The Future of Digital Fashion with Kerry Murphy, The Fabricant
In this interview, Kerry Murphy, co‑founder of The Fabricant, shares how her background in film, visual effects, and advertising led her to pivot into digital fashion. She recounts the evolution of The Fabricant from a proof‑of‑concept art project to a revenue‑generating digital fashion house, highlighting early Instagram traction, a high‑profile collaboration with a Hong Kong luxury retailer, and a landmark blockchain auction with Dapper Labs that sold a digital‑only garment for $9,500. Murphy discusses the tension between moving fast to meet brand demands and preserving creative freedom for long‑term innovation, emphasizing the importance of delegation, a small but focused team (Amber, Marlous, Adriana), and personal well‑being practices like floorball and CrossFit. She reflects on the challenges of scaling 3D production, establishing digital bodies, and building marketplaces, noting partnerships such as Didymo for avatar tech. The conversation also covers market perception of digital clothing, the role of scarcity via blockchain, reactions from the broader public, and the broader vision that digital garments will become a standard layer of personal identity over the next decades, with environmental and cultural implications. Murphy positions The Fabricant as a pioneer navigating between startups and large fashion corporations, advocating for a future where digital fashion is both functional and culturally valuable.
Chapters
So, Cary, for those that don't know you, can you explain a little bit about yourself and your company?
So, I'm Cary.
Hello.
I have a background in film and visual effects. I worked in advertising and marketing for the longest time. As an animator, and basically I wanted to pivot away from advertising. It's a little bit of a soulless industry where, you know, people make good money, you know, but then you're selling toilet paper, for example. I don't know anybody who's passionate about toilet paper. Maybe the toilet paper manufacturers. Yeah, maybe. So, um, but that's an industry where you just do a little bit of everything. So when I came across some, uh, yeah, digital fashion tools kind of, first of all, it complemented my skill set. And so I implemented it into my, you know, into my tools, and I started using it. And because of that, I kind of got more and more immersed into the fashion industry, and really just started talking to fashion designers, people who really worked there, and started understanding that actually how far behind digitization where fashion is like in that spectrum. And I was like, coming from film and visual effects, I really just had that crystal ball into the future where I could just be like, okay, the future of fashion is digital, 100%. And what that is, it was like, okay, we get to create that, we get to jump on board. And it was definitely like, you know, coming across my co-founder Amber, you know, who had that similar vision, you know, like didn't want to make physical clothing because of the environmental crisis. And I got super excited about that as well. And it's like, great, let's, let's let's just dream and let's try to do something cool with it. And it started out as just as a proof of concept that became a proof of concept business model that became a viable business, you know, where we make revenue and make a good living. And then beyond that, we actually started being able to work on a new industry, you know, the digital identities or the virtual identities industry. And that's basically how The Fabricant came to be as a digital fashion house from all those conversations between Amber and I and, you know, all the different partners around us, you know, like, let's— it kind of started out as a proof of concept art project that became serious because we actually, yeah, we had early successes and then let's say the Instagram engagement or the social media engagement, you know, that started.
Was that your Instagram? I don't know.
I didn't say, hey Siri, whatever. So it's like all that engagement through our communities and Instagram just made it clear that there is a need for this, you know. So how do you monetize that? That was the big question. And then, you know, like through Instagram, we got one of our biggest projects with a Hong Kong luxury retailer. It was this UK creative director that saw us like, And they just wanted to try something new, you know, they had their 30th anniversary and they wanted to do something big and they wanted to do something digital because they already saw that digital is the future, you know, they wanted to get Lil Miquela on board and they got us on board and then we just, we just animated, you know, 15 different looks from their luxury collection, which was used as a retail experience, as a selling point, and, you know, the kids just went crazy. It's like really Asian kids, they're so digitally savvy there. So they got really excited, they toured the world with the pop-up store. And all that content that we created from that project became our selling tools. Because everybody's like, okay, that's the type of visualization I want. It's gotta look cool, it's gotta look photo-real, and it's gotta be scalable. Well, that's what we're not, we're not scalable because I get contacted from brands around the world. It's like, we see what you have, can you do it for 6,000 looks? Like, sure, yeah, give us a year. You know, we can, but they want it, of course, immediately.
