With the slowing of mainstream interest in NFTs, the medium has shifted from mass appeal to the realm of specifics. NFT artists cater to a devoted collector base, for instance, while luxury labels tap into web3 as a means for marketing to their deep-pocketed customers.
FEWOCiOUS (AKA Victor Langlois) is one such artist. In 2020, the then-17-year-old trans artist received $90 for the sale of his first painting; in the intervening years, FEWOCiOUS has generated over $18m in digital and physical artworks.
Later this summer, FEWOCiOUS is set to debut his own dedicated "web3 experiment," FewoWorld. Whatever the outside world thinks of NFTs and the metaverse, it's irrelevant in FewoWorld, which accrued nearly 25k Twitter followers months before launch.
Meanwhile, cultural titans like Nike and adidas have financial and cultural investments in NFTs, what with Nike-owned metaverse studio RTFKT and adidas' partnership with tentpole brands like Bored Ape Yacht Club.
This collaborative approach appears to be key for adidas. Though it's keen to singularly explore the metaverse itself with its ALTS project, adidas is equally interested in seeking likeminded partners to boost the visibility of its web3 ventures.
Everyone benefits: adidas' digital-native collaborators receive the official-sounding stamp that comes with teaming with adidas and adidas gains access to a built-in fanbase.
Hence, FEWOCiOUS x adidas.
For his debut adidas collaboration, FEWOCiOUS elected to remix the adidas Campus 00s, a suitably buzzy sneaker well-suited to today's Y2K-hungry consumers.
And, because this is a collaboration with an established NFT artist, adidas and FEWOCiOUS are dropping more than a mere sneaker.
It all begins June 22 on adidas' website, where only 4,500 consumers may purchase the Trefoil Flower Mint Pass. Holders of the Pass will be given exclusive access to redeem it for the FEWOCiOUS x adidas Campus 00s shoe, at which point the Pass will "be upgraded to a digital twin," according to adidas.
The digital sneaker "will become interoperable as virtual wearable" within FEWOCiOUS' FewoWorld project and adidas' ALTS metaverse. This is adidas' debut token-gated, NFC-tagged sneaker that's also tied to an NFT.
When NFTs and web3 were the hot newness a few years ago, many outlets (us included, to some extent) predicted that this market was the future of sneakerdom. Not quite.
These powerful companies weren't ever going to wholly shift their output towards digital collectibles; instead, they will organically incorporate virtual objects into and alongside their product lines.
Like with IRL sneakers, these efforts will succeed or fail based on the authenticity of the partnership, which will be defined by the brands' abilities to appeal to the fans already tapped into these realms.
As personal and organic as it is, FEWOCiOUS' adidas collaboration can also be taken as big picture proof of how adidas, and perhaps brands at large, will tackle NFTs and web3 going forward.
