Streetwear x web3: XCorp bring quality to web3 merch and Balenciaga start accepting Crypto
Hey - it’s time for the first ever SW3 newsletter! Thankyou for being one of the first 100 to sign up. I appreciate it and hope you’ll get loads out of this.
Before we cosy up, if you don’t know me yet I’m Sarah Akwisombe. I’ve been involved in different creative scenes since I started my career, first in music as a recording artist and producer, then interior design and now fashion - I’m building my streetwear brand, NOT THAT DEEP®.
Basically I’m a combination of creative and business geek with a healthy passion for tech, which is why I’m so fascinated by the world of web3 - most importantly how it relates to the creative industries and what it can do for both creatives and consumers to make it all, well… better and more exciting.
Anyway, enough of that, shall we get into some cool shit? This is what’s caught my eye over the last few days.
XCorp
I mean I literally live for a cosy oversized hood so I was easy prey when I saw these on my twitter feed. Yes, they’re simple, but as web3 ‘merch’ goes, this is pretty elevated.
Firstly, let’s look at the slogan - ‘DYOR’ is an obvious but clever one (a well known abbreviation within the stocks and crypto community for making sure you do your homework before throwing money at the latest shitcoin) as it’s niche but not too niche. And honestly, I was just happy to see some ‘phygital’ pieces without a giant anime character printed on the front. BUT. After I did some digging I realised that was XCORP are attempting is way bigger than just some cool hoodies.
I spoke to Xcorp founder b00zie to get some insights.
What's your background - are you a streetwear head or been a brand owner yourself?
Three members out of our core group have extensive fashion backgrounds. I worked as a creative director in one of the biggest barbershops in Canada, working directly with Lo’real and American Crew. Ggghosted, our apparel manager, runs a luxury streetwear brand and has an extensive manufacturer network. Lastly, Aeta has been interested in fashion since middle school and has been working on his own brand as well.
Talk to me like I'm 85 - how would you explain the topline of what XCORP is building?
XCorp is building street culture in web3. There is a big gap in the web3 street culture, whether that's in fashion or even home accessories. We’ve had such a big influence from street culture (fashion, lifestyle, etc) and also love the web3 space, so it only made sense to bring street culture into web3. We see this as a huge opportunity to dominate the web3 fashion market as we have experience running web2 luxury streetwear brands and also understand the web3 space, hence why our products will be made from the same materials as Gucci and Balenciaga. Although our current products are all based on fashion, we are in the process of creating home accessories like rugs, album covers, and more. XCorp streetwear is just a branch from us and you can expect us to create many more unique pieces in the future.
Why did you start XCORP - what's the problem you aim to solve?
We have two main problems we want to solve, first the ongoing massive counterfeit issue in the world and second the lack of quality apparel in web3.
First, fighting counterfeits. As a result of the sale of counterfeit goods, the fashion industry has lost more than $50 billion alone in 2020. For consumers, not only can counterfeit goods cause health problems because of the quality of the products but consumers might also lose a lot of money investing in a grail product only to discover it was a counterfeit. For sellers, extensive research, investment, and work goes into each new product designed. A brand may lose their business to a seller who has just counterfeited their product which is very discouraging, especially for new designers to become more hesitant to invest in innovative products. Counterfeiting is stealing the greatest asset a designer has - their creativity.
Second, the lack of quality apparel in web3. The streetwear and fashion market grew more than ever in the last 5 years and while a few web3 companies produce “merch”, there is none with high quality and designs that the community could proudly wear outside. XCorp saw this as a huge opportunity to dominate the web3 fashion market because of our experience running web2 luxury streetwear brands and understanding of the web3 space. Additionally XCorp will supply whitelabel apparel (blanks) in bulk to other web3 companies wanting to create their own apparel to overall improve the web3 fashion market.
I think you guys focusing on blanks is a huge win - as a streetwear brand owner myself it's been the biggest challenge (finding high quality blanks at good prices, good quality and sustainable etc). What are your plans around this and how exactly does it work?
Our main focus was creating high quality garments that replicate luxury fashion at a much lower cost. The plan with this was to create these garments that last a lifetime rather than most of the current blank companies you see nowadays with garments that change shape, deteriorate and just overall become really poor after a few washes. Yes our prices will be higher than your traditional blanks but you also will not find anything better for the price you pay, you are genuinely getting top of the line merch.
As for our plans, we hope to develop a strong base in the web3 space by helping projects who want to uplift a merch project make it come true. We understand figuring out what blanks to use could be difficult but here we’re guaranteeing the best of the best.
You want to incorporate NFC tags into your clothing - why do you see this as being important, and how does it link to blockchain technology?
A NFC (near-field communication) tag embeds several advanced features, like the memory protection of its content and authenticity verification, thereby helping brands and consumers differentiate authentic goods from counterfeit ones. Additionally a NFC Chip added to garments allows for added utility. XCorp will be incorporating NFC Chips in all clothes in order to ensure consumers legitimacy of our products and also to add utility for every single consumer.
You mention that if you hold an XCORP NFT you can share in revenue, can you explain how this works and what holders of your NFTs could expect?
All holders of our X NFT’s will be applicable to a 30% revshare of our profits we make from any sales of apparels. This includes our own collections, collaboration products and also bulk whitelabel sales. We are sharing a big portion of our profits to really share our success with our holders who have been supporting us from the beginning. We want to grow together with our community.
What are your thoughts on the streetwear / NFT web3 world at the moment? Where do you see room for it to grow?
A lot of bigger web2 brands like Diesel and Hugo Boss have been entering the market so we are definitely expecting an improvement of the scene in the future. While we are excited to see those projects, we want to see more projects rooted and starting from web3 to make more noise in the web3 fashion scene.
Who else is doing cool shit with streetwear in web3?
We appreciate everyone else trying to develop the streetwear scene in web3 because we want to see the overall scene develop. A special shout out to Trippy Bunny Tribe for being our first custom whitelabel products clients. A few other names that come to mind are Embroidery Boy, WovenNFT and Nekozuma.
You can find out more about XCorp and read their whitepaper here.
Also happening this week in SW3…
Rimowa have partnered with Nike-aquired RTFKT (pronounced Artefact, not RETEFECT as I was previously saying, cringe)
Balenciaga announced they will now accept Crypto as a form of payment in some stores (they also just publicly stated they are officially parting ways with Kanye, ouch)
That’s it for this week, keep your eyes peeled for next week’s newsletter.
Heard of some cool shit happening we should cover? Drop me a line - yo@sarahakwisombe.com