So what this is, this is really interesting actually, because you are the pioneer, you're at the forefront of a new industry, sub-industry, let's call it. It's becoming more normal now, as we say, you know, we're hearing it being talked about at this conference a lot more. How do you now make sure that you stay ahead of the game and keep doing what you're doing but building it up, you know?
Yeah, so a lot of people keep telling us like we need to move fast. I keep hear that a lot, but first of all, I don't want to think about it in that way because once I start, you know, moving fast, I start not being able to be creative anymore.
And that's the soul of what you're doing, right? That's the absolute soul of it.
I mean, it really has to come down to that because when you move fast, you move fast because of what you hear in your surroundings. So when a brand says to us, we need this to be scalable, we would be working on a scalable platform right now, but it's not our interest because then we go towards that service direction. And let's say brands' interests are quite immediate. You know, it needs to happen within the next 1 or 2 years, maybe 3 years if you're lucky. And their vision goes maybe into 5 years. But we're like, alright, you know, we want to operate on a level where we get to dream 10 to 20 years from now. And because of our ability to do that, we've actually been able to completely accelerate that, where we get to do projects that, you know, nobody could have imagined really last year.
Do you think this is— Sorry, sorry.
No worries.
Do you think this is one of the biggest mistakes that people— new technology is also exciting and you just try and move too fast and they lose the essence of what they're actually doing?
I think there's a lot of validity to that, but looking at the startup space, like what's happening in Silicon Valley, yeah, I think they're finding a happy medium where it's just like there has to be a little bit of sense of urgency. You have to feel a little bit uncomfortable and be like, okay, there's, you know, something is biting you in the ass and you have to move. Because once you become too comfortable and just sit back, you know, it's the reverse. Nothing will happen. You know, you become a little bit too comfortable with what you have. And I think it's like, you see the same with like musicians, you know, bands, you know, like band not making any money, but so much passion for the music. They have their successes, you know, a few years goes by and they get really comfortable, you know, their lifestyle is comfortable and, you know, they're making enough money, everybody loves them, you know, so you don't have that sense of urgency anymore to really redefine yourself, you know, and do something differently, you know, it's really that uncertainty, that uncomfortable, like in arts, you know, like they say, the best art comes from suffering, for example. You know, and I'm not really sure why that is. It's just like when we're really happy and jolly, it's great, you know, because that's what we're thriving in life, but it stops us from creating from, let's say, maybe from a very primal need to create. I'm not really sure, and I'm trying to push this with my teams as well, like, especially now that we have early success, you know, it's very easy to say like, oh, hey, we're set, you know, the biggest brands of the world are calling us. We're in a really good position, you know, but it's only the first steps, you know. I think to truly move forward as a startup, I think, you know, you have to be a little bit uncomfortable.
I mean, you've got so much stuff day to day. How do you make that decision? I mean, you've got a small team, you've got so much going on, small growing business in a crazy world. How do you prioritize what to do?
First of all, I hire a very good producer.
That helps.
