Benoit Pagotto: The Nike-Backed Gamer Constructing the Supreme of the Metaverse

PARIS — Benoit Pagotto believes the subsequent wave of breakout vogue manufacturers will promote digital seems to a technology who grew up with video video games. The shift, he says, can be larger than the streetwear revolution that powered the rise of Supreme and Off-White and reworked the enterprise fashions of mega-labels from Gucci to Dior.

“A few of my greatest recollections of spending time with my mates as a child — it’s stuff we did in video video games,” says Pagotto, smoking in a black Balenciaga hoodie at a streetside cafe in central Paris.

“I used to be a weirdo in my technology, however now each 13-year-old is a gamer. And most vogue manufacturers — even Supreme — they don’t perceive.”

Final December, sportswear big Nike made a giant wager on Pagotto’s thesis, buying his digital vogue model RTFKT lower than two years after launch. In a press release saying the transaction, RTFKT appeared within the pantheon of Nike Inc.’s multi-billion-dollar megabrands Nike, Jordan and Converse.

Simply months earlier than, RTFKT had made headlines for promoting out $3.1 million of limited-edition digital sneakers priced from $3,000 to $10,000 a pair in beneath seven minutes. The coup — pulled off by a staff of solely 5 folks, unencumbered by the supplies, manufacturing and distribution prices that include promoting bodily items — illustrated simply how worthwhile digital vogue could possibly be for these with technical know-how and the cultural savvy to make proudly owning it a “flex” on-line.

Designed by digital artist Fewocious and launched as non-fungible tokens (NFTs), the sneakers “had three key issues: the creator story, shortage and the proper worth factors,” says Pagotto.

By 12 months’s finish, RTFKT had generated $180 million in income with a staff of simply 15. “Evaluate this to the cash that Nike makes per worker — we’re some of the worthwhile companies on this planet,” says Pagotto.

A again of the envelope calculation helps his level. In 2021, Nike generated $44.5 billion in gross sales with a workforce of about 73,000 folks, or about $610,000 per worker. The identical 12 months RTFKT generated greater than $12 million per worker.

“It’s the effectivity you may have when your model is especially digital,” he says. “However you must perceive the tech, the content material and the tradition.”

In 2019, when Pagotto started pitching RTFKT to buyers, the primary slide of his presentation mentioned: “Making Nike’s 2025 Roadmap Occur in 2020.” By this, he meant constructing a digital-first enterprise, “90 p.c digital, 10 p.c bodily, which is to me the mannequin for a real way of life model of the long run,” he explains.

His plan was rooted in two core convictions: (1) that our digital possessions would quickly be extra worthwhile than our bodily possessions, each emotionally and financially, and (2) that the worth of a model was more and more linked to the power of its neighborhood.

Demand for collectibles like RTFKT’s Fewocious sneakers exploded in 2021, partially fuelled by crypto hypothesis that noticed bitcoin and ethereum hit all-time highs. However the market has since fallen again to earth and stays area of interest. The chance in digital vogue made for video video games, nevertheless, is important.

Epic Video games’ Fortnite, which attracts between 2.9 and 4 million gamers at any given time, generated $5.8 billion in income in 2021, a lot of it from promoting “skins” which change the looks of characters. In keeping with DMarket, a Los Angeles-based market for NFTs and digital items, the worldwide marketplace for skins is already price $40 billion a 12 months.

“NFTs are nonetheless a small world however gaming is large, with thousands and thousands of individuals enjoying on a regular basis,” says Pagotto. “Fortnite sells extra vogue than most vogue labels.”

On this world, neighborhood engagement is central to the ability of a model. “Neighborhood market cap is essential,” provides Pagotto. “It’s crucial who your neighborhood is as a result of they’re those representing you each day and so they’re those who’re going to construct on prime of you and co-create your model.”

Nike was expert at harnessing shortage and creativity to generate need, and had developed a profitable playbook for limited-editions drops and artist collaborations for its bodily merchandise, however was slower to grab the chance in digital items and cautious about loosening management over its fastidiously managed manufacturers.

“We needed to construct Nike for digital creators,” says Pagotto. “Most manufacturers outline what they signify; we do that with the neighborhood. We’re the primary enter, however they remix it, co-create it.”

Louis Vuitton grew to become the primary main luxurious model to develop skins for video video games when it partnered with Riot Video games’ League of Legends again in 2019. However manufacturers actually took discover after rapper Travis Scott’s Fortnite live performance sequence in April 2020, which provided attendees particular skins and, at its peak, attracted 12.3 million concurrent gamers. It was changing into clear that video video games could possibly be at the very least as highly effective a cultural phenomenon because the hip-hop and skateboarding scenes that gave rise to the streetwear increase, and that the chance in digital vogue was actual.

