Retailers such as Forever 21, Nike, and Chipotle have opened virtual world stores on Roblox, as they seek to use the metaverse to drive real-world sales
Financial Times : Tweets: @edgecliffe , @dlknowles , @everyrealm , @lewiswiltshire , @ryanbarretto , @muradahmed , and @sub8u Tweets: A Edgecliffe-Johnson / @edgecliffe : Retailers such as Forever 21, Nike and Chipotle are rushing to create virtual world stores in a bet it will boost real-world profits. But is the metaverse a passing gimmick, or will it transform global retail? @DaveLeeFT & @MsHannahMurphy via @FT https://www.ft.com/... Daniel Knowles / @dlknowles : Slightly worry that at the age of 33 I am already firmly in the all new technology is stupid camp, but this is stupid: https://www.ft.com/... @everyrealm : “Instead of having stores in every city... build a global hub in the metaverse that is able to serve millions of customers” Great article by @FinancialTimes @Prada @Nike @ChipotleTweets @Meta @Roblox @Forever21 @thenorthface @Timberland @RTFKTstudios https://www.ft.com/... Lewis Wiltshire / @lewiswiltshire : One of the best recent articles I've read on the #metaverse. It acknowledges that what we have today is VR, not yet a metaverse or metaverses. And it's balanced - talks about the opportunities but acknowledges some of the issues. Worth a read. https://www.ft.com/... Ryan Barretto / @ryanbarretto : We often hear that brands should meet their customers where they are, i.e. the rise of social commerce. With that in mind, this analysis by @DaveLeeFT & @MsHannahMurphy on retail investments in the metaverse, despite reluctant consumers, is a great read: https://www.ft.com/... Murad Ahmed / @muradahmed : The intrepid @DaveLeeFT and @MsHannahMurphy journeyed into the metaverse to shop at virtual stores from the likes of Forever21 and Nike. Is this the low-overhead, high-margin business that will transform retail? Or just a passing gimmick. Report in @FT https://www.ft.com/... Subrahmanyam Kvj / @sub8u : Once upon a time: We have a website. Browse this brochure online. Then: We are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and half a dozen other services you didn't know existed. Now: We are in the Metaverse. Come, open your wallets! https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
In early 2022, mainstream retailers were racing into virtual worlds on the theory that presence where young consumers already spend time would convert into real-world sales. Forever 21 doubled down within weeks by joining the first Metaverse Fashion Week in Decentraland alongside DKNY and Estée Lauder, while Walmart later treated Roblox as an explicit testing ground for reaching younger shoppers with Walmart Land and Universe of Play.
The bet was made at peak enthusiasm — the same wave that carried Facebook's long-gestating VR ambitions into a full metaverse rebrand — but the follow-on coverage shows how quickly it cooled: Meta pivoted to efficiency a year after hyping the metaverse in a Super Bowl ad, and Decentraland land prices collapsed from ~$45 to ~$5 per square meter. This article captures the rush in, before the reckoning.
First-order effects
- Nike, Forever 21, and Chipotle gain direct access to Roblox's young user base without buying media against it, converting brand-marketing budgets into in-world storefronts and virtual goods tied to real-world products.
- Roblox becomes a retail distribution channel overnight, adding branded commerce on top of its existing creator economy and giving it a new revenue class beyond in-game currency spending.
Second-order effects
- Competitors face copy-or-cede pressure: Walmart's subsequent Roblox debut shows mass retailers treating these worlds as mandatory youth-marketing tests, raising the floor for brand participation across the category.
- Platform competition sharpens between centralized worlds like Roblox and decentralized ones like Decentraland, which courted the same brands through Metaverse Fashion Week — forcing each to prove which actually drives measurable sales.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, virtual storefronts settle into a standard retail marketing line item rather than a standalone business — but the later collapse in metaverse land values and Meta's efficiency pivot show the structural question unresolved: whether brand presence in virtual worlds survives once the experimental budget cycle ends.
The trend: Consumer brands are colonizing gaming platforms as youth-marketing channels, turning the metaverse from a speculative land grab into a testable — and disposable — retail experiment.