So it comes down to, I've been, you know, having to learn to really delegate all tasks away, whatever I can delegate, even if it's to my mom, just give it away, you know, from business and private. So that's the only way to loosen up the weight of my shoulders, because it's so important to be able to stop and reflect and think. Because if you're constantly moving forward, you know, if you're constantly switched on, it's, it just, it becomes too much, you know? And that's what I really noticed this year after all the busy projects that I've been constantly switched on until it almost feels like, like a mini burnout. I mean, definitely not as heavy as a burnout, but just like, yeah, it's just like it becomes harder to get up in the morning. It becomes harder to find pleasure in the things that we're doing. And we've had really awesome projects this year that I've been just so happy about. Those, so those give you energy, you know, to get up in the morning. Yeah, but then at the end of the day, it's like, oh my God, it's, uh, yeah, it's crazy because we're only— it's basically Amber, you know, creative director, you know, doing all the creative direction, social media, you know, thinking concepts, this. And then Marlous, our producer, doing the planning, trying to hire freelancers to take stuff off. And now we have Adriana, you know, business development, to make sure that you know, we actually have projects, you know, in the pipeline. So it's not like this agency way of working, you know, you work your ass off for this one-off project, deadline hits, and then you're asking yourself, yeah, what's next? Yeah, type of situation. And that's what it's been for like 6 months now.
So, so how do you actually— you say you have to take a step back. What do you do to take a step back? What's the thing that you do?
Yeah, good question. First of all, I have to really tell myself to take a step back when it really feels heavy. I have a hobby, so I do two different sports.
Tell them what you do.
One is called floorball. It's an offshoot of ice hockey. So I have an ice hockey history. So during the summer we just play this game, you know, there's no skates, you know, it's just shoes and stick. And then I do CrossFit just to kind of keep healthy. Yeah, but I can't— I also can't do that too intensely because if it takes away energy, then I can't do my work. So it's kind of like it's forced meditation, right?
Yeah.
Because when you're doing CrossFit, you know, it's like 1 hour and you have a trainer saying, are you going to do this now? And then your mind is only at that task. Yeah. So you take away from the work side. So that's the way I find balance. And now my current learning is like, okay, when I come home, is to be home and not take my work home.
Okay. I always find team sports really help me. I can't really do singular sports because they don't get me in that, or they don't give me that same respite, whereas I quite like the team side of it. So I play like 5-a-side football, and that's— yeah, I need that in a week to really, I don't know, have a different mindset about things. And actually, I find that whether it's CrossFit, floorball, football, Not thinking about work lets you think about work a lot better when you come back to it.
Yeah, yeah. And that's what they say about the creative aspect, that actually 90% of your problem solving happens in your subconscious mind. So if you're constantly, you know, putting your active mind on the problem, that's actually much worse than letting your subconscious mind come to the conclusions. I mean, everybody knows this, like, you know, you have a heavy day and you just kind of, you know, you just have to solve that one more problem, but you just can't. Then you go home and next day you come come there and you solve it in an hour or something like that. Oh, it's like, that was simple. Yeah, it's just because you give your mind rest and let your subconscious mind take over. And that's the, that's the really the difficult part. You know, when you get stressed out, you know, you're constantly, you know, so immersed in that problem. And if you can't let go of that problem, it becomes harder and harder and harder to solve the problem. And that's what it's been with us because, I mean, we're a very young startup. And we have early success now, how do we deal with that? Even something simple like, you know, getting 200 emails in your inbox. How do you, how do you manage that? You know, like, how do you start filtering out? Because back in the days it was so easy to just answer every single email that comes in. Now you have to be very selective, you know, which, what is the email that matters? And then the vision becomes so important. Does this fit my vision? 'Or does it not fit my vision?' If not, out.
And you're trying to base that on the back of an email, which is quite a sort of one-dimensional form of communication as well, you know.
Indeed, indeed.
Yeah, it's quite hard.
Yeah, it is. And let's say that's the smallest of our challenges.
I was gonna say.
But it can take away so much energy. Yeah. So it really just starts becoming about dividing the energy to make the startup roll. Delegation, number one thing, it's the biggest keyword in my dictionary at this moment, as is partnerships and recruitment. Those are the three things that I deal with. And then to make sure that, you know, everything's rolling, you know, like how do you, you know, how do you, how do you build a digital pipeline when you don't really have any examples? You just have to keep trying. So it's, you know, it's pretty cliché, but it's just, you know, how startups should operate. You know, you fail, fail, fail, fail, you know, it's like out of 10 tries, you maybe have like 1 half success, and then you really have to celebrate that success, because otherwise, you know, your whole life just feels like a failure.
