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The Fabricant, a digital fashion house for the metaverse, has raised $14 million in a round of funding. The company is partnering with other high-profile metaverse companies to position itself to be early in the market.
Greenfield One led the round, with participation of Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, Red DAO and others. The funding is being used to support and expand the company’s initiative to build the “wardrobe of the metaverse” through its co-creation and non-fungible token (NFT) platform, The Fabricant Studio. The metaverse is the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.
The company has a partnership with Epic Games, and it is unveiling a new collaboration will be with World of Women, the biggest female-led NFT community to date, and The Sandbox. The Sandbox’s chief operating officer Sebastian Borget also acting as angel investor. In addition, Epic Games recently awarded The Fabricant with a mega-grant, which is open to digital creators, for projects utilizing their Unreal Engine software.
“The story behind digital fashion is in need of a new narrative,” said Amber Slooten, creative director at The Fabricant, in a statement. “One that leaves toxic behaviors and waste behind and looks into the 21st century and beyond. In the metaverse, we get to create a new playing field where everyone can benefit and enjoy the love for self expression, and create an economy around it. We’ve designed the tools to help construct a new fashion industry, one in which we believe we will all thrive.”
The company’s ultimate mission is to build a decentralized fashion house that will dress the population of the metaverse and create a more equitable, creative and sustainable fashion industry. The Fabricant Studio allows anyone to create, trade, and wear digital-only garments.
Jascha Samadi, Partner of Greenfield One said in a statement, “Within virtual environments we are likely going to have multiple digital reflections of our physical self. The Fabricant Studio allows any creator to become their own fashion designer in the metaverse – paired with Web3 technology, digital fashion becomes unique, tradeable and accessible for the masses. The team behind The Fabricant identified this paradigm of user-generated fashion very early on, long before NFTs caught mainstream attention.”
The Fabricant has raised funding with participation from previous investors including 4impact, Slingshot Ventures and Borski Fund. The Series A financing will allow the company to focus on contributing to a new economy and providing a platform where anyone can become a digital fashion creator and participate in the digital fashion economy.
Other contributors to the A round include pioneers in the crypto community such as Sfermion, Koji Capital, Stefano Rosso (OTB Group), Marc Weinstein (Partner at Mechanism Capital), Red DAO, Trevor McFedries (Brud), Shari Glazer (Glazer Foundation), Angel Xu (Venture Partner Quantstamp), Benny Giang (ex-Dapper Labs), Richard Ma (Quantstamp and owner of Iridescence Dress), Sebastian Borget (Sandbox), Sillytuna (Crypto Investor), Chad Knight (Head of 3D Wilder World), Victoire Maureau and Anoop Kansupada (Nifty Gateway).
“Everyday users become creators using The Fabricant Studio, which allows users to craft high-end digital fashion NFTs in collaboration with their favorite brands,” said Maaria Bajwa, Investor at Sound Ventures. “The Fabricant is building a very user-friendly end-to-end experience that obfuscates the complexities of blockchains, while still giving users all of the sovereignty + interoperability + distribution value that NFTs can offer. By being the first to tackle UGC on the blockchain, The Fabricant is introducing entire new ecosystems to this community and showing them the power and value of NFTs for creators.”
The Fabricant was started in 2018 at the intersection of fashion, gaming, and blockchain. To date it has worked with Under Armour, Off-White, Napapijri, Puma, Peak Performance, World of Women and gaming platforms like Epic Games and The Sandbox, to demonstrate the possibilities within the digital fashion realm.
The company has 40 employees. In an email to GamesBeat, The Fabricant’s co-founder and commercial director Adriana Hoppenbrouwer said the company’s focus is on building an entirely new fashion industry that is digital-only. It wants to enable its community to co-create and own the largest wardrobe of the metaverse, she said.
The company launched The Fabricant Studio in October 2021. That is the platform where anybody can create, trade and wear digital only fashion NFTs, and have since enabled the co-creation of thousands of digital fashion items.
Season 2 is about to start, featuring Stephy Fung’s Zodiac Wardrobe collection (dropping 15 April), followed by a collab with World of Women, that will dress all 27 characters from the project (drops end May). The platform is invitation only.
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