David Cash: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to NFTS.WTF. My name is David Cash, editor-in editor-in-chief, and we are here at NFC Lisbon (Non-Fungible Conference) 2022. And I’m joined today by Olivier Moingeon from Exclusible. He’s the CCO chief commercial officer of Exclusive, of course, and they’re doing incredible things in the luxury and fashion space. I just want to delve a little bit into what Exclusible is doing right now and why we’re all here right now in Lisbon. So maybe for just people who aren’t familiar, do you want to give a little bit of a background of yourself and how you joined the team at Exclusible?
Olivier Moingeon: Absolutely. I’m Olivier. I’m also a co-founder of Exclusible. So we are an NFT marketplace for luxury brands. So we really specialize in premium NFTs made by brands. But we’re also launching our own art vertical very soon.
DC: Super.
OM: Yes. So it’s elevated, it’s curated, and it’s the idea to build the community also on behalf of the brands, through us, through our discord and through our own community.
DC: And, yeah, I think you’ve done a great job of building this. We’ve gotten to chat a little bit in the past about how you’ve done certain drops. And if you haven’t yet, do make sure to check out our conversation. We did one for Decentland Fashion Week about luxury in the space and how fashion is moving forward. But obviously, I think one of the angles that you guys have taken, which is a little bit different, is you have a broader approach to luxury and a more I don’t want to say realistic or traditional, but it’s a more defined approach to luxury. It’s not just fashion, it’s not just accessories, but you include real estate, lifestyle and beyond. And I think that’s really exciting. So maybe just for people who aren’t familiar, do you want to mention a couple of the projects you’ve done just so people can see the depth and breadth of Excusible?
OM: No, absolutely. I think it’s very typical, web3 moves at the speed of light. So we started with the ambition to become the Farfetch of NFTs or the Opensea for luxury. We started the company in September of 2021. But pretty quickly, we started being approached by brands. We started with fashion and jewellery and watches and also cars, but then we were approached by wines and spirits and then by artists and by beauty companies. It was going on and on and on. So that’s when we said, okay, we have to be agnostic, really. We are about brands and we are about sophistication and premium. And that takes so many different dimensions. And there are so many brands that need that. But then, also at the same time, Facebook was still called Facebook. And the conversation with the brands started becoming very different. And then it turned into everything Metaverse and NFTs overnight. And NFTs are like two sides to the same coin. The NFTs are the products, it’s the what, and the Metaverse is the how and where. It’s the location it’s the boutique. It’s the type of experience that you can offer. So very quickly we realized that we had to go deep into the Metaverse as well. But following our agnostic approach, we decided to buy land on Sandbox. We also started working with Gigi and Sam at Decentraland. Then we started buying land there as well. Also recently we bought the land on NFT Worlds, actually more than one land. We are very close to the team at Spatial as well and we’re also talking to the Epic Games team to see how we could maybe create our own experience that can integrate many different dimensions that we think could be very interesting for luxury brands. Our philosophy is that we do things first for ourselves and then we learn and then we leverage our knowledge and our community and our experience and it helps brands in their journey to web3.
DC: There are so many things I want to touch on, but I think that’s a great way of putting it because when you’re taking people through this journey and they’re new, it can be very overwhelming. And I feel like a lot of what you’re doing, especially for big brands, is translating and being that guide, bringing them through this world and also just helping them not make mistakes. Because a lot of the time it’s just this project management and making people do the right thing. And ultimately it’s sometimes a really simple solution, especially for a brand that’s massive. But yeah, I think you guys do a great job of taking it further. And one thing I wanted to touch on, which I know that you have some thoughts on as we kind of move our lifestyles from the physical into the digital, but I like to say tangible because you’re still experiencing it. How do you feel like people are starting to embrace this? Obviously, as you said, you’re in virtual spaces all the time, but when we’re considering luxury as a lifestyle, how are you guys with some of the projects perpetuating this in the Metaverse?