Yeah.
So that's, that's kind of our biggest learning.
Yeah, you guys have had so much success this year as well, you know, I mean, what, so, so talk me through the big $10K sale, you know, that went on earlier this year. Can you explain to me everything that happened in the process?
Yeah, exactly. So I think that was about 2 months of discussions. So we got contacted by Dapper Labs, the creators of CryptoKitties. So these guys created the gaming platform for illustrations of cats on blockchain. Okay. And, you know, they're selling in the millions of illustrations of cats. On the blockchain because blockchain enables them to just, you know, operate in a different sense. And I mean, it is quite fun experience because you get to buy cats, you know, and you get to make them breed cats and you don't know what comes out of that breed. And, you know, so it becomes your little collectible platform of illustrations of cats. And because it's on the blockchain, you can say, okay, this is a one-off, I am the sole owner of this cat. So you can also sell them. And last year they sold illustration of a cat for $140,000. So yeah, it's blockchain space. Interesting, you have to look into it. So, they had, you know, crazy success with that last year because, of course, you know, Bitcoin and Ethereum, you know, it was already going down at that point, but, you know, people were still in that hype. It's same as the dot-com bubble, it's the cryptocurrency bubble that happened last year when it burst. So, this year they wanted to do something new, and I'm not really sure how digital fashion came on their radar, But I think they were, like, talking with a lot of people and through one of our partners called Luxo, it's a fashion and luxury blockchain company in Berlin, or startup, and they're really cool and they actually told them about us and then they got in touch with us and we started talking and just hypothesizing. At first, it was going to be a collaboration between Dapper Labs, us, and Lil Miquela. So they really wanted Lil Miquela on board and she was part of the communications. But she was coming out with her physical clothing line at the same time. So, they thought that it might be a little bit too confusing for their audiences to truly understand why is there this digital clothing and this physical clothing. So, they really wanted to focus on the physical clothing aspect. So, then they got in touch with this Instagram face filter artist from Berlin called Johanna Jaskowska. And she had like crazy success with Instagram face filters. Where she went from just like a few hundred Instagram followers to like 600,000 Instagram followers.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah. Like within a few weeks' time. Just because— yeah, just from this Instagram filter. So she became the model of the company and we dressed her in our digital clothing and Dapper Labs enabled it to be on the blockchain, basically. And then it was going to be auctioned off at the blockchain conference called Ethereum Summit in New York, which is really like the real blockchain bubble, you know. It was interesting to be there because it's all these blockchain nerds and, you know, they all like, you know, they all operate with Bitcoin and Ethereum, you know, that world is so normal for them. They're like, oh, we don't want to use fiat money. I'm like, what's fiat money? Yeah, yeah, money. Yeah, it's just like normal currency. Yeah, yeah, you know, they don't want to do that. They know they still have to And when even when you got a food pass, it was like it came with like the currency of the conference itself. So at the conference you were trading with its own currency. So it was kind of like this micro economy that they had created.
Crazy.
And like we were just all like just completely confused what was going on. And for everybody was like super cool and super normal.
Yeah, yeah.
So then the last bit of the whole conference was the for the auction itself, there were a lot of different art pieces. Ours became last because apparently it was the most high-profile one. Also because Dapper Labs had, or, you know, they had the success from last year, and they had promised, like, somebody had pre-bid $10,000 on it. So this was an early promise already from weeks before, so we knew that we were selling for $10K, and we were like, oh wow, that's already a lot. This is just digital-only garment, basically it's kind of pushed into the art corner as well. But some people would say, yeah, it's going to go for $50,000, $80,000. Somebody said, oh, I definitely think it's going to be 6 figures. And so my mind is going like, oh man, I'm hoping it actually sells for more than last year. Then they sold an illustration of a cat. Now it's like, okay, this is a little bit more functional. You know, it's clothing, it's fashion, it's something new. So then the auction started and I thought I was okay, it's gonna start at $10K. No, it started at $7.5K. I was already confused, like what? And it went like, there were like 2 people going head-to-head, uh, $7.7, $7.8, uh, $8.2, and it's going $9.5, boom, sold. And I was like, what? We were promised $10,000.
