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Shopper Experience
01 February
Elevating the drop: Pinko launches a complete metaverse boutique
The virtual store was built by Emperia.

As it opens a new boutique, Italian women’s fashion brand Pinko is opening a virtual store that is designed to create a personalized experience for customers to browse handbags digitally.
Pinko's virtual shopping experience powered by the platform Emperia, which allows users to access metaverse environments through commonly-used devices such as laptops and mobile phones. The launch of the store, which is dubbed Pinko Galleria, is timed with the opening of the brand’s boutique in the exclusive Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan.
The store has exclusive offerings that allow the brand to cross the physical and digital worlds:
- New handbags that are specifically designed for the experience, and displayed through 3D modeling that offers education and
- NFTs from Pinko called Meta Love Bags.
- Communities for women that are designed for empowerment and independence.
The opening comes on the heels of last week’s closing of a $10 million Series A investment round for Emperia, which has also worked with Bloomingdale’s and Dior. Founded in 2019 by fashion and retail expert Olga Dogadkina and VR technologist Simonas Holcmann, Emperia’s platform provides the technology and visual infrastructure that architect the virtual stores, as well as data and analytics that provides key insights to retailers about how shoppers interact with the store and what is needed to personalize experiences.
The virtual store is designed to complement the physical store. It presents new opportunities for brand-building that is untethered from physical parameters. It also makes the exclusive more accessible. Shoppers anywhere in the world can now enter the store, even as the physical location is only in Milan.
“The new experience allows audiences, worldwide, to experience the unique, bold design that Pinko is so well-known for, wherever they choose to,” says Olga Dogadkina, Co-founder & CEO at Emperia, in a statement. “Our 3D technology ensures a high merchandise-viewing quality, which complements its real-life twin product, to the smallest detail, allowing Pinko to present and directly-sell its exclusive capsule collection in a way that simulates a realistic shopping experience.”
Inside the virtual store, shoppers have the opportunity to browse and navigate through a space that is laid out and merchandised in 3D with all the hallmarks of a Pinko physical store, right down to a full layout of the brand's signature pink. They’re also greeted by music. A sign that the store is not in the physical world arrives upon turning toward the front. Look out the window, and a shopper will find that they are high above the clouds.
That’s a new way to elevate the experience.
Here are more photos of the Pinko virtual store:
Handbags in Pinko's virtual store. (Courtesy photo)
Hands holding handbags. (Courtesy photo)
NFTs in Pinko's virtual store. (courtesy photo)
Looking out the window at Pinko's virtual store.
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Economy
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This Week in Commerce: Nike earnings, Fed rate decision
Check out the agenda for March 20-24.
Welcome to a new week. Earnings offer a bellwether for the consumer economy this week, as key brands like Nike and General Mills will report results. Elsewhere, all eyes will be on the Federal Reserve as it announces its latest decision on interest rates.
Economic indicators
Fed interest rate decision: The Federal Reserve Open Markets Committee announces its decision on whether and by how much to hike benchmark interest rates following its two-day meeting. The Fed has been hiking interest rates rapidly in an effort to bring down 40-year-high inflation, but slowed the pace at the February meeting with a 0.25% increase. (March 22, 2 p.m.)
Durable goods orders: The U.S. Commerce Department releases data on orders from manufacturers for goods that are designed to last more than three years. This is considered an indicator of business activity. In January, orders dropped at the steepest rate since April 2020. (March 24, 8:30 a.m.)
Earnings
Monday, March 20: Boxed, Foot Locker
Tuesday, March 21: Nike, GameStop
Wednesday, March 22: Petco, Chewy
Thursday, March 23: General Mills, Express
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