How products can be both digital and circular, with Karinna Nobbs

Hello and welcome to another episode of Fashion Made. Thanks for bearing with us over the last few weeks, we've taken somewhat of a summer break, but we've got loads of great content coming up for you over the coming weeks. From a Py Apparel standpoint as well, we've got loads of things going on as well. We've got roundtables happening every single week. And we've just made an announcement to everyone that we're turning every single event from now until the end of the year online. Naturally, as an events company, we're struggling to really hold physical events. The whole industry is feeling that right now, and I know that everyone wants to just go out there and meet one another, but obviously for the foreseeable future, it's just not possible. So the great news is that we're going to be delivering all of that content digitally and so you'll receive announcements of when those events are. But yeah, until then, as I say, we've got this podcast and loads of great roundtables coming up, so do keep listening, and thank you for that as well. This week features a conversation I had with Corinna Knobs, and really, really interesting chat about the future of digital-only fashion. You know, you may know companies like The Fabricant and Carlings, but Corinna is doing some really, really interesting stuff herself. So yeah, here's the chat we had. Thanks.

Karina, nice to speak to you.

Hi, nice to see you. I was going to say, David.

Yeah, I know. It's been a long time since I've seen anyone that hasn't been my wife or my dog. Nice to speak to you. Futurist, academic, and founder of Hot Second.

That's me. Yeah.

Tell me about all those three things because, you know, quite different. Maybe let's start with the academia side of things first. You know, in what part do you play in academia?

Certainly, and I guess that kind of like explains almost like the different phases of my career. So I started my career initially as a visual merchandiser on the shop floor, and at the same time as when I was studying, after I finished my master's degree, the professor who supervised me said, would you like to try teaching? And I never thought of it as a career profession as such, but I was like, yeah, I'll try it. And I tried it and I just, I really, really enjoyed it and I got a lot from preparing and learning and kind of provoking. And so I worked as a full-time senior lecturer at various different fashion institutions and business schools, focusing mostly in the area of retail and kind of communications. Within the fashion sector and concentrating. I did a kind of stream of research output around flagship stores and pop-up stores and the kind of digitalization of kind of each of them. So that was the kind of like academic stream. And now I got a bit kind of like frustrated with academia in terms of like the like the decision-making. It's really hard to get like new curriculum and things like that through, which when I got like bitten by the digital bug, I started getting a bit frustrated. So I jumped ship about 5, 6 years ago. And now I would say I spend around 20 to kind of 25% of my time still teaching, but this time much more specialist subjects and again, kind of traveling around Europe in particular, going to fashion schools and business schools specializing in kind of fashion innovation.

Oh yeah, that sounds all right.

Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, I get to like user test kind of different ideas on all the students as part of the discussion. So it's kind of a win-win situation.

Yeah, I bet. I bet. And where does The Futurist come into this?

The Futurist came into it. So when I decided to quit my well-paid academic day job, I thought, okay, what is it I'm going to do? What is it I'm kind of like good at or whatever? And I realized it was about kind of like searching and kind of looking at consumer behavior, doing kind of like trendscape scrapes. So I realized that actually the most passionate about was what is it that's coming next? And then obviously the more I spoke with brands and agencies who I was kind of like working with, I realized obviously there's a value in kind of knowing that and understanding that. So I guess that's where kind of like that part came from. And I was working with an agency called Holition, a creative technology agency in London, as their head of strategy and marketing. And so I branded myself internally and externally as their kind of chief futurist, and it made people remember who I was. Which was always kind of useful and it got across again like an area of specialism that I'm kind of really passionate about trying to figure out what's coming next and trying to kind of spot the little sections of future that are already here and figuring out where they're going to go.

Yeah, I know Helixion well, fantastic company. Jonathan, obviously a really great guy as well.

Yeah, he's spoken a lot at the events.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Really, really nice guy.

So I guess that's all led you to found Hot Second.

