The topic of the metaverse is one fraught with misperceptions….something recently brought home to me after my keynote presentation at Furniture Today’s #TheInnovationEvent. This was the first event in the history of the furniture industry to focus on the metaverse, and the financial opportunities it represents for furniture retailers and manufacturers.

Later in this post, I will share images with you of the people I met, and more exciting information from the #TheInnovationeEvent, but first, I want to clear up these misperceptions about the metaverse, so that those of you who were not able to attend it will have clarity.

Are you ready?

Metaverse Misperception #1: There Is Only One Metaverse

In fact, there are many metaverses, and any brand can partner with and/or create their own metaverse.

To open my keynote presentation, I shared a video showing the metaverse that famous NYC realtor and TV star, Ryan Serhant, has developed for his team, called UNIVERS.

In addition, I mentioned how Laura Albers, CEO of Williams-Sonoma, recently announced a collaboration between WS brand, West Elm, and the metaverse of Roblox, for virtual furniture.

There are many metaverse activations currently in existence. Three of the most well known are Decentraland [where Sotheby’s has their metaverse activation], The Sandbox [ where Snoop Dog has his activation ] and Spatial, and there are many more.

Metaverse Misperception #2: Metaverse Activations Are Only For Games

It’s a fact: gaming is a large component of metaverse activations for many brands, but metaverse activations aren’t ONLY for playing games.

For almost all major brands using metaverse activations, the games they have set up for people to play in the metaverse [ people LOVE to play games! ] lead to outcomes that include live links to the sale of real world products, and these brands are making millions of dollars on the sale of real world products from their metaverse activations that include games.

In my presentation, I shared a slide showing just how many millions of real world dollars were being made by brands using metaverse activations and it was eye opening for many in the audience.

Metaverse Misperception #3: Only Kids Are Exploring Metaverse Activations…And They Don’t Have Money To Spend.

On the Reddit thread for Decentraland’s metaverse, a user asked this question regarding age and this is the answer they got:

As mentioned above, many adults think playing is the only thing people do in the metaverse, because they see their kids playing in Roblox, Minecraft or Fortnite, but this isn’t true.

Kids [ and their parents ] are definitely shopping from brands in Roblox, and they are shopping in different metaverse activations, too, like Decentraland and The Sandbox.

Here’s an interesting look at how much more kids spend if they are playing games to socialize - which most of them do - in the top 3 metaverse activations aimed at kids.

These numbers might not seem significant to a furniture retailer or manufacturer at first glance, but when you think about the number of kids who might play your game if you activate the Moms and Dads in your existing communities and through your newsletter, etc. + set up an advertising program on TikTok to attract players to your game, you can see the potential.

Metaverse Misperception #4: Brands Aren’t Making Real Money In Their Metaverse Activations.

In this June 14, 2022 Wall Street Journal article [screenshot below], this was the headline:

“Metaverse Spending To Total $5 Trillion in 2030, McKinsey Predicts.”

From this same article:

”Businesses’ and consumers’ annual global spending related to the metaverse could reach $5 trillion by 2030, according to a new report from consulting firm McKinsey & Co. “

”E-commerce in the metaverse will comprise some $2 trillion to $2.6 trillion of the total, while virtual advertising endeavors will make up another $144 billion to $206 billion, McKinsey said.”

Notice the sub headline: “79% of survey respondents said they have already made a purchase in the metaverse.”

I shared some additional statistics from McKinsey and Co.’s report in my keynote presentation at Furniture Today’s #TheInnovationEvent.

MIsperception #5: Metaverse Activations Are Still A Long Ways Off

As you can now see, this isn’t true. Many major brands [ Gucci, Nike, Chanel, Hummer, Disney, Starbucks, Sotheby’s ] from all categories that vie for consumer disposable income such as fashion, food, autos, tech, travel, entertainment and art already have major metaverse partnership activations in place.

As mentioned above, West Elm now does, too, but they are the only furniture brand, so far, to take this step.

The Innovation Event.

Furniture Today’s recent Innovation Event provided the thought leadership necessary to help the manufacturers and retailers who attended it understand the financial opportunities for their brands inherent in metaverse activations.

As mentioned above, I was honored to be selected as their keynote speaker, and my time there was filled with interesting conversations, seeing long time industry friends like Kim Wray, Ray Allegrezza, and John Thompson and meeting new ones.

I was so happy that Annilee Waterman could join me there, too, as she’s the virtual architect who worked with Gary Pettitt and I on Seasonal Living’s Virtual Designer Showhouse - the first virtual designer showhouse to include AR, and developed using the software of one of this conference’s sponsors, Coohom.

I was also excited to meet some of the young leaders in our industry who were honored with Furniture Today’s 40 under 40 Future Leader awards.

Here are pictures I took of some of the people I met and saw that made my time there so exciting and rewarding.

On the upper right of this image is Furniture Today’s executive team that made this event happen:

Bill McLoughlin, Editor in Chief of Furniture Today magazine, Jessica Byerly, Director of Events for Bridgetower Media in the Carolinas and Cindy Hodnett, Executive Editor, Brand Development for all Bridgetower Media furniture related publications.

