LONDON — Drest, the mobile gaming company that permits players to turn out to be fashion stylists and types to appeal to recent audiences, has raised 15 million kilos in fresh funding from its longstanding investor.

The cash has been earmarked for the event of a recent product proposition, Drest Game 2.0, which guarantees to supply a more sophisticated user experience and a bigger, global marketing platform for fashion, luxury, beauty and jewellery brands.

The corporate said the brand new funds will allow Drest to grow and scale within the fields of gaming, media, data and e-commerce with the ambition of becoming the leading creative platform for fashion, entertainment and lifestyle gamification.

The updated plaform is being rolled out progressively in numerous markets and can make its official launch worldwide in the primary half of 2024.

Drest launched in 2019 as a mobile-only gaming platform for fashion fans, who undertake specific challenges within the metaverse, akin to styling a hyper-realistic avatar head-to-toe for the Oscars or participating in brand-specific competitions.

Community members vote on the styles and the winners level up through the sport, winning virtual prizes and other rewards.

Its revenue comes from customers’ in-game spend, partnerships with brands and affiliate links. Drest has a partnership with Farfetch, which allows players to remodel the virtual clothes and niknaks from the sport into real-life purchases. 

The corporate has to this point raised 45 million kilos, including the most recent funds, and user growth has been increasing 250 percent year-on-year, in keeping with Drest.

The corporate works directly with greater than 260 brands including Breitling, Cartier, Christian Louboutin, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Valentino.

Lisa Bridgett, chief executive officer of Drest, said the brand new investment “is testament to the strength of our product delivery and pipeline of ideas, and can help Drest scale” in a troublesome market.

“We are actually able to take the business to the subsequent level and offer a recent one-of-a-kind experience to our users while maintaining the core elements of the sport,” Bridgett said in an interview.

“There may be an undeniable interest in gaming from the posh fashion and lifestyle industries and we’re thoroughly positioned to cater to this increasing demand. We very much stay up for the subsequent chapter,” she added.

Bridgett contends Drest is a super platform for brands across the life-style categories to achieve recent, younger audiences. The Drest users are mainly women between 18 and 29 years old.  

“We’re luxury fashion, beauty, jewelry, entertainment, interiors, travel — all of those different categories and audiences are relevant while you come into considered one of our challenges. There are such a lot of opportunities for customer acquisition, engagement excitement and content. For the brands, we’re a improbable marketing channel to an audience they are attempting to handle,” Bridgett claimed, adding that brands are intrigued by the probabilities of gaming.

“They’re in search of recent formats, with a view to democratically and organically reach recent audiences,” she said.

The newest investment round is from the family office of Drest cofounder and co-chair Graham Edwards, a businessman and tech entrepreneur.

His cofounder and co-chair is Lucy Yeomans, previously global content director for Net-a-porter and editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar U.K.

Edwards said the brand new funding “will support Lucy in her quest to bring the merged worlds of gaming and fashion to an excitingly large global audience.”

He described the updated platform as a “highly improved, metaverse-enabled version of its current product.”

The newest iteration of Drest will include a series of recent features. The brand new platform will offer a more immersive experience, allow users to create their very own avatars and share them, too, in keeping with Bridgett.

“We’re also very keyed in on all the Web 3.0 initiatives, whether that’s in digital fashion, augmented reality or virtual reality,” with the continuing aim of enriching the client, and brand, experience, she added.

Additional games inside the Web 3.0 and lifestyle space are being explored, she added, and Drest will enter right into a research and development phase over the subsequent 18 months.

Drest said it has recently appointed a gaming and Web 3.0 expert, Henri Holm, as chief financial officer. He previously worked with privately funded, enterprise capital-funded, and publicly listed firms, driving finance, business development and digital strategy creation.

The brand new investment has come at a vital time. Mobile gaming revenues are on the rise and the competition in the style and gaming space is becoming fierce.

As reported last week, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton has teamed with Fortnite creator Epic Games to create recent immersive customer experiences and add recent tools to its design pipeline with 3D tech.

Last October, Burberry partnered with Minecraft on a game called “Burberry: Freedom to Go Beyond.” It offered a special capsule collection that customers could shop digitally inside the game and in stores at seven global locations.

Burberry previously partnered with Mythical Games to launch an NFT collection on Blankos Block Party, an open-world, multiplayer game.

Based on NewZoo, which provides data on gaming, mobile gaming revenues hit $92.2 billion in 2022 and accounted for 50 percent of the $184.4 billion global gaming market’s revenues.

It’s estimated that the worldwide gaming market shall be price $221 billion by 2025.