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Remember when a digital Carolina Herrera gown sold for $5,000 on Roblox in 2022? Or when a limited-edition digital Gucci bag ultimately resold for the equivalent of thousands of dollars on Roblox in 2020? Burberry, Coach and Fenty Beauty were among the other fashion and beauty brands selling digital iterations of their physical offerings to digitally savvy young shoppers.
But as artificial intelligence has skyrocketed to the fore, luxury fashion and beauty brands have placed their metaverse strategies and experimentation on the back-burner. Now, Roblox has a new offering to get them back into the fold: the opportunity to sell real, physical goods on the Roblox platform.
From 15 May, approved brands, creators, merchandisers and intellectual property holders will be able to sell physical products within shoppable Roblox experiences, in partnership with Shopify. Under Roblox’s new ‘Commerce APIs’, users will be able to purchase physical goods in-platform, and get a digital replica for use on Roblox as well.
It’s a big move for a company that built itself on the platform of immersive, digital-only experiences. But it’s also a logical next step, argues Stephanie Latham, VP of global brand partnerships and advertising. “Shopping for digital items is already endemic to our platform. They are purchasing digital products while they spend time with friends and dress up, so contextually relevant physical products are a natural extension of that,” she explains.
For creators, it’s a monetisation opportunity, adds Latham. For users, it’s a fun and organic way to buy physical goods from experiences they’re already spending time in. “And for brands, commerce provides a way to build purchase intent and interest in products, reaching the unique Gen Z audience that comes to our platform,” she says.
Roblox boasts 97.8 million users a day — and 50 per cent of Gen Z users are very or extremely likely to consider a brand in the physical world after trying items on virtually, per Roblox’s 2023 Digital Expression report.
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To mark today’s offering, Fenty Beauty is returning to Roblox with a commerce integration. Fenty’s new shoppable game offers the latest shade of its popular Gloss Bomb Universal Lip Luminizer, available exclusively in-game. When on Roblox, users can click a digital version of a physical product. A checkout window will pop up — not unlike a normal e-commerce site, with sizing options (for clothing), product information and a button to purchase. The familiar Shopify payment page appears and users check out as they would on any other platform, before returning to the game. They never have to leave Roblox.
“We’re merging the physical and digital worlds by offering a first-of-its-kind shopping experience inside the game that brings our brand from Roblox to real life,” Nanette Wong, Fenty’s VP of global brand marketing, said in a statement.
Roblox tested the physical goods offering with other brands mid-last year (before the Shopify integration was announced for a more scaled approach). In a retail environment full of cautious consumers and increasingly ambivalent Gen Z shoppers, will this chance to convince younger audiences to buy physical goods excite brands about the metaverse again?
That’s the goal. Roblox has seen positive interest from brands since it announced its work on commerce, Latham says. “It’s really early days, but we ultimately envision a shoppable future for Roblox where creators and brands can grow their businesses through commerce.” It’s a way to tap into communities they can’t access elsewhere, she says.
This is Roblox’s USP for physical goods, too. The Shopify integration may look familiar, but the digital ties are unique to the platform, Latham says. “Roblox has a differentiated approach to commerce where brands can offer more than physical items — for example, attaching an appealing digital benefit, whether that’s an avatar or in-experience item,” she says. “This was one of the early learnings in our tests where creators saw impressive results bundling physical merchandise with valuable digital products for their community.”
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