CONNECTED
CLOTHING

We’re launching the world’s first NFT connected clothing collection on the Cardano blockchain. Every item of clothing that we sell will be tokenised and represented by an NFT.

We’ll use these NFTs to store fully transparent sourcing information, prove scarcity and authenticity of our clothing and link to unique media telling the story of the shirt’s creation.

But why do we think it’s so important to tokenise physical items and accompany our garments with NFTs?

‍The fashion industry has a bad reputation for its sourcing practices. We've all heard about sweatshops in places where workers are paid pennies and have to endure dangerous and dehumanising conditions.

Slowly but surely consumers are also becoming aware of the damage caused by synthetic fibres and destructive farming practices.

Unfortunately as our collective social awareness of these issues has increased, so have the efforts by large brands to obfuscate the true origins of the clothes that we buy.

“Greenwashing” has become the new normal. Brands shout loudly about a small environmental initiative whilst hiding the true cost of their products. We’re using NFTs to make our garment supply chains fully transparent.

The NFT that accompany our first range of shirts will link to invoices from every supplier in our value chain. Our customers will be able to see exactly who has made our clothes and how much they have been paid.

The invoices to our suppliers will be pinned to IPFS making the information fully public and unable to be withdrawn by Origin Thread. We’ll have to stand by all of our sourcing decisions.

Whilst linking to information in this way is a radical leap forward for transparency in the fashion industry, there’s a lot more for us to do.

The NFTs that accompany our first shirt’s are an MVP (minimum viable product). We’re working to onboard our suppliers to the blockchain. Doing so will enable us to reference transactions to our suppliers from the garments NFT.

This will allow our customers to independently verify who we’ve paid to produce our clothes and how much they have been paid.In time, it is our hope that this level of transparency becomes increasingly common in the fashion industry.

We would like consumers to become increasingly discerning. If a brand is unwilling to be forthcoming with their supply chain information, customers can instead chose to purchase from a brand who is proud of their sourcing decisions and is willing to share them.

Counterfeiting is a huge problem for fashion brands. The fashion counterfeit industry was valued at over $450 million in 2019.

By tokenising each garment we produce and accompanying it with an NFT, our customers can easily verify the authenticity of their clothing.

If the garment is not accompanied with an NFT with a verified Origin Thread policy ID, it’s not authentic.

Ever since the Romans invented Tyrian purple dye, scarcity and exclusivity have been major factors in the fashion industry.

Today, many luxury brands trade off of the perceived scarcity of their products. Unfortunately for many buying luxury items of clothing, this just isn’t the case.

It is common practice for brands to destroy large amounts of unwanted clothing to protect their price point and perceived scarcity.

In 2017 alone, luxury brand Burberry destroyed £28.6 million of stock.

By tokenising our clothing, we make this impossible. Anybody will be able to independently verify the number of items of clothing we produce and how many we sell.

No more inflated prices due to fake scarcity.

Most of the NFTs minted to this point have a single utility - linking to and providing “ownership” of images.

When we were designing the Origin Thread brand we asked ourselves the question, “How do we get customers to join the dots and care more about how their clothes have been made?”

Part of the answer we arrived at was building an emotional connection between our customers and the people, processes and places that have made their clothes.

Video is a great medium to do this. It can be used to tell a story in depth and transport viewers to the places their clothes have been made.

Fortunately NFTs can link to  MPEGs as well as JPEGs.

Every item of clothing we produce will include a video telling the story of its creation. This is stored on IPFS and linked to from the garment’s NFT.

NFTs are a new technology. We’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the customer experiences they unlock.

So far we’ve seen NFTs be used as “keys” to access communities and spaces, both IRL and virtual.

NFTs can serve as a new “layer” of communication between customers and a business.

An NFT can be used to unlock delivery of a physical product, access exclusive physical products and media.

As a blockchain native brand we’re excited to explore this space. We've begun to do so with our "ORIGINS" collections of NFTs. Ownership of one of these tokens gives priority access to all future clothing drops.


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