If you haven’t heard of The Metaverse yet you must be living under a rock.

Simply put, at a high level, here’s how I’m currently describing The Metaverse:

“The Metaverse is a rapidly expanding digitally rendered world the contents of which are only limited by the imaginations of those bold enough to build it” ~ Jeff Ashcroft

Inside the explosive growth of The Metaverse, people can now find pretty much everything, including but of course not limited to, large immersive online Games, virtual Concerts, digital Real Estate, virtual Products and every day more Retail Stores as well as Metaverse Malls continue to emerge.

So how are Retailers and Brands reacting to and participating in The Metaverse?

Well the easiest answer and point of entry is for them to create and open up their own Metaverse Stores and design then introduce virtual products for consumers to purchase and use within this new universe.

Sounds simple right, however Brands and Retailers do this at the risk of repeating many of the past missteps originally taken with ecommerce and the creation of online shopping storefronts in their own silos separated from their traditional brand and retail businesses.

Please don’t repeat the mistakes of the past, as doing so will not only cause much pain when you have to come up with plans to bring these virtual and real world silos together, but also the results you will achieve through both Metaverse and Real World Retail stores will be hampered.

With these challenges in mind, MetaReal Retail is the new monicker I’ve now coined to describe what needs to happen for Retailers and Brands to take a more strategic view, approach and path towards merging their Real World Retail business and assets with The Metaverse.

“MetaReal Retail is a portmanteau created through combining the word Metaverse with Real World Retail to form ‘MetaReal Retail’!”

The intention now is create and rollout a roadmap both Retailers and Brands can adopt and follow in order to get the most effective results possible from combining and designing their operations in both the Real World as well as in The Metaverse, with both becoming extensions of the other to create a much larger and more profound retail brand presence!

These endeavours are not unlike the term “New Retail” which has been struggling to enter the common lexicon championed by thought leaders like my friend Michael Zakkour and others, and manifested initially by the significant digital and social commerce advances of retail operations in China.

Impacts of these efforts are not limited to Retail and Brand companies, but also extend to all others in the retail ecosystem including the Real Estate, Logistics and Supply Chain players who participate in and support these industries.

One example of these adjacencies and the opportunities a MetaReal Retail approach can surface relates to Real Estate firms and Shopping Mall owners.

As mentioned above, a number of Metaverse Malls are emerging, but there are truly three options at play:

1) Building Pureplay Metaverse Malls

2) Conversion or Retrofit of Existing Malls with Metaverse Extensions

3) Design and Build Combined Real World and Metaverse Malls (clean sheet)

All of these options require further analysis, exploration and experimentation and look out for our next article on this as we all begin to move together to shape the MetaReal Future!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

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