OM: So we’ve done a few projects so far and we have a lot in the pipeline. So we did this beautiful project with Louis Moinet which is a heritage watch brand from Switzerland. Inventor of the Chronograph. They only make 500 watches a year price point is between $20,000 all the way to hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s very high-end. Their first collection was an entirely generative high-end collection in 3D around the theme of space. Because the watch was called Space Revolution is one of their limited edition. It’s a beautiful watch. And so we created all the digital utilities. Snapchat filters, you have your Apple Watch background, your 3D objects, but the whole point is to create a community that can, 1: discover the brand and 2: get nurtured and grow over time and connect in the physical world with the brand. So what has happened that was very interesting is that our community discovered that brand through the NFT drop. Loved it, bought the NFTs and then they asked us to put them in touch with the brand because now they are buying physical watches, and through the NFT and the beauty, the magic of the crypto wallet, which I think is the big revolution. Then the brand is developing CRM programmes to invite them to events, give them free access, even develop future physical watches and involve them. So that’s when it’s true phygital, you start from the digital world with a new type of creativity, but you can connect to the physical expression of the brand and that’s really powerful.
DC: I think that’s super exciting because especially in the luxury sphere, because that kind of model before, you only really find like crowdfunding or something that was almost looked down upon. But when your community members can actually be your investors for a luxury brand, that’s hugely empowering because like you said, they only make 500 watches a year. They only need 500 customers a year, right?
OM: Right.
DC: Or maybe even less. Sometimes they buy two, I’m sure, but it’s a different way of thinking about it.
OM: Absolutely. It’s very close to the hypercar industry. When you are Ferrari or Lamborghini.
DC: You’re not selling in mass.
OM: You have two tiers, you have your clients, but you only make a few thousand cars a year. So you have a few thousand clients, but then you have millions of fans. And so how can you create that rich engagement that you can monetize as well? Because you have your IP, it’s all about that. And so NFTs and the Metaverse also create this new opportunity to push the monetization in a way which I think is much more interesting and much more elevated.
DC: And it doesn’t cheapen the brand. You look at some brands when they try to find an attainable product, like Gucci or somebody, and they try to make a little cardholder or something, they try to make something cheap and it’s obvious that it’s supposed to be cheap. When you make an NFC and it’s $1,000, it’s not cheap, it’s a digital asset. So you can totally reevaluate how you bring these kinds of ideas to consumers.
OM: Exactly. The relationship to price is very interesting because now I catch myself when I shop and I look at the price. I live in New York, I look at it in dollars.
DC: Do you look at it in ETH?
OM: Yeah, I think in ETH haha.
DC: I love when people post on Twitter, like how much their food costs in ETH, it’s like I had a three-star Michelin dinner and it was only 0.3 ETH. It’s amazing. Speaking of Michelin, we’re in Europe right now and I feel like Europe has way more of a grasp on luxury than the rest of the world. I’ve mentioned this in a couple of other talks, but now we’re finally tangibly back in person at these events. So much of this happened during COVID when everybody was remote. How do you feel that the scene in Europe, obviously, it’s very heritage, it’s very old school. So many things are slow to develop, but you’re obviously encouraging a lot of brands to take the step and they’re doing it. How has that been for you? And do you see people now finally coming together and being a little more decentralized in these industries?
OM: Yeah, it’s very interesting because we started working on the idea of Exclusible back in the spring of 2021. We raised money in August, we officially launched in September of 2021. And at that time it was still fairly new. So when we started talking to brands, the progression in the discussions that I’ve had from July to August to now, we are in April 2022, are completely different. So now it’s on the radar of every single brand. Like number one priority is sustainability, number 2 is usually metaverse and NFTs. It doesn’t mean that all of them are going to go full speed into it, but all of them are taking the information that there’s something happening.
DC: They’re at least receptive to the idea now.
OM: Totally receptive and a lot of them are launching RFPs. A lot of historical web agencies are working on strategies for luxury brands.
DC: Even like Accenture and huge companies. Now, you see.
OM: Totally, now at the moment, all of them are aware that there’s a massive fundamental shift in technology that is basically adapted to the new generation, to what people are going to go more and more towards. And so when they missed the eCommerce boom back then. They missed also the secondhand market revolution ten years ago. They know that they want to be omnichannel. It really means you go where your customers are. It doesn’t mean I’m going to make it easy to buy something online and return it in a store that’s not omnichannel. You go where people hang out and you want to be there. Now, with NFTs and Metaverse, NFTs is the technology that will enable digital ownership. Digital ownership can take so many different forms. It’s not just fashion, as you were saying, so many different expressions.
DC: But I think that’s great, that now the Metaverse has allowed people to broaden their definition of NFTs. Web3, all of this. It’s added context. I think it’s made it a lot easier.
