H&M forced to deny claims of opening a store in the metaverse
H&M has been forced to deny claims that it will be opening a store on the metaverse platform Ceek City, after some organisations reported that the Swedish fashion giant was in negotiations with CEEK, a virtual reality startup.
The rumours began circulating after CEEK uploaded a video of their virtual H&M store on Twitter. The tweet said that the virtual store had been presented to the retailer, but did not state that if the store was made in collaboration with H&M.
CEEK is a virtual reality metaverse, based in the US, that connects its users with famous brands, musicians, sportspeople and other celebrities through virtual worlds.
Shopping in the #metaverse with $CEEK
Concept VR store presented to @hm by #CEEK Creating mainstream use cases for $CEEK + scaling #Virtualreality beyond games. #VRAPP #CEEKVR #NFT #VR #CEEKVenues
👉🏽 More at https://t.co/oAvCTgp2Bk pic.twitter.com/OI4BFkyUAw— Ceek (@CEEK) December 7, 2021
CEEK later clarified on twitter: "Hi Ceekers, as stated in the post below, the H&M store in the Ceek metaverse was just a concept that was presented to H&M and not an actual virtual store yet. We are in discussions with people at H&M to make this a reality, but this is not something that’s a reality as of now."
However, a spokesperson denied all claims in a statement to Bitcoin.com, commenting: "We’d like to confirm that H&M is not opening a store in Metaverse at this time. We are also not collaborating with CEEK."
With the concept of the metaverse growing from a niche futurist idea to the next generation of the online world embraced by luxury brands, a new study has revealed consumers’ hopes and fears for the virtual sphere touted as the modern version of the internet.
The study found that 57% of consumers believe that the metaverse has a key role to play in addressing the social problems created by the pandemic while 46% of consumers say they intend to spend more time in the metaverse in the future.