Exactly. Yeah. So it's like kind of this little, little, well, not that little, longer journey. Initially, I have a really big passion for vintage, vintage dresses in particular. And I thought I wanted to open, I was very interested in consignment and in particular, a couple of companies in the US, Buffalo Exchange and Beacon's Closet, that do kind of like instant consignment. So you just take your bag of stuff in and then they give you either credit for the store or they give you cash. And I couldn't believe that there isn't anywhere in this day and age in London that does that. So I thought that's what I wanted to do initially. So I started kind of looking into that and I was going to have like an in-house alterations person and a really super cool like visual merchandising kind of idea, which was I was going to merchandise the clothes by when they were going to decompose. Because again, looking at this from a kind of sustainability angle and a kind of education perspective, I wanted to bring all those things together. I didn't, and I still don't have any money or investors, so I realized that the outlay for that was going to be too tricky and also probably too hard to do on a because I knew I wanted to do a pop-up first of all, to kind of as a proof of concept. And I took 6 months off and traveled around the world. And during that time, I followed the kind of initial exciting movements in digital fashion from Carlings and The Fabricant. And I was on a panel with Kerry when I came back to the UK in 2019. And I was researching different people's perspectives, people who I know in the industry and asking them, do you have a digital fashion strategy? What's your take on this area? And most of them kind of like scratched their heads or said kind of like, hmm, we don't have one, should we? And that kind of made me interested in like, right away, I was like, I want to contribute to this space somehow. So then I said, I know, why don't I still have this kind of notion of physical. So I asked people to donate a garment that they didn't love anymore. And I partnered with a social enterprise in the UK called Love Not Landfill, who were the kind of the donation— where the donations went. And so there was this— I wanted to look at this kind of new form of currency. So asking people to donate a garment they didn't want anymore, or alternatively, I had in-house artists who you could customize your piece of clothing, so that hopefully either way, it didn't end up in landfill, and in exchange for that, you got to try digital fashion for the first time. Almost everyone who came to the pop-up store that I did in November, they were trying digital fashion for the first time. And so I created, or I kind of, I knew I wanted to work with Kerry and the team at The Fabricant. I knew I wanted to work with Carlings, so I managed to get two pieces from each of their kind of archives. I also, because of the vintage thing, I knew I wanted to get a vintage piece, so I I kind of went out on a limb. I could have got sued, but touch wood, I haven't so far. And I hired a 3D artist to recreate a jumpsuit that David Bowie wore, a Japanese designer who's still alive. And I did email and tell him I was doing the project, non-commercial project, just to make sure that I didn't get sued. So that was the third item. And then the fourth item was I kind of wanted to test would consumers potentially see digital fashion as a way to be part of their decision-making process to buy something physical? So again, I had been on a couple of panels with Christopher Rayburn before, knowing that he has a kind of— is known for sustainability and also open to innovation. I was delighted when him and his team said to be involved. So that was the kind of the premise for Hot Seconds, was exchanging physical goods for digital experiences. And that was the kind of the story behind it.

Amazing. So, can you tell me a little bit more about how the process works?

So I was very lucky that Jonathan from Holition was happy to support me and work with me and his team by using the work that they'd done previously with Uniqlo and Vans, etc., on magic mirrors. And we created a very rudimentary static try-on where I had a— you stepped into a space that was common, like a kind of fitting room size kind of space where there was a live camera feed, and you were able to kind of like go between these 4 different items which were then kind of like placed kind of in the center of the screen. And then myself or another one of the team who was working to help me on the project would then manually kind of like move the garment, kind of either stretching it kind of like 4 different ways to kind of fit it onto you and then kind of take an image. So that was the— and then before that, in theory, they would have either donated or experimented or got something done to like a garment. And then the output, I was meant to, and I had a printer all set up and ready to go because I wanted people to have a physical takeaway of themselves in one of the garments. And I wanted people to have a digital takeaway. But from the moment I stepped, from the moment we got the keys to like the last day midnight when we had to be out of the space, I just didn't even have one minute to switch the printer on. So that's something that I really am keen to do in the next incarnation.

Generally around digital fashion, what are the sort of challenges? And I guess for someone who works in digital fashion, these might be the opportunities here.

Exactly. There is this kind of like double— so one issue is that not everybody knows about it. Certainly if you think about it from a kind of like mass population.

Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, I talk to my friends about it a little bit when I have these podcast conversations and other chats and they, even though I'm telling them that it is a real thing and people are doing this, they still don't believe me.

