Meet Mintouge, the Web3 plugin that connects luxury brands with their customers through purchased product. It generates digital twins of physical items that combine a blockchain-based certificate of ownership, a digital handheld device, and a private communications channel.

The startup was one of eight chosen for the inaugural Farfetch X Outlier Ventures Dream Assembly Base Camp accelerator, benefiting from a 12-week mentoring program.

Mintouge enables brands to provide customer service after the sale, digitizing physical assets and communicating through the digital twin of a product stored in a partner app that combines digital wardrobe with custodial wallet and social network.

Interoperable and scalable technology means that Mintouge can be integrated with virtually any eCommerce operation, in a matter of minutes through just a few lines of code.

Currently, post-sale communication represents a real challenge for brands. The luxury consumer expects and demands a high level of customer service, but is increasingly reluctant to share their personal data due to the myriad of security breaches.

“Before the purchase, they have a direct line to their customer, but once the sale is complete, that line often stops abruptly. Mintouge offers a solution to this problem plus additional utility, all in one place,” says co-founder Pietro. Novelli: This is vital for customer retention, he adds, which, during a recession, becomes more important than customer acquisition.

For the consumer, the benefits are multiple. Along with your physical purchase, you receive your 3D digital twin that you can use in a variety of games and metaverses. It doubles as a digital certificate of ownership, providing access to token-protected experiences and communities.

Is that how it works. You select a product on a participating brand’s e-commerce site, try the 3D-scanned version in an integrated avatar configurator (Mintouge digitizes the assets and builds the avatar), pay with your credit card (this is important), and receive the physical item in the mail as standard.

The transaction also generates a digital certificate of ownership / digital wearable stored in the Mintouge digital wardrobe application (custodial wallet) and through which the brand can talk to you, launch experiences, offers and rewards.

As Novelli says, “Imagine your next luxury purchase as a key to unlock a private membership club.”

Crucially, neither the brand nor the user need to deal with the cryptocurrency aspect, as Mintouge technology takes care of that through its fiat-to-crypto payment gateway. “It’s completely seamless,” says Novelli, “which makes it a real bridge to Web3 adoption.”

As the community evolves, owners will be able to use the digital twins to resell connected physical products through Mintouge’s social community, tracking the market value of their physical wardrobe through the custodial wallet. This resale can also potentially generate an additional stream of revenue for brands (in the same way that creator royalties can be written into smart contracts). The custodial wallet has a $35 million insurance policy.

Mintouge had its genesis at Art Basel Miami 2021. One night, Steve Aoki was doing a set with Alec Monopoly at Liv in Fontainebleau, Novelli recounts. “He was wearing a bomber jacket with his Bored Ape on the back and I thought this guy was redefining the idea of ​​luxury because it’s not just about big brands anymore, it’s about exclusive communities. He’s wearing something worth a million dollars and he’s the only person who can use it.” (FYI, the owners of Bored Ape and Crypto Punk own his IP.)

Looking at the pedigree of Mintouge co-founders Pietro Novelli and Kunaal Chande, they were respectively a marketing manager in the global business team at Meta and a digital strategist at Bloomberg. The broader team is comprised of former TikTok, Google
GOOG
and Amazon
AMZN
talent.

Mintouge has already signed at least one global luxury fashion brand and is in advanced talks with several others. Talks are also underway with an influencer marketing agency. In the future, Mintouge’s technology may allow brands to feature an ambassador’s avatar in the configurator and directly track conversions. The influencer accumulates royalties from each transaction as set out in their smart contract, allowing them to monetize their communities.

Since their debut, the founders have been driving the company forward, but they will launch their first round of seed funding in the first quarter of 2023.

MORE FROM FORBESHow Philipp Plein’s new Plein Sport brand is revolutionizing sportswear retailBy Stephanie Hirschmiller
MORE FROM FORBESHow to turn a Web3 startup into a billion dollar business?By Stephanie HirschmillerMORE FROM FORBESAdidas’ First Wearable NFT Collection Marks The First Time You Can Dress And Undress Your Bored ApeBy Stephanie HirschmillerMORE FROM FORBESTiffany & Co Release Those CryptoPunk Pendants And They’re Expensive, Here’s All The IntelBy Stephanie HirschmillerMORE FROM FORBESFrench platform Web3, set to become the ‘Shopify’ of the metaverse, raises €3 million in seed fundingBy Stephanie Hirschmiller