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L’Oréal-owned beauty brand Shu Uemura has linked up with Nike-owned Rtfkt to develop products that span physical stickers, NFC chips, augmented reality filters and avatars, in a partnership that brings together two of fashion and beauty’s biggest companies in the name of innovation.
Japanese-based Shu Uemura, acquired by L’Oréal in 2004, will introduce 3D “Shu Stickers” later this year. The design of the limited-edition physical pieces, made to be worn around the eye, were inspired by Japanese calligraphy. Each sticker contains a micro NFC (near-field communication) chip that, when scanned with a smartphone, activates three AR lenses in Snapchat that layer on a fantastical appearance themed around Tsubaki flowers (a Japanese camellia), calligraphy and an “explosion of colour”.
Face stickers are an emerging product category in beauty — a nod to the digital-physical blending happening on social media — and this is the first major beauty product to add a worn NFC chip.
Rtfkt, the digital-first, Web3 sneaker brand acquired by Nike in December 2021, will add further digital enhancements to the project. The specific details are still being ironed out, but these are slated to include additional AR filters, designed in part by Rtfkt’s community of creators, and digital makeup for Rtfkt’s avatar PFPs, called CloneX. Expect special perks for Rtfkt’s NFT holders and other Web3 tie-ins, such as loyalty rewards and additional blockchain-based utilities, says Asmita Dubey, chief digital and marketing officer at L���Oréal Group. She calls the approach “O plus O plus O”, which stands for “offline, online and on-chain”. Already, one of Rtfkt’s CloneX avatars has been dressed in a digital version of the stickers as a way of teasing the collaboration during the recent Viva Tech conference in Paris.
“We believe the future of beauty is physical, digital and virtual, and we know there will be new codes of beauty for new audiences,” Dubey says. “Rtfkt is very much at this intersection of physical and digital — they are into gaming, fashion and design, digital value — and that is a common ground for both of us.”
Collaborations like these can leverage each brand’s unique expertise and fan base, and generate limited edition products that break out of the everyday product pipeline. In Rtfkt, the 114-year-old L’Oréal stands to gain the attention of a Web3 community that is accustomed to digital enhancements and new approaches to fashion and design. And, with Shu Uemura, Rtfkt is able to continue to push into new areas beyond sneakers, and reward its loyal community with more perks and opportunities to monetise their creativity.
Rtkft co-founder Benoit Pagotto says that he has always had an interest in beauty and makeup trends, and notes the existing popularity on social media of physical facial stickers and AR enhancements that enable that effect. Already, Rtfkt has used NFCs and AR filters in other categories of phygital products. “Beauty can evolve a lot when you involve tech, and on the Rtfkt side, we are very close to young creatives and 3D artists. There is a new type of profile that uses 3D to do beauty and beauty experiences.”
A year ago, Rtfkt released the 3D files and commercial rights to CloneX avatar holders, enabling them to independently create and sell content or products using CloneX intellectual property. The Space Drip sneaker collection, which was started two years ago, asked its community to personalise digital Nike Air Force 1s, with the promise of sharing revenue with the creators of any that ultimately became phygital products.
Rtfkt’s Pagotto adds that this collaboration with Shu Uemura will likely start with inviting people to create new augmented experiences for the sticker. Already, when the project was teased on Twitter, the “Clone Queens”, who are a group of women in the Rtfkt community, were very interested, L’Oréal Group’s Dubey says.
This isn’t the first beauty partnership for Rtkft. Last summer, it announced a partnership with luxury fragrance brand Byredo on a metaversal perfume, including customised digital and physical scents and NFT-connected NFC tags on bottles. The limited digital collectibles were designed to be wearable digital “auras”. Pagotto says that while beauty won’t become a key focus of Rtfkt — it became known as the “Supreme of the metaverse” for its digital sneaker designs — he says that as a fashion brand, it’s natural to want to expand the business. Beauty, he says, “is about self-expression and identity and an area that has a lot of innovation to do. I’m very interested in how Gen Z is using filters and different beauty codes, and it is a lot more diverse than what it was for a long time. The concept of beauty with younger generations is completely different and more transformative.”
Rtfkt has also partnered with LVMH-owned luggage brand Rimowa on suitcases that include an AR enhancement, and with parent company Nike on phygital “Cryptokicks” sneakers. In February, it introduced a collaboration with physical crypto wallet provider Ledger to offer a series of education programmes and collaborative drops. Both Rtkft and Shu Uemura have also partnered with artist Takashi Murakami, among others.
While the exact mechanics of the Shu Uemura and Rtfkt partnership are still not known, it’s likely that the perks for consumers will focus on elements such as loyalty, access and co-creation, as Dubey says the “O plus O plus O” strategy includes in-store sales and Web3 perks. “We want to link it to utilities in Web3 and blockchain, so that [customers] are able to get some kind of a loyalty and evolve with it,” Dubey says. This is in contrast to the early days of Rtfkt’s success, which gained notoriety based on high floor prices and speculative trading values. When it added new items to the ecosystem — often through free airdrops to existing holders — the holders could in turn sell them for a profit, which made royalty revenues for Rtfkt, brought new people into its ecosystem and rewarded its early adopters. In recent months, peer-to-peer sales like this and floor prices have decreased across the board.
According to blockchain analytics platform Nansen, NFT sales and new wallets (meaning new crypto wallets) in the past year have been declining. Rtfkt’s CloneX avatars, which dropped in November 2021, have earned the company the most royalties in secondary sales to date, at $37.8 million (converted from ETH). The royalties earned on the more recent Rtfkt x Rimowa Meta-Artisan collection, which dropped in October 2022, earned about $300,000, Nansen reports.
Other brands within L’Oréal’s family of brands have already begun experimenting with Web3 and metaversal technologies. Most recently, Maybelline introduced 12 virtual makeup looks that can be worn in video meetings held in Microsoft Teams. Additionally, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) Beauté, NYX Cosmetics and L’Oréal Paris Colour Riche have all experimented with various approaches to NFTs. Both Maybelline New York and L’Oréal Professional have created virtual makeup looks for Ready Play Me avatars, and in 2022, the company launched a Web3 accelerator with Met and Incubateur HEC Paris.
The price and exact quantity of the physical face stickers is yet to be determined, but Dubey says that they will plan to produce “thousands” to begin. She hopes to attract Shu Uemura’s existing creative community, while bringing new people into the fold. Dubey says that when she tested the product at Viva Tech last month, a number of people wanted to wear it immediately. Will Pagotto, who has become a bit of a poster child for how a Web3 brand can find success, wear a 3D Shu Sticker? “Me personally? Maybe not,” he says with a laugh. “I’m a very low-key guy.”
Maybe, however, he will wear it in the metaverse.
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