The source | Tech Planet
| Chen Qiaohui
Following education and games, Byte has set its sights on another new 100 billion market.
Tech Planet exclusively learned that Byte's Douyin has quietly entered the digital fashion industry and plans to launch a business called "pheagee", which is affiliated with Shanghai Boiling Silence Technology Co., Ltd., which is an affiliated company wholly owned by Byte, and its legal person is Ren Lifeng, head of byte VR business "PICO".
It is reported that "Boiling Silence" is a new digital fashion community, which mainly integrates science and technology into fashion and builds a new market for the fashion industry. According to informed sources, boiling silence or involving virtual clothing, virtual people, virtual fashion, etc., and vibrato e-commerce, PICO and other business linkage, has become a platform for continuous output of digital fashion. Currently, the project team is located in Shanghai and Beijing.
Byte's digital fashion business has not many own businesses connected in the later stage. Tech Planet found that some of the digital fashion product manager positions that Byte began to recruit recently clearly required to be responsible for digital wear scene exploration and function iteration, and to achieve virtual try-on solutions and tools, including but not limited to app AR try-on effects and picture virtual fittings. And in-depth understanding of the development trend of rendering engine, digital people, virtual idols, etc., it can be seen that the project wants to connect its own multiple businesses for collaborative development.
Tech Planet asked for verification from the byte side in this regard, and the relevant person in charge of Douyin replied: "Boiling Silence" is an online fashion creative platform for fashion designers, which is still in the early stage of exploration.
Digital fashion is an emerging industry that revolves around the culture of fashion design, dressing and collecting in the digital realm. The rise of digital fashion has benefited from the transformation of the physical fashion industry and the combination of virtual technology after the epidemic, creating online goods for sale and display, leading the new trend of wearing.
Not long ago, the digital fashion platform RTFKT for Musk to create a pair of virtual sneakers, on the Internet to quote up to 50,000 US dollars, and triggered tens of thousands of people to rob, some people can not understand, some people think that the value for money, in the end is the world too crazy, or a new consumer trend? Everything behind this is a new consumer trend brought about by the rapid rise of digital fashion in recent years.
Musk and Kanye wear RTFKT virtual shoes, image source: from the network.
And ByteDance is laying out the emerging digital fashion industry in order to find the next Internet ferry ticket.
Byte quietly creates a digital fashion industry chain
Digital fashion is an essential part of people's virtual world, in the virtual world, or metaverse, virtual clothing allows users to express multiple self identities in the virtual world and explore a new way of life of their own virtual image. Similar to the gamer through the skin wear to show another self, in the game to build a virtual spiritual enjoyment space.
Not long ago, according to VentureBeat, digital fashion brand The Fabricant completed a $14 million Series A funding round led by Greenfield One. This round of financing also set off a wave of capital investment in digital fashion, and subsequently, a number of digital fashion-related companies have received investment.
The infiltration of capital has accelerated the development of digital fashion. An industry insider said: "Digital fashion needs a new narrative model, in the virtual environment, we will exist multiple digital identities, digital fashion will become tradable and popular, which is an economic system that can benefit every user."
From the perspective of market background, digital fashion has a vast space for development, and the entry of bytes is not a whim.
According to the 2021 Digital Fashion Report, released by British fashion shopping search platform Lyst in collaboration with digital fashion firm The Fabricant, around 3.5 billion people worldwide are digital fashion customers, accounting for more than 55% of total purchasing power. Analysts believe that in China, the market will reach a huge amount of 100 billion yuan in the future. For Byte, it is clear that this emerging market will not be spared.
Although byte's digital fashion business is still in the early stage of exploration, the basic industrial chain has been invisibly formed.
In addition to being the source of output of digital fashion products, Byte has made some moves in the technology and application scenarios associated with digital fashion.
Digital fashion is inseparable from the support of technology, especially the related technical support closely linked to the meta-universe, such as MR, XR, VR, AR, etc. Just last year, Byte spent a huge amount of money to acquire PICO, a meta-universe technology manufacturer, which supported Byte in the technical aspects of digital fashion.
In addition, Tech Planet also learned that after the acquisition of PICO, Byte is increasing its research on XR and MR, and recruiting technical talents from AI companies such as Megvii, and these technologies will also allow real people to wear in a more realistic way through AR and other forms.
It is worth noting that byte's digital fashion business is currently affiliated with Shanghai Boiling Silence Technology Co., Ltd., and its legal person is Ren Lifeng, the relevant person in charge of PICO of Byte's VR business. According to relevant sources, the digital fashion business and PICO will have a certain relationship.
Fashion-related virtual people and virtual idols will also become an important scene of digital fashion, these virtual characters want to easily bring a virtual dress is not difficult, they are the KOLs in digital fashion. In the recruitment of related digital fashion positions, Byte has also clearly defined the exploration of digital people and virtual idols, and in the past two years, it has invested in virtual digital people "Li Weike" and virtual idolS-SOUL.
Image source: ByteDance recruitment official website information.
On the consumer side, Byte is also trying to increase the connection between digital fashion and e-commerce. Douyin is currently forming an e-commerce team in the direction of digital fashion. E-commerce is an important consumption window of digital fashion, through the AR try-on function in digital fashion, it can achieve a very real try-on effect, allowing users to complete virtual wear online, and then complete shopping according to the experience results, which will improve the user's purchase efficiency.