Yeah, yeah.
But we sold it for $9,500. I'm like, okay. It's still super cool, but it was like this mixed feelings of like, we thought it was going to be like $50K, it became $9.5K. So in the moment it felt weird, but honestly, like 20 minutes later, we were just like, really just looked at the situation, how grateful we are to be able to sell digital-only clothing because it was always our planning, it's always what we wanted to do, but we thought maybe 3 to 5 years from now. And the fact that it kind of happened this year already.
Yeah.
Really just started the conversation. You know, like when I posted that on my LinkedIn, it's just hundreds of comments there and it's a lot of people who are like, this is the most absurd LinkedIn post I've seen in my life. This truly is going to be the end of humanity. You know, this is really going to disconnect us and make our lives even worse.
Yeah.
A lot of people made the reference to, you know, the story of the emperor's clothing. You know, where the emperor buys, you know, invisible clothing. We get that reference the whole time. It was posted on like places like Forbes and Gadget, and especially in Gadget, crowd was really hateful. I don't think there was a single really good comment, you know, people are like, oh, I have a digital pink elephant, does somebody want to buy it for $200,000? You know, like, it's a lot of these conversations, but a lot of the comments were also just objections, you know, people truly not You know, truly wanting to understand but not really seeing the relevancy of that it actually has for our lives, you know. But it's the same type of conversation when social media first came about, when internet first came about. I even got an email from somebody saying, what is this digital fashion? What am I supposed to do with it? And it really reminded me of an email that I got like in early 2000s when I, I can't remember who, I just, you know, emailed a friend of mine who had an email address but never used it, and he emailed back and it's like, 'What is this email? Why am I supposed to email you? Why don't we just call each other?' So it just feels like digital fashion is still like 20 years behind.
But isn't that an amazing place to be in? You feel like you're— was that the first digital bit of clothing being sold on blockchain?
On the blockchain, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
I mean, being a world's first in that regard is pretty cool.
Absolutely.
Causing a reaction where people get so emotional about it is pretty cool, regardless of whether it's positive or negative. I mean, that's, that's an amazing thing to do. And you really— they're only being negative because they don't understand it.
Yeah, that's what I think. So too. Yeah, that's why it's a really nice, just really nice space to be in, and really great that we've been kind of given this opportunity to be the enablers of that, because there's of course a lot of other digital fashion designers around us who could have also done it. But I feel like our key differentiator is that we really took the leap of faith, called ourselves digital fashion house, and say we never ever make physical clothing. And at first people were like, really, that doesn't make any sense. But now people are like starting to believe in it too. It's like, all right, well, I guess there can be an existence. I mean, Fortnite being the best example of that, that they're selling digital-only assets for over $300 million in revenue each month. And then, you know, that's, uh, you know, if we wouldn't have that example, it would be a lot harder for people to digest something like this.
Yeah, yeah. Oh man, it's so cool. I remember when we spoke on the first podcast, you know, almost a year ago now, I had to re-ask you, with the first digital fashion house, you know, it didn't really make much sense in my mind, and it's so cool to see how quickly this sort of curve upwards has gone from there.