OM: I can’t wait for the word NFT to actually drop and be changed to something else, like digital collection or whatever.
DC: They used to call it blockchain art, but it’s obviously now so much more. One of the things I want to touch on that you mentioned, and we talked about this once before in a chat about how brands are segmenting different elements, NFT, Metaverse, and sustainability. But that’s another thing I want to mention, and I think we’re both in the mindset that it doesn’t work like that. Web3 is an all-encompassing ecosystem that has these elements to it. These are just parts of a whole. But I think sustainability is something that’s worth mentioning, especially when you consider luxury brands, because that’s a huge KPI, OKR, or whatever they use for many luxury companies now. And funny enough, over the past ten years, but even some of them now, that’s their huge innovation now they’re going to be doing sustainability. But what many don’t realize is that NFTs or digital fashion could be that solution. I don’t know the exact statistic. DRESSX does a great job of sharing this, but if we changed 1%, I think we removed 1% of clothing manufactured. We’d save like 60 billion or million tonnes of water a year. But brands don’t really consider this. Do you use that argument, the sustainability argument, when you’re chatting with brands or I’m curious how they kind of take that approach because obviously, they’re segmented and then you help them understand. Absolutely.
OM: So the sustainability argument was a very strong argument for us, which I explained like this, if we look at the luxury landscape right now, you have stores in every continent, most likely every primary city, every secondary city. The brands are present and very active in every single distribution channel, every single communication channel. So we are going towards saturation. We cannot just keep consuming. There are no pockets, very limited pockets of growth in the next ten years. And right now it’s euphoria.
DC: Especially for the biggest brands in the world. I mean, it’s happened, they have all the stores.
OM: Yes, exactly. And so the growth can only be organic to some point. So how do you create growth? How do you capture these new clients because you cannot just keep producing? Now, every single brand has very strong sustainability objectives that are very often self audited and self-imposed. It’s interesting because with that in mind, for us, presenting the sustainability opportunity of NFT and Web3 was very strong, but it got rebuked by the brand saying, Well, I hear that the blockchain is not sustainable, so we cannot do that. And there are also KYC and AML, which are also two very strong dimensions that they care about. Right. So then we had to switch that sustainability argument to education to tell them, okay, let me tell you about the blockchain, the reality of it and what’s happening. And I think the percentage that DRESSX uses is to say that the same garments but made in the digital version have 97% less impact on the planet than their physical counterpart.
DC: Absolutely.
OM: Yes. So we go from like, we have to do a lot of education on the blockchain, the fact that the merge is coming on the Ethereum blockchain and switch to POS should happen soon, a few months, hopefully. That’s going to be big and it’s going to help tremendously and also create much more excitement, I think, from the brands.
DC: Especially, considering that Ethereum is really the transaction network right now, there are a lot of competitors and we use a lot of layer twos and other POS solutions, but 96% of transactions are still in Ethereum.
OM: Yeah, all the blue-chip projects are on it.
DC: Also, when you think fundamentally if you’re going to sell a piece for over $100,000, do you want to do it on the most used, most trusted network or not? Right before that was Bitcoin. But now that’s Ethereum. So, I mean, it’s almost obvious. It’s such a pleasure to actually get a chance to chat and talk through things. I know that you guys always have a million exciting things going on. Obviously, you’re activating here live. Is there anything you want to mention To our audience? Obviously, we have a bunch of amazing degens in our community who are blockchain native, and web3 native? Anything You want to mention to them about either Exclusible or what you have going on or how they might be able to become a part of what you’re doing.
OM: For sure. So you can join our discord. It’s very active, very French. The French community is super dynamic. We have a lot of NFT drops coming in the pipeline, but most importantly, we are working on our own project with an incredible metaverse drop coming in May.
DC: Super.
OM: Yeah, where you will be able to mint and purchase your own metaverse experience. It will be a very high standard, very innovative drop.
DC: Something to look forward to. Make sure you’re following along Exclusible on social media, if I’m not mistaken, we’ll link it all In the article. Olivier, thank You so much for taking the time. I know you have a very busy week, But it’s always a pleasure to chat and as always, This is NFTS.WTF. My Name Is David Cash and we’re here at NFC Lisbon. Thanks so much for watching. Take care.
OM: Thank you.