“These digital merchandise have a kinship with streetwear in that the t-shirt is just not the worth — the shortage is the worth, the neighborhood is the worth — however the alternative is far larger than streetwear due to the size of the tech,” says Ian Rogers, LVMH’s former chief digital officer who, in 2020, joined crypto pockets maker Ledger, an early investor in RTFKT. “It’s like Supreme for the period of digital id.”

Pagotto has a pointy thoughts. He additionally has years of expertise in three domains that proved crucial to the early success of RTFKT: gaming, vogue and branding.

The Frenchman grew up within the working-class suburbs exterior Paris. His mom was a nurse. His father was a draughtsman for an electronics firm who listened to Björk and Radiohead.

Pagotto’s cultural weight-reduction plan ranged from Arthur Rimbaud to Akira. He bought into gaming at a younger age, enjoying pen-and-paper fantasy video games like Dungeons & Dragons, then Sega Genesis, his first console, and developed an early curiosity within the enterprise aspect of the video video games sector. “I cherished the competitors,” he remembers. “Sega versus Nintendo, then Sony got here out of the blue and fucked everybody with PlayStation.”

He was a superb pupil and valued the French faculty system, which emphasised “crucial pondering, argumentation, dissertation.” At 17, he bought a summer season job in London at Mark Constantine’s cosmetics chain Lush, the place he “realized methods to construct a model in a community-friendly means, listening to folks on boards.”

Again in Paris, he attended the distinguished École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, the place he “cherished being provocative.” For his remaining venture, he invented 13 “pretend artists” together with a photographer who “took photos of bald ladies to speak concerning the poetry of getting previous.” He pretended they have been actual and even staged an exhibition of their work. “The opposite college students have been very severe. I needed to do one thing tongue in cheek,” he says. His remaining presentation didn’t go nicely. “They accused me of spitting within the soup.” However he cited Marcel Duchamp and bought his diploma.

Pagotto had a pupil job at hip retail temple Colette — a pioneer in colliding luxurious vogue and streetwear — which he had found after visiting its Rue Saint-Honoré retailer for an exhibition on the British studio that did the album covers for his favorite musicians Autechre and Aphex Twin. He stayed 5 years, engaged on the store ground “each weekend, each vacation, each sale season.”

At Colette, Pagotto realized “an enormous quantity concerning the luxurious world,” together with the significance of newness, curation, show and methods to create cultural worth. “We had a loopy Saint Laurent gown upstairs, Nike sneakers downstairs; a lollipop, a lighter and a €70k Chrome Hearts belt. We had huge celebs, wealthy folks, vacationers, Karl Lagerfeld shopping for books,” he remembers. “It was a cultural vacation spot.”

After Beaux-Arts, Pagotto studied promoting and took a sequence of jobs in model technique at companies from Paris to Singapore. He at all times labored carefully with prime bosses as “the voice of younger individuals who knew about sci-fi and video video games but additionally excessive vogue and modern artwork” and realized that “manufacturers are like creative ideas, you want a transparent imaginative and prescient of the world, then you are able to do no matter you need — it could possibly be bodily, it could possibly be digital — however most vital is the folks you combination round that imaginative and prescient, as a result of they’re one of the best ones to unfold it.”

By 2015, Pagotto had turned his consideration to digital actuality and e-sports, “the subsequent huge fandom primarily based exercise,” he explains. As advertising director at main e-sports organisation Fnatic, he pitched Nike for sponsorship. “They mentioned, ‘No, you guys are sitting down on chairs, it’s not sports activities.’” 4 years later, Nike sponsored the League of Legends Professional League in China, outfitting e-sports gamers for the primary time.

“I used to be at Fnatic throughout these 4 years when issues went from nobody desires to speak to us to everybody desires to do one thing in e-sports,” remembers Pagotto. “I used to be one of many first to do limited-edition jerseys, bringing streetwear to e-sports, however I used to be uninterested in promoting garments. I needed to promote skins, I needed to do digital items.”

Promoting skins usually required a long-term cope with a sport writer. However in 2018, Pagotto met Chris Le, one of many world’s most well-known designers of skins for the online game Counter Strike, and the 2 found NFTs collectively. “With NFTs you can promote scarce digital items, and though you can not present them in video games, you can showcase them to different players [via digital wallets].”