Yeah, because I think it is because it's quite conceptual. It doesn't make sense until you've— one of the things I found, and it was the reason why I wanted to do a physical installation rather than a virtual store initially, was that I wanted to have that face-to-face feedback. And because it is new, that kind of the digestibility of the idea and also the kind of more sensory experience of it was, is really important, I think, for adoption and trying to get more people to kind of adopt it or be aware of it. So I think there's this kind of like, I did some research before I opened and asked people like, what are your general perceptions of digital fashion? And a few people, I would say maybe about 5% of the survey were like, I can't take part because I'm not familiar with the term. And then kind of like after that, the next kind of like most frequently used terminology was curious, and then there was kind of like skepticism, excitement, etc. So I think that they're all positive things that can be kind of played with or kind of used. I think the other issue. And again, like you say, opportunity or challenge is that there's not necessarily enough places or spaces or brands where you can actually try digital fashion. So I mean, something that's happened in the last few months due to quarantine and COVID has been amazing because we've started to see new brands like, um, Roba or Tribute Brands, or there's another one called CBED, which have released products into the marketplace And I think that's really exciting because it's another way that you can kind of like demystify digital fashion by actually trying it. And I think the third thing is about once you've actually played with or experienced digital fashion, whether that's in a kind of pop-up or through AR or something, or even in-game, there are kind of limited places where you can share or kind of like demonstrate that experience. So at the moment, the only way that thing that you can kind of do is to shout about on social media. And that's not necessarily everybody's cup of tea. So I think that I'm excited again to see more places where digital fashion will be able to be kind of like aired or exposed or experienced.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And It's important actually that people like you do it in a physical way as well, because as you've rightly said, that's a sort of a much easier gateway for people to experience it in a way.

I think so, yeah. There's just a digestibility element, and I think that's something I learned during my time with Holition working with augmented reality and makeup. And again, something I also learned during that time was that people, until you try it, like you can do all the market research in the world and kind of say, does this sound like a great idea? And the people who are very positive will say like, yes, I really want that. But until like direct experience is the only form of confirmation, as many different people say, and I think, yeah, we need more opportunities. For brands. And like, again, I was really, really happy that when the pop-up was open, I had lots of different people from brands, from agencies, as well as like emerging 3D artists and other kind of like potential competitors in the space coming to kind of view and experience it because we're kind of all in this together.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like these brands are starting to take take the idea of digital fashion seriously now?

I think there's a chain reaction of sorts. So in the last, I would say, 8 or 9 months in particular, every time I've gone to a fashion conference or a luxury conference, that whether I've been speaking or whether I've just been there as an attendee, I'm the person who like, "Are there any questions in the audience?" and I shoot my hand up in the air and say, Do you have a strategy on digital fashion? Whether that's like a CEO of a fashion brand or the CEO of a kind of media publication. So like, for instance, Heiß Nobility, I asked that at a conference in November. And almost everybody's answer is the same. Everybody says, we're watching the marketplace to see what happens. We're looking to see what our competitors do. If everybody's doing that and nobody's actually experimenting, nobody's going to do something. So for instance, just like when Louis Vuitton announced their partnership with League of Legends last year, suddenly people kind of like all other like CMOs or whatever were like, okay, let's do a digital gaming thing, or let's kind of look at the potential for like smart skins. So I guess one of the things that I really kind of want to— I kind of give a plea out to any CMOs or anyone who holds kind of budgetary finance responsibility is to really consider this as a viable— I mean, I do believe there's a revenue stream attached to it in terms of buying digital fashion as an asset, which maybe we'll come on to talk about. But other than that, I just think it's very good for experience. And post-COVID, we're reading consistently in the news about, well, some people, there's a rush to get to stores to get that kind of like endorphin hit. Kind of like post that, it was already happening anyway, that physical retailers, particularly like department stores and maybe kind of like destination luxury flagships, need to have something differentiated in order to get people to leave their homes and to go into a store experience. So I do believe that it offers an avenue for competitive advantage as well.

Yeah, I mean, let's get into it now. I think it's a really important aspect of this because, you know, you mentioned Chief Marketing Officers And that would suggest to me that this is more about giving your consumers a better experience and therefore sort of building engagement and loyalty maybe that way. But is there another revenue stream to this that wouldn't necessarily be marketing-oriented, but would actually be another product line in a digital-only space?

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've been kind of in, again, in the last kind of like 6 months, pitching to, like, figuring out who's best to pitch to within an organization. Like, is it the marketing team? Is it the product team? And each one is different depending on the level of kind of innovation that I see typically within that brand. But I definitely think we're just at the very, very early stages of people potentially purchasing these digital fashion assets effectively as a potential kind of almost like a crypto collectible, like CryptoKitties. I mean, we saw, for example, with The Fabricant last March, the garment that was sold for over £8,000, which I know is like a little bit of an anomaly, but if you considered Again, an area where I really think there's a strong use case is bringing to life an archive piece from a well-known luxury brand or even something which is not necessarily luxury, but people can't access it anymore. Like, I don't know, like Biba from the 1960s, for example. Okay. I think if you cross-reference that with things that we're seeing within the digital art space, I think there's a potential kind of like fusion for brands to create a digital asset. And then, I mean, we've not talked yet about the kind of like Hypebeast type community as well. There's a lot of interest in new businesses which are creating kind of like digital twins of like physical products and then you get a digital version of the product as well, which could be partly for experience, but also could be some kind of like tradable asset in the future as well.

