How We Sold Out 100 Exclusive Phygital Hoodies at Taipei Blockchain Week – TBW through the lens of Daniel Duan — Legitimate

Daniel Duan is Legitimate’s Head of Engineering. Based in Asia, he is also a part of BuZhiDAO and helped in the planning, coordination, and execution of Taipei Blockchain Week.

Taipei Blockchain Week was crazy. It was fun and exciting, but more importantly, we met a lot of potential customers and partners that we’re excited to introduce into the Legitimate ecosystem.

We had a very unexpected journey going into Taipei Blockchain Week. We met a few BuZhiDAO members who were in New York for NFT.nyc. BuZhiDAO (不知道) is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on advancing web3 in Taiwan and the Taiwanese overseas communities. The Chinese name for the group is a clever play on the Chinese words for “I don’t know”. Quickly, we became privy to the news that BuZhiDAO was planning a conference in Taiwan and we wanted to be a part of it. The question was how?

Around the same time of NFT.NYC, Cin (a friend of ours) introduced us to the 0xAvenue team. Also a part of BuZhiDAO, we immediately kicked it off with Andy and Michael (the co-founders of 0xAvenue). They told us that they were powering the merch experience at Taipei Blockchain Week, and we knew that was our opportunity to help truly transform the experience of the event. It was a no-brainer to work with 0xAvenue to power the Taipei Blockchain Week merch with Legitimate’s connected product technology.

The few weeks leading up to the conference were hectic. As a team, we were dealing with supply chain delays that impacted LGT Tag production, all the while flying around the US and Asia meeting potential customers. In between that, we were also ramping up our production and integration capabilities to support orders in the tens or hundreds of thousands of units in preparation for some large releases next year.

This first ever collaboration between 0xAvenue, Legitimate, and BuZhiDAO embodies the open and collaborative nature of web3 in Taiwan. The 0xAvenue transparent brand label on the hood resembles transparency on the blockchain. The (02) in 2(02)2 is the area code of Taipei and is embossed with a special print method that creates a rich texture representing the rich culture and history of Taiwan. The clothing material is hand selected and the fit and cut is custom made in Taiwan for a loose streetwear fit that is popular in Asia and beyond.

The team at 0xAvenue ultimately decided to start with a limited production run of 100 Taipei Blockchain Week hoodies, fully integrated with LGT Tags that allowed each respective customer to claim and unlock the Physical NFT. Supply chain and production delays meant 0xAvenue did not receive the final hoodies until the Saturday before the conference. Adding salt to the wound, we then discovered that the chips were not correctly aligned with the “Tap Here” print during manufacturing. 0xAvenue’s Director of Merchandise, 0xmm.eth, had to tear out all of the tags by hand and individually re-sew them back in the correct spot. It was an “all hands on deck” weekend at the AppWorks coworking space getting the merch drop ready for the opening of Taipei Blockchain Week.

Leading up to the conference, we thought it would be fun to gamify the purchasing experience a little bit and let people pick the NFT token ID they wanted. We bought a chalkboard from IKEA to display the available hoodie numbers, 1 through 100. The plan was to display the available hoodie numbers, each individually mapped to its unique token ID, and to cross off numbers as the hoodies were bought. It worked better than we expected.

On day one, we sold around 70 hoodies, completely eliminating our supply of XL. Hoodies that had the number 8 were the first to go, followed by interesting numbers such as 42, 24, 69, etc. 8 was a hugely popular number, specifically because, in Chinese, it is a number that symbolizes fortune and happiness. By the end of the day, we only had around 30 hoodies left.

On day two of the conference, some people who already bought hoodies came back to buy more and pick up more conference merchandise. We had a few repeat customers buying 2 or 3 hoodies at a time for friends and colleagues. We had people dropping by the merch booth begging for more hoodies but we were all sold out half way through day 2.

Our founder and CEO Calvin Chan spoke on a panel on day 3 of the conference with Michael Liang (co-founder, 0xAvenue) and Jonathan Mui (co-founder, Moongate) about the utility of NFTs. During the panel, they discussed a lot of the problems around the user experience of wallets and blockchain transactions and how the web3 ecosystem can collaborate to improve onboarding. They also collectively believe in using NFTs for purposes beyond speculative purchases. Coming out of that discussion panel, we realized that our respective companies have a lot of synergy, especially in line with event production and supporting other blockchain projects.

By end of the conference, over 60 people unlocked the NFTs from their hoodie and interacted with the phygital experience. The experience included recap videos of the conference, a discount code for future orders, as well as care instructions for the hoodie and an NFT airdrop on Christmas eve. As a KPI, an unlock and “clickthrough” rate of 60%+ is a much higher engagement rate than most other digital + physical products on the market today; needless to say, we were thrilled about this success.

Legitimate has mostly focused on North America and Europe in the past because that’s where most of our potential high fashion and luxury goods clients are located. In September, we started exploring the markets in Asia starting with TOKEN2049 and we came back to Asia for Taipei Blockchain Week. We met a lot of interesting projects and companies that expressed interest in using our technology. Going forward, Legitimate has a strong thesis and belief that Asia will be a strategic and powerful fulcrum point to accelerate phygital adoption, especially in terms of web3 and fashion. Singapore, Taipei, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Bangkok, and other major Asian markets have proven to be a force on par with, if not greater than, the demand we are seeing in North America and the West. From Taipei Blockchain Week alone, we are confident in our ability to iterate and experiment much quicker with smaller web3 projects and take those learnings and apply them to luxury goods and retail at scale.

*Our customers who bought the last hoodie*

Stay tuned for more information about our future collaboration between Moongate, 0xAvenue, Numbers Protocol, and Legitimate and other blockchain projects and brands based in Asia.