On the similar time, gaming was changing into trendy. Chris had began making use of Counter Strike skins to pictures of Jordans, whereas Pagotto started seeing his Fnatic gamers put on Gucci, Supreme and Off-White out in the true world. “The period of players with zits sporting shorts and t-shirts was over. They have been changing into superstars and elegance icons,” says Pagotto. “That they had cash, however the place may they spend it? Gucci wasn’t made for his or her tradition.”

The 2 mocked up a pair of Fortnite-inspired Yeezy 700s and posted the picture to Fnatic’s Instagram. It was essentially the most engaged publish within the historical past of the corporate. “Everybody was texting us, ‘When can we purchase the footwear?’” remembers Pagotto.

Quickly after, Pagotto discovered Steven Vasilev, who ran a sneaker customisation studio in London, and the three created bodily footwear that Pagotto’s League of Legends staff wore to the 2019 League of Legends World Championship in China.

Benoit, Chris and Steven: the triad behind RTFKT had come collectively. “We noticed a possibility to create our personal model, born on this tradition, digital-first, made for this technology,” says Pagotto. “Now everybody loves video games, anime, sci-fi, Harry Potter.”

Pagotto, Le and Vasilev based RTFKT in January 2020 simply earlier than the Covid-19 outbreak triggered a digital consumption increase. Curiosity in cryptocurrencies and NFTs exploded. The corporate grew to become worthwhile the identical 12 months. “It was a blessing,” says Pagotto. “With out Covid, issues would have by no means gone that quick.”

In September 2020, RTFKT designed a pair of sneakers impressed by the futuristic design of Tesla’s Cybertruck and photoshopped them onto Elon Musk attending the Met Gala. The picture offered as an NFT for $11,000.

It was a traditional Pagotto provocation. “Nietzsche wrote: if nothing is true, every part is permitted,” he says. Not everybody was amused, however it made waves on Twitter and Reddit. “It was Chris who taught me to embrace hate,” says Pagotto. “At the moment it’s good to have some folks assume it’s unhealthy, as a result of it creates extra engagement.”

However it was the Fewocious drop in March 2021 that actually put RTFKT on the map. By Might, the corporate had raised an $8 million enterprise spherical led by Andreessen Horowitz. The identical month, they started talks with Nike. “When Nike approached us, we thought we have been going to get sued as a result of we have been making pretend Air Pressure 1s,” says Pagotto. (Nike’s iconic Air Pressure 1 was the “canvas” for a lot of of RTFKT’s early releases). “However they mentioned we need to purchase you. We have been shocked.”

The buyout was Nike’s first huge transfer within the metaverse and a watershed for digital vogue. The 12 months earlier than, RTFKT had made $200,000 in gross sales. By the point the deal closed in December 2021, it was set to generate $180 million for the 12 months.

Pagotto declined to debate the phrases of the transaction. However accordingly to market sources, RTFKT offered for greater than $200 million in a deal that got here with a profitable provision giving the founders a share of resale royalties from its NFTs, thought to vary from 10 to twenty p.c, a major revenue alternative given the worldwide, liquid and ‘at all times on’ nature of the market.

It was Pagotto’s thought to place RTFKT alongside Nike’s megabrands within the assertion saying the acquisition. “There’s Nike, Converse and Jordan, the extra premium one. RTFKT is the digital-native one with luxurious pricing,” he says.

The deal gave Nike a “petri dish for web3 next-gen luxurious,” says Pagotto. “They watch every part we do and take learnings.” It additionally gave them direct entry to a few of the greatest minds within the house. Pagotto and his co-founders are actually senior administrators at Nike. They work with Nike Digital Studios, a digital collectibles unit launched in January 2022, and report back to Nike technique head and board member Melanie Harris.

In the meantime, for RTFKT, the sale unlocked entry to Nike’s world-class advertising savvy and manufacturing capabilities. Bodily items have at all times been a part of RTFKT’s imaginative and prescient. “There may be nonetheless worth in artefacts and the magic of seeing one thing from on-line seem in actual life,” says Pagotto. “Bodily footwear and hoodies will also be highly effective markers of belonging to a web based neighborhood.”

The Nike payout was “life-changing” for Pagotto, besides that his life hasn’t really modified a lot. He needed to purchase a brand new condominium however nonetheless goes dwelling to his “pupil flat.” “I bought a membership on the spa in Cheval Blanc simply to remind myself that I’m wealthy, however I’ve been too busy to do a lot else.”

The acquisition was huge information and a month after travelling to Nike’s Beaverton, Oregon campus for on-boarding in January 2022, Pagotto, Le and Vasilev knew they wanted to ship their first RTFKT x Nike sneaker shortly.