Of course, the final application scenario of digital fashion will still be the virtual world, as technology promotes the development of the Internet to the metaverse, each user will play a role in the virtual world, and these roles are inseparable from the consumption of virtual clothes, which is undoubtedly a huge consumption scene.
Huawei, Tencent, and Xiaohongshu are also competing for layout
In addition to bytes, Huawei, Tencent, Xiaohongshu and other leading enterprises are also intensively laying out digital fashion business.
On April 18, Xiaohongshu and Xintiandi XINTIANDI launched a virtual fashion event. Together with 9 well-known designers, we launched new virtual fashion products in R-SPACE, including 9 brands such as ANNAKIKI and CHENPENG, released 18 limited virtual fashion new products.
Users can also unlock and experience these digital clothes in various forms such as AR in the R-SPACE function module of Xiaohongshu's personal homepage, send notes to share with platform netizens, and drive the social atmosphere within the community through this novel fashion dress.
Not only that, recently, Xiaohongshu also launched the "Xiaohongshu Virtual Fashion Recruitment Plan", inviting designers, artists and other creators who have a love, creativity and ideas for virtual fashion to settle in Xiaohongshu. The arrival of these designers will create a digital fashion atmosphere for Xiaohongshu, allowing users to experience different wearing experiences and contact cutting-edge digital fashion.
Tencent's layout in digital fashion is mainly based on super QQ shows, and has a mature way of monetization.
Super QQ Show continues qq show's creative gameplay on fashion clothing, that is, users can dress up virtual characters by purchasing virtual clothes to express their own personality. However, compared with the static QQ show, the more dynamic super QQ show can better show virtual clothing to others, which also allows digital fashion to be effectively applied, followed by driving users to pay for these virtual clothes.
Tech Planet learned in a number of super QQ show groups that whenever the super QQ show releases a new issue of digital fashion, many post-00s group members will compete to buy, although the price of a set of clothes is about 80 yuan, they will not hesitate, and post the purchased wearing pictures to the group to show others. In addition, in the group, some members of the group will provide relevant clothing strategies for others' reference, forming a digital fashion exchange community.
Traditional enterprises, such as Li Ning, also use the super QQ show to show the trend to Z generation consumers through joint digital fashion. It can be seen that both Internet companies and traditional clothing companies hope to complete the transformation of consumers' consumption concepts in terms of clothing through digital fashion.
Huawei, as a technology company, signed a "Joint Innovation Project Cooperation Agreement on AI Digital Fashion Industry" with a Zhejiang company at its headquarters in Shenzhen in January this year. Based on HUAWEI CLOUD AI Pangu big model technology and StarChain C2M digital industry solution, it provides a digital overall solution for traditional industries.
Then, at the end of January, the people's government of Longhua District of Shenzhen signed a cooperation agreement on the new city of digital fashion industry, which intends to build "China's first digital fashion city".
For Huawei, digital fashion may become an important pawn in its new consumption.
Under this outlet, the digital fashion industry will become a new round of battlefield for the Internet and even the traditional clothing industry.
Looking for the next "growth curve" of bytes
According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, the secondary market equity transaction shows that the valuation of ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin, has now exceeded 250 billion US dollars (about 1.95 trillion Hong Kong dollars), second only to Tencent and Ali.
For bytes at this stage, with a vibrato, it is difficult to support the trillion yuan valuation in the future. Just like Tencent and Ali, they not only rely on their respective social, gaming and e-commerce advantages, but also expand in more directions, and achieve absolute occupation of these new markets to support the existing valuation.
So in the past year, Byte has explored many market areas. Throughout the past year, byte's layout in new business can be found that Byte has achieved business expansion in at least 9 directions, mainly in e-commerce and meta-universe layout.
Based on publicly available information, the diagram shows the main business of only a partial byte layout.
In addition to the e-commerce business is gradually growing into another major growth engine of bytes, other businesses have not yet shown the expected results, or are still in the stage of exploration.
In the case of weak advertising business and education, games and other businesses have not improved, Byte urgently needs to find a new growth curve, comparable to or even surpass "Douyin", and prove that it can still create a blockbuster ability. The digital fashion that entered the game this time may become a new growth point for Bytes.
It can be found that byte exploration's other businesses, such as music, novels, social networking, etc., have long been a stock market, and the competition is particularly fierce, while digital fashion is an uncultivated field, and preemptive entry means being closer to success.
In addition, there are greater opportunities in this new market, where the biggest consumption of people is concentrated in "food, clothing, housing and transportation". Representative such as: "food" has been controlled by the Us group takeaway, "line" is controlled by Didi, "live" is divided by relevant Internet companies, only the online "clothes" have not yet moved, digital fashion can undoubtedly be used as a weapon to pry this market, becoming a new consumption scene on the Internet.
Not only that, digital fashion can be well associated with Byte's "e-commerce", "virtual people" and other businesses, which can help Byte improve ecological complementarity and create a larger consumer circle.
Of course, how the digital fashion industry landed, how to let hundreds of millions of users consume, bytes are still in the early stage of exploration, the future prospects are not yet known.
After seizing the outlet of "short video", Byte jumped up and ranked among the top domestic Internet companies, this time, in the face of "digital fashion", can Byte once again grasp a ticket that is expected to lead to the next generation of Internet?