On the upper left are members of Furniture Today’s sales team - the team responsible for securing the sponsors that made this event possible.

On the bottom left is the beautiful atrium space within Winston - Salem’s Innovation Quarter where the event took place, and an image of the schedule of events is on the right.

Below, L to R: Annilee Waterman, virtual architect and my partner in our upcoming 2 day webinar about the metaverse [ see below for more information ] Brian Morgan, CEO of Austin, TX based The Couch Potatoes [ see the video of him talking with me about his wonderful and unique way of finding and hiring employees on my Instagram feed at https://instagram.com/lesliemcarothers ] , Stephanie Geary, marketing manager for Albany, NY based retailer, Old Brick House, and Ani Krihkori, a partner in I Shop Meta, the first virtual shopping mall where every purchase automatically generates an associated NFT to the purchaser.

Both Brian and Stephanie were also recipients of Furniture Today’s 40 under 40 Leadership awards.

More wonderful people:

[ As you know, I’m all about online community building, [ a service my company, Savour Partnership, has offered to brands and interior designers for many years now ] and to be successful as a brand in the metaverse, your first step is to build your online community - a point reiterated by Live Furnish’s CEO, Preet Signh, shown below. ]

Upper row:

Kian Amini, Director of Business Development and Technology for AICO with David Koehler, Amini Innovation Corporation’s [ AICO ] Executive Vice President, then on the panel L to R: Beck Besecker, CEO and Founder of 3D Cloud by Marxent, Michal Stachowski, Founder of Intario and Preet Signh, Co-Founder and Product Head of Live Furnish.

Bottom row:

The 40 under 40 who were at the conference, being presented with their awards, and Ray Allegrezza with his son, Steve.

Ray was the former editor in chief of Furniture Today, and the man who first gave me a leg up in the furniture industry [ along with Joe Carroll and Cary Benson ] by asking me to write Furniture Today’s Retail Ideas column, which I did for 9 years. See this article I wrote back in Nov. of 2008 about the product development experiment I carried out with Rob Sligh, then CEO of Sligh Furniture, in the virtual world of Second Life:

https://www.furnituretoday.com/business-news/sligh-second-life/

It was so great to see Ray there in person and to let him know how much his early mentorship and kindness meant to me. It was a true full circle moment in my career. Ray is now head of the International Association of Home Furnishing Representatives [ IHFRA ] and his son, Steve Allegrezza, is now head of Digital Strategies and Marketing for IHFRA.

I want to [almost ] end this [ long! ] post by thanking my good friend, Kim Shaver [ and her husband, Chan Shaver ] for their kindness and amazing hospitality during my visit. I first met Kim almost 20 years ago, when she was then the Vice President of Marketing and Communications for Hooker Furniture.

Kim was an early mentor of mine, and provided me several opportunities to train Hooker Furniture’s sales representatives and retailers early in my career. She was also the one responsible for me having the opportunity to keynote High Point University’s first symposium for the furniture industry on social media marketing.

Later, when Kim was ready to leave her full time position at Hooker and go freelance, I was able to help Kim out by bringing her onboard as part of Leslie Hendrix Wood’s Hadley Court team - where she was instrumental in helping build content for the Hadley Court blog, as well as building the fan base for the Hadley Court Facebook Page.

We’ve stayed friends all of these years, and Kim and her husband provided me with amazing southern hospitality while staying with them during this event in their beautiful home in Jamestown, [ this is Kim on their beautiful new back porch ] including home cooked dinners each night I was there.

Kim is gluten, dairy and sugar free and I’m encouraging her to write a cookbook, because the food she cooked was DELICIOUS!

If you’re attending High Point Market this fall, say Hi to Kim in the Marge Carson showroom, where you can often find her as she is handling all of their PR now.

Kim and Chan: thank you!

Lastly, as mentioned above, Annilee Waterman and I will be providing an introduction to the metaverse of Decentraland on Thursday, Sept. 29th and Friday, Sept. 30th, beginning both days at 3 pm ET.

Come and join us as we show you how to:

1. Set up your Metamask wallet. [ No money will be involved ]
2. Set up your Decentraland avatar.
3. Explore the metaverse of Decentraland, where Sotheby’s has its activation.

If you consider yourself an explorer, too, and you want someone to guide you, please join us!

It’s $99.00 for the 2 days of training, and you can purchase tickets via our Eventbrite invitation here. When you purchase, Eventbrite will send you the notification of when the ZOOM will start, with the ZOOM link.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decentraland-metaverse-training-for-designers-furniture-retailers-mfgs-tickets-401605401567

As always, I thank you for taking your time to read and subscribe to my blog.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s post, and I also invite you to read Furniture Today’s post about my keynote presentation here:

https://www.furnituretoday.com/technology/5-stats-that-show-how-the-netaverse-is-translating-to-real-life-dollars/

Leslie Carothers
Chief Energizing Officer
Savour Partnership

If I can help you develop a strategy for your metaverse activation, as well as for building the online community and digital communication strategy necessary to make it successful, please reach out to me at leslie@savourpartnership.com.

PS: I’d love to collaborate with your existing marketing teams on this to ensure your success in the metaverse.