Yeah, I know. I mean, I bought some vinyl the other day and they give you a free sort of MP3 download link when you buy vinyl. So sort of similar thing to that.

Yeah, exactly. And I think this is one of the things that I had kind of talked to Christopher Rayburn and the creative team about as well, because they were like, oh, this, this gives us kind of a new opportunity. We could potentially make less of, or we could make one very expensive kind of like iconic piece, but then make digital kind of like versions of it, should there be a good kind of technology or platform that can be kind of like serviced and also authenticated on. I think A challenge that we have in this space, and it's something again that I'm trying to kind of like converge and work together on my next project because I hope that it will be a way that more brands will get involved, is to authenticate the digital asset. Because effectively, once something is released into the marketplace digitally, it is kind of easy to copy, especially if you have the kind of like 3D skills. So obviously, if you're purchasing that and it's of a significant amount, you want to make sure that that's safeguarded somehow. And I think blockchain is a good option for being able to kind of like certify that this product that you've bought from this person is special to you. And should you decide to want to sell it in however many weeks or months or years' time, potentially that might appreciate, especially if it's only one of one or one of ten.

Yeah, that is a very interesting part of it. Also, I guess there's no real sort of marketplace for these things yet either.

Not yet, but maybe there's one coming this year.

Maybe, maybe.

What's—

can I ask, what do you do with the clothes that you did in this pop-up, that you exchanged the sort of physical garments with digital experience? What did you do with the clothes and how does that tie into circularity?

Yeah, the physical one. So I kind of researched a few different social enterprises, and one within London that had like a good brand awareness, particularly within kind of like early adopters and the kind of fashion crowd, was Love Not Landfill. So they were the people who we donated the garments to. And I guess one of the initial reasons that I also kind of came up with the idea was like my goal within the 3 days of having the pop-up shop open was that I wanted to save 500 garments from landfill because as I've researched more in this space, like the figures of how many garments we're producing, like the kind of overproduction in conjunction with our overconsumption was something that, for instance, the kind of it's not a tagline, but one of the things around Hot Second is think, trade, try. So trying to kind of suggest or urge or nudge consumers to be more conscious about what they've got and what they might want to get into the future. So looking at, yeah, this kind of like more conscious decision-making process within fashion as a way to potentially affect a circular business model as well. And then it also, it made sense for me. I wanted to work with a social enterprise. It meant that I didn't have to have any payment or anything within the pop-up experience as well. So it was kind of useful from that perspective. And people that came, they said it did make them think about what was coming in and what was potentially going out of their wardrobe. And you might not be surprised to know that almost every garment that was in, that was donated, was from a fast fashion retailer, because obviously that makes sense that that's what people would feel comfortable with giving away.

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have that special feeling whatsoever to them. They might have bought it for a festival, or, you know, and that's the problem with fast fashion is that you buy it with intention, you know, it's intentionally throwawayable. So I think that's a very good thing that you've done, is saving, saving those from landfill. It's interesting you talk about they sort of stopped for a second and thought. It reminds me that, you know, technology is changing the way that consumers approach shopping and the whole experiential side of of shopping and retail. How do you think brands can change their operations to connect with an increasingly sort of digital consumer?

I mean, there are still lots of brands that, particularly those that are larger, that don't have kind of interconnected systems about really kind of being able to piece together who their customer is or recognizing their customer in different kind of like, I don't know, in different touchpoints when they meet them. I think I'm a huge advocate of customer journey mapping and I can practically preach it in almost all my classes that it's a kind of fundamental thing before you come up with any campaign idea or any activation or anything is that you must have a fundamental understanding of the various different paths that consumers interact with you, because it's only once you can identify them that you can figure out potentially how to innovate in particular. And I guess one thing that I'm personally kind of researching at the moment is about when you are creating a technology activation or kind of innovation creating kind of like multiple experiences within that journey. So a couple of examples, actually, I was inspired, I was doing some research a few years ago in the Rebecca Minkoff store in New York that had the like magic mirror and various few different types of pieces of technology. And I was interviewing the sales team. And I said, what type of customers come in? And they said, well, we have the the customer who doesn't use any of the technology, they use the mirror as a mirror and they use kind of like general, they use us, the sales assistants for customer service. And then they said we have the Mariah Carey technology customer who presses every single button and is in the fitting room for like 2.5 hours. And I kind of love that idea of, and it's something that I learned as well with working at Holition is to kind of make sure that these kind of, there are multiple journeys for how different types of consumers will use your technology. And, um, Man Repeller did something on their e-commerce site that unfortunately isn't live anymore, but they created two pathways, one for browsing and one for buying. And that's something that I'm looking to pull forward into the next kind of projects that I do. So the way that that kind of manifested itself on her website was that the The shop one was a more kind of like linear, fewer clicks to purchase, and more of a kind of catalog logical format, whilst the browse one had more playfulness, more animation, etc. More editorial kind of within it as well. And I think that even— and I'm always looking at how that translates in a physical environment as well. And I love using the example of Sephora and the two baskets that they have in there. So they have a red basket and a black basket, and if you have a red basket, that means— I can never remember which way around it is— that means, like, don't approach me, I'm quite happy, like, I'm a knowledgeable customer, I'm just going to do my own thing. And if you have a black basket, it means you're open to customer service that day. And I think these are quite simple nuances that actually make a massive difference potentially to your experience and to your potential return rate to that store as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

