While some ecommerce platforms may be navigating a downturn as many consumers return to brick-and-mortar retail, startups Parade and CPGD are looking to the metaverse to make the online shopping experience more fun and personal with their latest platform: The MetaMarket.
Launched earlier this year, the MetaMarket calls itself “the first-ever farmers’ market in the metaverse” and aims to gamify ecommerce by placing consumers inside a virtual plaza featuring an array of booths from independent brands. Users navigate the market like they would a video game and the program can be accessed from any web browser on desktop or mobile. When two users encounter one another, their cameras and microphones automatically turn on, allowing them to chat with each other as they would in person.
“We came to this idea that we could bring back more of a live component to online shopping so that there’s more of a serendipity aspect to it, and more of an explorative aspect,” Parade co-founder Tyler Fisher said. “It’s not that you’re just going and you’re saying ‘I need this so I’m going to read a few reviews and buy this product.’ It’s more of the way it is at a farmers’ market.”
Founded in 2021 by Fisher, an app developer with a games industry background, and CEO Josh Liss, Parade aims to “make ecommerce more fun” by designing online games for brands that can be released as promotional items which can also collect customer emails, advertise specific products and create additional revenue streams by monetizing in-game ad placements.
For the MetaMarket, its first owned platform, Parade teamed up with CPGD (Consumer Packaged Goods Directory), an online brand tracker and newsletter that was able to help identify and contact brands to participate in the first market.
The markets operate as singular pop-up events held bimonthly for two hours each. According to Liss, the company plans to run the events as three month-long “seasons” featuring the same brands at every market. New seasons featuring a new slate of brands will begin at the start of each quarter.
MetaMarket has hosted two events so far, one in March followed, after some retooling, by a second on July 25. Brands featured in this inaugural season include OffLimits Cereal, Byte Bars, dressing and hummus maker Field + Farmer, Miracle Seltzer, better-for-you lemonade Swoon, insect protein brand Exo, Renewal Mill, web3-integrated hydration drink Leisure Project and mushroom snack Munchrooms, among others.
Founders and brand representatives are expected to be online during the market in order to interact directly with shoppers. According to Fisher, each event is open to the public and is targeted to both consumers and industry professionals looking for B2B networking opportunities. Currently, each market is capped at 500 participants who sign up in advance to receive a ticket, but entry is free.
There is also no sign-up fee for vendors, who can apply through the company’s website to participate. Instead Parade and CPGD take a small percentage of all transactions made through the event. For sales, shoppers are linked to a Shopify page for the MetaMarket offering all featured products from the participating brands.
“We want to make sure that during any given season we have brands from a lot of different niches so that if you’re going because you really like a specific brand – you follow them on TikTok and you go to meet the founder or something like that – then you’re gonna interact with every brand while you’re there,” Fisher said.
As consumers have been inundated with – and frequently confused by – information about web3 and the metaverse, Fisher noted that Parade is hoping to make the MetaMarket as user-friendly and easy to understand as possible. He noted that many people associate the metaverse with VR headsets or blockchain technology, but the MetaMarket requires neither. Liss added that everything about the experience is intended to be familiar and compared the visuals of the program to a Pokémon game.
What makes the MetaMarket a metaverse play, however, is its integration of “the digital world with components of the quote, unquote ‘real world,’” Fisher said. While users are not necessarily required to use their mics or cameras, the experience is built around face-to-face interaction.
“You can pop in and out of conversations like at a real farmers’ market,” he added. “It’s that sort of element where we’re creating an environment where it feels like you really are at an actual event that’s taking place, even though you’re still just sitting behind your computer screen. That’s what makes it feel so obviously metaverse to us.”
The MetaMarket is also sponsored by B2B web3 company NiftyCat and Parade intends to integrate additional web3 elements into the experience in the near future, including the option to pay with cryptocurrency and a possible NFT launch. Eventually, Liss said the pop-up MetaMarkets could give way to a permanent MetaMall, where brands would lease digital real estate and have virtual storefronts staffed by customer support representatives available to answer consumers questions in real time. However, there’s no timeline for when a mall might launch.
“As human beings spend more time online and value their digital identities as much, if not more than their IRL identities, we think they’ll be living on the internet far more,” Liss said. “So this, ideally, is one of the places where they’ll be spending their time.”