Indeed, yeah, you did say that. That was a period of time where it was very normal for us to explain that as well. And now still we do have to explain it, but I think it's a lot less. So like you say, that how much, how many things can change in 9 months, it's crazy. And it's really because you see technologies, it's just, it's moving fast. But also because people are starting to see that technology is definitely enabling, let's say, our new existence. We call it a virtual layer of existence. You know, social media is picking up, Instagram being so popular, in our lives. And, you know, this is really enabling people to operate in new ways. And Lil Miquela being a great example of that, and Shootogram, you know, Cameron James Wilson being able to create what he has done. And, you know, this is all within the span of like very short time, less than 2 years' time, of like all these things happening. I can only imagine that 2 years from now it will be much more saturated space where more concepts. Maybe people won't jump into the space exactly how we are, but, you know, in a similar way, you know, really just starting to define and build business models that make sense, you know, kind of moving towards the future. Because for us, it feels normal in that in the future people will buy digital clothing. And I think for us, let's say, our responsibility is to not keep it on a gimmicky level, but really just try to find an angle where it actually adds value to our lives that even the people who don't care about fashion, especially don't care about digital fashion, that it does still become layer of existence for them that they still operate there. You know, whether it be virtual fitting on an e-com platform, these are all like opportunities that are, you know, easy to identify. But what are all those other opportunities that, you know, are out there that we don't know about yet? And that's what I love about fashion. It's really providing that ecosystem and space for people to create something new because there's that cry out for, you know, cultural change, environmental change, sociopolitical change, you know, like it's just, it just needs to change in so many different ways and it, it just feels like it's happening.
Well, we're in the middle of it right now, you know, someone earlier on was like, you know, this thing is becoming, you know, I told them it's not coming, it's here, it's right now.
Yeah, exactly. And I think you're in the middle of too. You see how this conference is growing, you hear the conversations. This is, let's say, the small bubble that exists right now. I can imagine this only just getting bigger and bigger every single year. Because it's not like that the digitization of fashion is going to go backwards. No. Where people just call it quits. Oh yeah, actually, we're not going to touch this. Yeah, no, it's only going to become bigger and bigger.
And I guess people don't question like, what's a digital fashion house when you come to a space like this?
It feels so natural to be here. That's the crazy thing because it doesn't happen often, you know, like I go to conferences, keynote speakers there, maybe 20 people in the audience and no, absolutely nobody cares. And here I just like see all the people that I know from the online world. I see we all have the same discussion and everybody kind of believes in each other's cause and it's like each other's collaborators and competitors. Working, you know, side by side to try to create the industry that we all know is going to happen.
Yeah.
You know, it's like, for me, blockchain is like one of those things that might or might not happen, or it's going to be some type of kind of compromise somewhere between internet and blockchain, or like, I don't know exactly what's going to happen in that space. But digital fashion, it's just like, it's the only way to go because architecture, automotive, film and visual effects, product design, you know, like you name it, any design industry is completely digital these days until the actual thing gets made. And everybody is again, super easy to identify that opportunity, super hard to execute that. And I think the conversations that exist here are all the challenges that, you know, everybody's going through. And I just had a focus group and I had a slide in there like, who are you? What is your biggest challenge in 3D fashion? And it really literally just came down to 3 different things of what is the biggest challenge. It's the people who know that 3D is a must but don't know how to implement it yet. The people who are already doing 3D but, you know, have to break those barriers within their organizations. And the people who already have broken the barriers within their organizations trying to make it scalable. You know, how do you truly make it cost-effective? you know, work that if you have 6,000 pieces per season that you can completely digitize that and save time and save money. These are all the discussions that I hear on repeat, and if everybody's trying to crack that code, eventually it will happen. But it's baby steps, and I can imagine, let's say, for a small brand, it can be very hard to jump into that space because you see how long that road is, you see how hard it is to actually you know, get to that dream state. Yeah, you know, it's just, it's just about starting the top of the mountain.
Yeah, the thing is, is though that there's two sides to that coin really, because as a small company you have the ability to change a bit quicker as well. And you, and if you're just starting out, you see the landscape for what it is and you can have all of these discussions and you know which way to go, whereas a big company is kind of hard to change that and it costs a lot more and there's You know, there's a lot more pressures, you know, so it's difficult.