That's a very interesting— Long answer to a question.

No, it's perfect. You know, that's exactly the kind of digital enabler of life that we need. You know, all too often we just try and digitally replicate what we do in real life and people like Keri and yourself, I'm sure, are advocates of the fact that in a digital space you can reimagine how you do things. And there are a lot of things that you can do that you can't do in a physical space.

And I think that also goes to be the case for product design as well, which actually I'm quite surprised we haven't seen that many examples of digital fashion. For example, on Hot Seconds Instagram page, one of the best performing posts I ever did, posted was a regram of a 3D artist who created a dress that was made out of water. It was really, really kind of beautiful motion graphic. And it's a little bit crazy, like, why have we not seen anybody experimenting with more non— like what you said, basically. There's lots of stuff in digital that you can't do in physical. So I think we should kind of play to that a little bit more.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, if you started this whole thing again, this whole world again with digital, you know, you sort of create really, really interesting experiences. We're just all too hunkered down with this sort of weight of our, you know, few thousand years of physical-only existence that we're yet to really— Wilson, you forgot about gravity.

Exactly. And legacy e-commerce systems have a lot to answer for.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, Windows XP, you know, but there's a lot of opportunity here and I think that's, you know, what we both agreed on for sure.

Yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of scope because again, I do a lot of— I did this research physically a few years ago where I took pictures of exteriors of stores and interiors of stores. I did it within the luxury sector. And they showed them to consumers in order to see if they could tell what stores they were. And they couldn't tell. They're like, the homogenization of store design is, is so apparent. And then I did it more recently as well with website design. And again, it's probably even, even harder to tell the difference between different brands, e-commerce platforms, there's very, very few differences in that context. So from that kind of notion alone, there's definitely scope from a purely visual perspective.

So Karina, tell me about the next sort of 6 to 18 months in the digital fashion space. Do you expect big changes to be made? Do you expect consumers starting to buy digital fashion in that time?

Yeah, I mean, it's happening already, which has been amazing. Like, my goal at the start of this year was that I wanted to be the first person to commercially sell digital fashion, because if you look at The Fabricant and Carlings, they were both charity kind of activations. But two brands already beat me to it. So the two that I mentioned, Robow and Tribute Brands. So Robow sold a hoodie, a digital hoodie for $40, and Tribute Brands, interestingly, started their price point at €9 and now have gone up to €19 because they're able to. And so I think we're going to see more of that. I think we're going to see people experiment and maybe at the larger ends of the market and sorry, like more luxury kind of ends of the market. I think we're seeing almost every week more people talking about digital showrooms, digital runways. Collaborations with games, and so more kind of synergies between games publishers and luxury brands. We're going to see more collaborations in that space. And I think we're going to see as well more platforms to be able to buy digital fashion and also wear digital fashion. So I think it's going to be like a rapidly changing kind of like space within the next 6 months in particular. I mean, I don't think it's going to hit the mainstream, but I think it's definitely going to expedite its growth in that kind of early adopter phase.

Yeah. Oh, it's so, so exciting. Honestly, I really love digital fashion. And anytime I speak with yourself and Gary Murphy and all these guys around this space, it's so exciting. So, yeah, look, I wish you all the best. Good luck. And for anyone out there, check out what Hot Second are doing.

Thanks so much. Thanks for inviting me on.

Absolute pleasure.

Yeah. Thanks again to Corinna Knobs. Really, really great to have her on the show and best of luck to her and everything that she's doing. Well, yeah, that's about all we have time for. So thank you again for listening. Really hope you guys are doing well out there and stay tuned for another podcast coming in the next few days. All the best.

Everybody get up!

Woo!

Woo!