brand Crocs is flying high in the actual world and now it’s able to tackle the vacations within the virtual one, with an immersive recent shopping experience launching Wednesday until Dec. 31, the corporate told WWD in an exclusive interview.

“We’re doing an actual virtual shopping experience that has five different unique themed rooms,” explained Feliz Papich, Crocs’ vp of digital product management and consumer experience. “These highlight necessary product lines and necessary innovation moments for us inside the Crocs catalog. So this type of takes this whole experience and brings it to life, so we will actually interact with the consumers.”

The corporate worked with virtual retail platform Obsess on the three-month project. The primary room, essentially a landing space, offers visitors options to roam the WebVR world freely, play a game to win exclusive prizes or take a quiz in order that the system can guide them to a relevant area and personalize the sport.

The opposite 4 rooms each carry different sensibilities: One was crafted as a tribute to the brand’s classic clogs, while one other glitter-infused room brings party vibes. A fuzz-lined room was designed as a warm and comfortable space, and a Jibbitz room was created as a customization station, where people can pick charms to customize their shoes. Shoppers are invited to go to one or the entire areas.

In response to Papich, the atmospheres could also be visual, but they were designed to convey a way of tactility and a spread of vibes — from the fuzz-lined room’s soft, fluffy decor to the glitter room’s metallic ball and balloons, which evoke fun and festive Recent 12 months’s Eve celebrations. Other spaces double down on a winter or holiday theme, complete with an igloo-like structure in addition to a snowy beach to indicate holiday vacations.

“[When] you’re thinking that of shopping at holiday, you consider a Hallmark movie, right? Sipping your hot cocoa and also you’ve got your scarf on, and so we actually desired to bring that to life,” she said. “We wanted our consumers to feel like they may go into a special room and feel their self-expression inside that. That’s a giant theme with our brand in any respect times. It’s self-expression, personalization.”

The hassle appears to resonate strongly with consumers, which can matter now greater than ever. While inflation and other issues dog major retailers, brands and tech firms, lots of which have been showing disappointing numbers these days, the 20-year-old shoe company just marked 4 consecutive quarters of growth, because of a revenue haul of $985 million. Although profit didn’t quite meet expectations, it was enough to spice up Crocs’ share price greater than 4 percent.

Not bad for an item that began as a boating shoe and is maybe known best as “kitchen clogs” — or a minimum of it was until recently.

This 12 months alone brought collaborations with MCM and Sza, in addition to luxury fashion house Balenciaga, significantly raising Crocs’ profile. The corporate has also been very lively on the technology front, which only helps keep the footwear in front of the Gen Z and even Gen Alpha crowd.

Indeed, while the present virtual shop could be the company’s first dedicated to the vacations, it’s not the brand’s first move within the metaverse and mixed reality.

In 2021, Crocs stepped up as the primary footwear brand to tackle TikTok’s augmented reality with #GetCrocd, a campaign launched on TikTok and Douyin in China that nabbed greater than 8 billion impressions and hashtag use that soared greater than 1.3 million times worldwide. Later that 12 months it launched on NBA 2K and debuted its own Crocs World in Minecraft.

January 2022 delivered Crocs NFTs for Paris Fashion Week, followed by a collaboration in June with Saweeti on a limited-edition line of Jibbitz charms featured, together with the rapper’s avatar, in one other virtual reality shopping experience. Most recently, it brought Crocs World to the Zepeto metaverse in September and Roblox in October.

This time, Crocs worked with Obsess, its previous tech partner on the Saweetie project. The firm’s virtual store platform develops immersive 3D experiences that brands can host on their very own web sites.

“We began working with Crocs earlier this 12 months, after they created this virtual pop-up with 3D, and that performed very well for them. This holiday virtual store is a much larger experience, with loads of their product line, and all of the several form of categories or products that they’ve,” said Neha Singh, chief executive officer and founding father of Obsess. “A few things which might be unique about this experience is how they’re using our platform, they’ve really added loads of form of personalization and gamification to the experience.”

Beauty and fashion are the biggest categories for the platform, which works with some 20 to 30 brands in these sectors. So far it has released greater than 150 virtual stores and Singh estimates that fashion and sweetness account for two-thirds of them. The projects vary quite a bit — from a virtual replica of a retailer’s physical store to a fantastical scene that couldn’t possibly exist in the actual world, just like the intergalactic environment it created for makeup brand Charlotte Tilbury last 12 months.

But splashy visuals aren’t the one motivation, a minimum of for Crocs. The utility matters, added Papich, each to assist the patron find just the correct thing and as a strategic move for the corporate.

“The way in which that we take into consideration these virtual experiences is that they really should drive acquisition with consumers that we don’t reach on other platforms,” the Crocs executive said. “I believe opportunity primary is to succeed in and acquire additional consumers. After which opportunity number two is the personalization and the conversation with the patron going forward.

“Because if we all know that you just are coming from an Instagram post and also you hit this, experience it and take a look at, we all know that that’s what you’re in search of from us. [Not everyone] wants to have interaction, so that actually helps us segment and have the correct conversation with you, so our conversations are literally relevant.”