That's why PVH, the Stitch team, it's a massive role model of mine because they are trying to change a massive corporation within, you know, from the inside. We say that we exist on the outskirts of the fashion industry. PVH exists in the dead middle, so they're trying to create that change from the middle. And, you know, like, I talk to these guys, Dominik from Stitch the whole time, and he's just going for it. You know, it's just like, you know, you keep hitting barriers, whatever, just keep going. Yeah. And then making massive steps. And it's really, really nice to see, you know, but at the same time, I'm happy that I don't have to exist in that space because, yeah, you're trying to move a mountain and you have a very small team to do that. And, you know, Stitch is in a good place because they can hire teams, you know, they have like more than 20 people working on one single problem. While other companies have maybe 2 people working on several different problems at the same time, and they're not given resources, they're not given people to actually help in that. They just think like, oh yeah, just one person come in and they can do that. And then they work with all these consultants and the consultants, yeah, just do this, do that, you know, and they're still like trying to figure out, yeah, what do we need? You need to invest in it. It's just like, that's where it starts. Or wait until somebody else cracks it and then you just implement it, you know, later on. But then are you too late? You know, it's just like you're gonna lose the competitive advantage. It's the first mover's advantage. But, you know, sometimes it's actually the second mover that gets to pick a part of the pie. Yeah. Because, you know, it's just the first mover has to struggle with so much. And the second mover can learn so much from that first mover.
Well, this brings an interesting point about IP, and I was going to try and bring up earlier on because you were saying you sold this thing for 9— whatever it went for, you know. Now you have two bidders bidding against each other. This is a digital piece of apparel. Why can't you just press copy and send it over there? Does that then reduce the I don't know, reduce the product, um, what's the word I'm looking for, like whether someone wants it, the desirability. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you know. And so there's only one of these, even though it's digital. Yeah, and you could just press copy and paste, you know.
That's the blockchain aspect of it. So blockchain enables it to be a unique item, and that uniqueness creates the desirability around it. Yeah, you can say it the same thing as like, okay, yeah, only one Mona Lisa. But I can also get a Mona Lisa from China for €50, put it on my wall, you know, does it still, you know, is it the same thing? You know, it's— blockchain allows it to authenticate the fact that you can call yourself that, you know, sole owner of the piece. And of course, of course it can be duplicated infinite amount of times, you know, like anybody in the world can have that. But it's just because you have that encryption key that comes, you know, through the blockchain. That allows you to really just be that sole owner. And that, you know, there is that still that thing like that ownership is still respected in our society, like film industry, you know, the whole of Asia is pirating movies, you know, but there's still a difference in the feeling of having the original to having a pirated copy. Some people don't care, some people do care, you know, and especially in the art world, you know, like auction houses, Sotheby's, Christie's, you know, they're still only, you know, selling those one-offs, but those one-offs have millions and millions of copies in the world. I also have art in my home that my mom bought from China for $50. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Do you feel like you're an artist? You're creating art?
So, I mean, I come from a design background, I come from film and visual effects where I was a 3D designer, to jump into space of actually being a businessman. But the way I do business is I still think I do business from, let's say, the artist side, because I'm not interested in, you know, listening to brands and trying to solve their pain points, because that's the typical startup way of doing. You understand what's needed, you know, in the landscape, you go and you create a product, you know, you get user feedback, you implement user feedback, and you know, this is how you build, you know, platform software. Where everybody does that. That's not my space. I don't understand development. I'm not a software builder, but I'm super excited about anything that has a little bit of aspect of unknowingness to it, uncertainty, and where we get to dream a little bit. And so we've been able to basically create a business model that didn't exist before. We also say we want to create the digital fashion industry. What is the digital fashion industry?
Well, this is what I want to know, because this is the exciting thing. The blockchain sale, I think, has proven this, this is going to happen. Yeah. And you kind of get to be a little bit of an architect and a pioneer in this new world. So where are you leading us?
Well, I always say that it's up to the creators to build the future, right? Yeah. And I feel like we're in that space, but honestly, it's not possible without everybody around us, you know, like it's not like we're such genius minds, you know, coming up with crazy concepts. No, I'm not saying that.