“We would have liked to do one thing or else folks would assume we have been lifeless,” says Pagotto. That they had created “pores and skin vials” permitting digital sneakers to be up to date with new seems. However they knew they needed a Dunk designed by Nike chief design officer John Hope and that this may take weeks to be authorised. In order that they purchased time.

In an e-mail to their Nike bosses, they proposed to launch an NFT sequence known as MNLTH, a metallic field emblazoned with the RTFKT and Nike logos. The RTFKT neighborhood would want to finish months of “challenges and quests” to open them. Inside, NFT holders would discover the Dunk, a “pores and skin vial” and one other MNLTH. The topic line of the e-mail: “Simply Do It.”

“I used to be pleased with that e-mail,” says Pagotto. “It was attacking the DNA, difficult them, so that they couldn’t say no.” It labored. They bought the inexperienced gentle and on the finish of April 2022, the RTFKT x Nike Dunk Genesis CryptoKicks made their debut.

RTFKT is evolving from a digital vogue model to a totally fledged “metaverse firm” that sells greater than digital outfits. Its most profitable product class is now avatars. “It’s not simply what you placed on, however characters: we will promote who you’re,” explains Pagotto. “You’ll be able to have a number of characters, which you’ll interchange relying in your temper.”

In November 2021, RTFKT launched a coveted line of “CloneX” avatars with artist Takashi Murakami. The characters have been launched as a sequence of 20,000 NFTs throughout eight “DNA varieties” whose numbers have been fastidiously calibrated to entice collectors longing for issues others don’t have: people (50%), robots (30%), angels (8.75%), demons (8.75%), reptiles (1.25%), undead (0.6%) Murakamis (0.5%) and aliens (0.15%). In February 2022, a uncommon CloneX avatar with Murakami “DNA” and white octopus hair modified palms for $1.25 million.

In June 2022, when Fb father or mother Meta started promoting digital outfits by Balenciaga, Prada and Thom Browne for $8.99 a chunk within the firm’s new Avatars Retailer, Pagotto, like many, was unimpressed. They have been the antithesis of RTFKT’s technique, which positioned digital property, not as mass market items, however as scarce collectibles, steeped in creativity and digital craftsmanship.

“First, we did digital sneakers, then digital vogue and now avatars; the subsequent step is to change into a world-building firm.”

Now, RTFKT has set its sights on constructing complete worlds for its avatars to inhabit, that means its product providing will develop from digital vogue and cool-looking characters to experiences in digital environments of its personal building.

“First, we did digital sneakers, then digital vogue and now avatars; the subsequent step is to change into a world-building firm,” says Pagotto. “It’s about making a universe across the drops. In the event you don’t get into world-building your self, in X years time Fortnite goes to let you know, ‘Okay you get 10 p.c income share.’”

Final Friday, RTFKT started dropping teasers for Venture Animus, the codename for its subsequent huge launch. The venture, to launch in 2023, will include a number of thousand distinctive “companions” which play a key half within the advanced backstory, or “lore,” the corporate has begun to weave because it focuses on world-building.

“The lore is essential,” says Pagotto. “You must make it fascinating, so it may be expanded in lots of instructions. Similar to model constructing, it’s a must to set your core beliefs, it’s a must to create the context, after which folks will construct on it.”

Pagotto is a fan of “modding” tradition in video video games, the place amateurs hack a sport’s supply recordsdata — from the textures to the sport engine — and modify them, typically making them higher than the originals. He cites Crew Fortress, a preferred sport sequence that grew from a mod primarily based on Quake. “The neighborhood will at all times be extra artistic, as a result of they’ve the time and the eagerness,” he says.

RTFKT already makes the 3D recordsdata for its merchandise out there to its neighborhood, to allow them to customise and promote them. It has but to develop a platform the place it curates one of the best creations and takes a reduce of gross sales, however it’s on the roadmap for subsequent 12 months. “We plan to construct out the platform aspect of the enterprise,” says Pagotto.

He expects to see a protracted tail of recent creators providing every part from digital vogue to mini-games. “Even with Shopify, if you’re 13 you may’t begin a DTC model — you want the manufacturing and also you want the logistics — however you will be 13 and make your digital model and you’ll be higher than the massive manufacturers as a result of you know the way to promote it, you perceive content material, you perceive TikTok.”

For larger manufacturers, a powerful neighborhood is one of the best defence. “It’s crucial to be engaging to creators; that’s the most important change for manufacturers,” he provides. “You want the proper folks in your neighborhood or you’ll be overwhelmed by creators who’re extra culturally related and technically savvy.”

“Numerous manufacturers are going to die.”

Benoit Pagotto has been a member of the BoF 500 since 2022. Discover the BoF 500 neighborhood right here.