Meta’s Zuckerberg revealed that the business will begin selling apparel for its avatars on a digital marketplace next week. On Instagram Live today, Zuckerberg and Eva Chen, Instagram’s VP of fashion partnerships, demonstrated some of the latest fashions.
The Meta Avatars Store will sell brand-name clothing that customers may dress their digital avatars in on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger for real money. Balenciaga, Prada, and Thom Browne will be the store’s first three designer brands to open. The store’s current free apparel products will remain available.
Image Source : Meta
Starting next week, the store will be available in the United States, Canada, Thailand, and Mexico. Meta intends to grow with other companies in the future, as well as introduce it to VR technology via the group’s Meta Quest headsets.
Last year, the 3D avatars were updated in VR, with new emotions, skin tones, and mobility aids like hearing aids and wheelchairs were added. Users can use one avatar to represent Facebook and Messenger, Instagram, and VR across all platforms, or they can use three separate avatars to reflect their individual profiles.
Meta would not be the first company to introduce customization of avatars through their platform. While the most popularized version would have been the rework of avatars on Xbox in 2017, other platforms such as Snapchat also have options with popular brands. However, Snapchat offers these selections as curated free selections and Xbox has a multitude of customization options that do not require real money to be exchanged. Time will only tell if this will take off in the way that Meta wants it to.