-end international real estate listing.
However, the Luxury Penthouses in question are actually complex, three dimensional NFTs built in photorealistic metaverse Spatial.io. Owners can invite up to 50 guests at a time — as avatars created via Spatial’s integrated Ready Player Me plug-in — to join them ‘at home.’
Lifestyle tropes abound in the shape of mid-century inspired bar carts, animated turntables, a wall-to wall-aquarium and that pièce de résistance integral to aspirational living, an animated helicopter.
There is also a gallery facility for showcasing NFTs from connected wallets as artwork on the walls (whether Bored Apes or Cryptopunks, a click calls up their OpenSea credentials) or even campaign images and logos in the case of luxury brands.
Brainchild of fashion’s go-to Web 3.0 platform Exclusible, said penthouses are attracting considerable interest from luxury brands and consultancies for whom a carefully curated image is paramount. Such companies represented 38% of respondents in an exploratory survey Exclusible conducted via LinkedIn.
They can decorate and custom curate the space “according to their own look and feel,” says Exclusible co-founder Olivier Bureau, noting also that the survey results “indicated preferred usage as a video conferencing alternative to Google
Bureau maintains that the luxury penthouses offer a cost-efficient option for brands looking to establish a company headquarters in the metaverse. Thus far, Web 3.0 has represented more of a tool for audience engagement and community building for brands than actual utility so this marks an interesting step.
“There are so many amazing and creative ways that buyers want to use our penthouses. It’s really mind-blowing,” Bureau continues. “We are in discussions with a very famous auction house which would like to do a live auction in one of them. There are also artists who will use them as a gallery and we have a media house that wants to organize the first ever team-building event in the metaverse. One crypto fund is inviting investors to its launch presentation in a penthouse while it raises capital.”
“We have some very affluent buyers, big banks and some celebrities,” he adds, “but we are not allowed to mention anyone specific right now.”
Indeed, 25% of respondents to the LinkedIn usage survey represented high net worth individuals — no doubt seduced by the notion of owning a ‘crib’ in the metaverse. The penthouses, with their cinemas, jacuzzis and helipads, certainly have echoes of the MTV Cribs franchise that was rebooted last year.
Founded by five French and Portuguese entrepreneurs, Thibault Launay, Olivier Bureau, Olivier Moingeon, Artur Goulão and Pierre Guigourese, Exclusible launched in August 2021 as an NFT marketplace, swiftly making a name for itself with luxury activations in the Web 3.0 space.
Partner projects constitute a roll-call of luxury industry stalwarts from the worlds of fashion, design, fine jewelry, timepieces and even supercars and include Asprey, Bugatti, Christofle, Hogan and Louis Moinet.
Moingeon, who previously held executive positions at Goyard and Cartier, has likened the marketplace model to that of luxury fashion platforms such as Net-a-Porter and Farfetch.
For Asprey it sold an NFT collection in collaboration with Bugatti, each of which came with a corresponding physical sculpture crafted in Asprey’s London atelier. Ali Walker Chief Creative Officer of Asprey’s Digital Studio says he chose to partner with Exclusible for its slick execution of previous projects and describes the team as “forward thinking, fast and innovative.”
Similarly, Tod’s Group owned Hogan tapped Exclusible to launch an artist generated NFT series and Exclusible also orchestrated a Hogan event in the Decentraland
Exclusible’s first foray into metaverse property came in January when the company invested a proportion of the $2.4 million generated from the sale of Alpha, its genesis NFT collection, into acquiring land on The Sandbox
Going forward, “our ambition is to establish Exclusible as the number one destination for digital luxury,” says Bureau. “We not only help brands start their journey, but also help them build their own community, and guide them in creating long-term engagement. We are developing Exclusible in a way that makes us stand alone as a brand, rather than simply a marketplace.”
Exclusible has six more NFT drops scheduled over the next couple of months alone with further strategic partnerships in the pipeline across different segments of the luxury industry.
Exclusible Luxury Penthouses drop June 18.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniehirschmiller/2022/06/14/exclusible-luxury-penthouse-nfts-in-the-metaverse/