I'm just saying that you have the ability to like drive it.
Oh, like we have the power, like the control over it. Yeah, I guess we have a little bit of leverage because of the PR that it generated, right? So eyes are a little bit more directed towards us. But because of that, what happened? We know what the next step is. You know, we have to make it possible for everybody to wear digital clothing. We have to make it possible to be a scalable solution. We want that experience has to, you know, also be something that people enjoy doing. So yeah, it's great, you know.
But where are you going to lead it? I mean, that's what I want to know is like, what, where are we?
Okay, so what—
I see Instagram, like, so, and you've done some work with Cameron James Wilson, who obviously created Shudu. And so, you know, creating moving parts to this digital model as well.
So, are you talking about the vision? What is that?
Yeah, I'm talking about the vision. Like, I want to know kind of the application of this, maybe in 3, 5, 10 years, you know, am I going to have my Instagram account or sort of a mobile version of that with almost a fake me that kind of influenced by Cameron James Wilson, a model of me wearing Fabricant clothes, wearing Fabricant clothes. And you know, how much is that going to cost me?
Yeah, those are all questions that, you know, go through in our minds as well. But if we're going to talk about, you know, a 200-year vision, you know, yeah, we're all going to be wearing digital clothing in our physical lives. That's, let's say, the end goal. You know, we know that's probably not going to happen in our lifetimes, but if we think about where we're going to be 5,000 years from now, it would be pretty weird to think that we're still wearing physical clothing or that our existence is even, you know, physical in this way that we just think, okay, you know, so that being a, let's say, 200-year vision, how do we break that down into smaller steps? You know, it's really the whole idea again from a startup perspective, what is our minimum viable product? How can we, you know, prototype as fast as possible? And the first step is you having a picture of yourself, overlaying yourself with digital clothing, putting on Instagram, you know. Okay, that's fun and games for now. Okay, not everybody cares about Instagram, not everybody is on Instagram, you know, not everybody's going to do that. It's going to be some people that find it fascinating. What are the problems that we can solve with it? Well, one, I a problem is this idea that, you know, these kids, they order clothing from, let's say, Gucci, you know, worth thousands of euros, you know, get it, put it on, take a picture of themselves, put it on Instagram, return the clothing, you know, returns is a massive problem in the fashion industry. So it can help kind of combat that and just enable kids to wear cool stuff and, you know, create their Instagram identities a little bit more. But is that really, you know, providing us with more value in our lives? Yes and no. There's a lot of arguments for it.
Yeah.
But where we are going with this, what we need is the digital body to be for people to actually wear our clothing, right? If we're only going to exist as a digital clothing company, yeah, well, we need digital bodies for that. Secondly, we need a marketplace, you know, where can people go to actually buy digital clothing. Yeah, so those are the two things. And, uh, I mean, a lot of people are already creating those. We're working, collaborating with a Portuguese startup called Didymo, and basically they're creating tech to create that digital body. And then we just need the, let's say, the user interface where we have that digital body and then we actually put the digital clothing on ourselves. So that's the, that's the first prototype. The second prototype is actually create movement in the clothing. The third one is that you create movement on the body and the clothing. The fourth one is that you can actually have like this real-time interactive usability on the clothing itself, kind of like CLO3D, you know, or Browzwear, how you can just kind of manipulate the clothing in the user interface. It feels very intuitive. It's super cool. And then beyond that, of course, yeah, that's, you know, those are like the small steps, you know.
I guess you can add time in there as well. Eventually, you know, because I see the fabricant clothing, you know, it's always the clothes walking and never the man and never the person in them, you know. It's the emperor that's invisible and not the clothes.
Yeah, good point. Yeah, actually I have to stop commenting on those comments.
Yeah, exactly. Okay man, thanks so much. Absolute pleasure.
Yeah, thank you.
