Applied Series: My Virtual Fashion Stores Increase Consumer Engagement 10x with Emperia's CEO Olga Dogadkina

Building Virtual Fashion Stores
The promise of an £80K deal that would never have happened until Olga met her technical co-founder on LinkedIn. Emperia was born. Specialists in building virtual stores for fashion brands, Olga and Peter dig deep into the retail, marketing, and creative strategies necessary to bring virtual spaces to life that resonate with a new generation of shoppers. Olga tells us firsthand how Emperia is not just adapting to the digital age but actively shaping its future, especially with the dawn of the Apple Vision Pro and Emperia's newly released 'creator toolkit'.

What Fashion Brands Want
We unpack the challenges and triumphs of designing digital worlds for top-tier brands such as  Dior, Lacoste and L'Occitane, and Olga takes us through success stories highlighting the need for data-driven insights to make their clients happy. 20-minute engagement time anyone? That first £80K contract has subsequently turned into many clients along with a Series A fundraising round of $10M - Emperia seems to be doing something right in the virtual retail space. Tune in now to find out what it took to get there.

Olga and Emperia are featured in chapter 5 of the book Fashion Tech Applied.  Check it out.

Find out about Emperia here
Connect with Olga on LinkedIn

*EXCLUSIVE OFFER* -20% discount for podcast listeners on the printed or ebook of Fashion Tech Applied. Purchase your copy at Springer here using the discount code*: 08cWPRlx1J7prE

*Offer ends end June 2024

Transcript

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 0:03

Fashion tech applied is published, my co-authored book taking you through six chapters and covering the technologies and innovations powering the fashion industry. I am Peter Jeun Ho Tsang, founder and CEO of Beyond Form, and welcome to the special podcast series applied. Each episode, I'll be sitting down with incredible fashion tech professionals that are featured inside the book. On today's episode, I'm sitting down with Olga Dogadkina, co-founder and CEO of Emperia, a platform that does virtual stores and spaces for fashion brands. When I interviewed Olga for the book, the first thing that she said to me was don't you remember me, Peter? And, in honesty, I didn't. However, she quickly reminded me that she was indeed one of my previous students at LCF. So what a surprise and, of course, what a joy it was for me to be able to talk about how she sees the future of fashion retail, including virtual stores. Since launching Imperial, she has now worked with mega brands such as Harrods, Dior, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, and the list just goes on. However, of course, those relationships are time to cultivate, especially with tech that yet hand be proven.

Olga Dogadkina: 1:11

Usually, by that point we would have a really open relationship and at the same time, we're very much working towards building this trust where we can say, hey look, this entry video, whatever is happening in the beginning is losing a lot of traffic, so we can actually remove it and restructure the experience in a matter of a couple hours and remove the issue, let's get to the conversation with Olga on this episode of Venturing into Fashion Tech.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 1:33

How are you today, olga?

Olga Dogadkina: 1:35

I'm doing great. How are you?

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 1:37

I'm good, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule, because you have a lot of virtual store projects happening. I know at the moment out of your day to come and do this podcast recording with us. So today's episode is all about virtual stores and what you're doing at Imperial. You're featured in chapter five of the book, all about retail.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 2:02

But before we get stuck into the conversation, I just want to give some context to our listeners. So the global virtual reality in retail market size is projected to reach 24.4 billion US dollars by 2031, so it's going to be a huge industry with a compound annual growth rate of 25.8% during 23 to 2031, according to straight research. Many fashion brands from high streets are luxury, such as Bloomingdale's, j-crew and Luxitang which I know, olga, are some of your clients as well, which we're going to talk about a little bit later on are creating their own virtual stores in the hope that consumers will spend more engagement time with their brands and, of course, spend money. With a Metadquest 3 released at the end of last year and the Apple Vision Pro arriving this year, which I have seen many posts from you all go on LinkedIn about these new headsets, so I'm eager to get your thoughts on it a little bit later on.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 3:04

The technology is becoming more advanced, meaning that the possibilities with virtual stores will only increase exponentially within the next 12 months. There's lots of opportunities there to be had, but let's start off with your journey, olga. Just to give some context to our listeners, olga used to be my student at the London College of Fashion many, many moons ago, so I'm super excited that she has come so far and specifically chosen to do a company in fashion tech, which I'm happy about as well. So from you know the days of you being in my classroom, olga LCF, tell Alice there's your journey into fashion and how you landed into the creation of Imperial.

Olga Dogadkina: 3:46

Of course and thank you, peter, for having me here I'm super excited to share the insights in the journey. So it's been quite a few years since LCF, indeed, and throughout my time at LCF for the two years after that as well I was working in fashion and pretty much all the different capacities, from retail to wholesale to, eventually, e-commerce, and particularly through my time in wholesale, I've worked with maybe 50 plus different brands, most luxury brands like Steve by Chloe, valentino and quite a few others, and there was one thing that I saw being common with all those brands that I worked with and they all kind of hated e-commerce, and the reason they didn't love it in particular was because they were like, well, yeah, we have to do it, we have to be like keep up with the time and target young consumers, but it's so undifferentiated like our stores can be an absolute experience, and I remember I was working with it with the German brand that spent 300 000 euros on birch trees to decorate their showroom because they wanted to create a better experience just for their buyers not even their customers and e-commerce just really didn't offer. That was this kind of white page grid of images. There was really not that much that you could do to differentiate there and to create this brand experience and true engagement, because consumers really connect more with the brand and the story behind it rather than just a product right that you can buy a handbag from from Zartwright will still perform the same function. So that was kind of the thing that I started noticing and I then decided to ship gears a little bit and went into consulting at Microsoft on a fashion-based project as well, which was, for Microsoft, more of a exploration of what they can do for fashion tech and gave me a great opportunity to explore all the new technologies at the time and that was like early 2018 so as well, with a while ago, early days of VR, the first wave of that VR hype.

Olga Dogadkina: 5:34

That was there and what it allowed me to do is really explore and then first try the VR headset.

Olga Dogadkina: 5:39

It was super cumbersome, nothing to enjoy, both experiences, massive, lots of cables.

Olga Dogadkina: 5:44

I think my neck hurt finding out of the experience, but I thought if we took this and made this sleeker and brought this to fashion wouldn't make the great shopping experience where you sit home with your nice glass of wine and enjoy a beautiful shopping experience where consumers would love it, because it's more fun and more engaging and much more interesting to explore, and brands would love it because they can actually finally break that chasm of e-covers and bring the differentiation and bring the brand experience of what they have in store and even go beyond, because you can do whatever you can be on the moon, you can be underwater, you can be inside a crocodile, as a matter of fact so all this kind of creative part of it really excited me, and at that point, I knew nothing about how to build it, other than there are gaming engines and they should technically work.

Olga Dogadkina: 6:28

So, yeah, it was kind of the very start of Imperia was, and so I started in 2019 with a vision to change e-commerce and the way people interact with and shop things online, and it now became an immersive commerce platform working with some of the biggest brands.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 6:41

So it's been an exciting journey. I think that's super interesting how you go from. You know fashion school, which, from memory, you didn't have any technology in any of your programs, did you? You then went to retail, then decided to go do a tech company. You don't have any tech skills, as you say, or minimal tech skills. How did you find your co-founder to make all of this come to life for you?

Olga Dogadkina: 7:04

It was actually a really lucky chance because we met on LinkedIn. So when I wanted to start off, I had this idea and kind of just very, very basic knowledge of what I might need. But at the time I just posted a job ad looking for, initially, an engineer to build virtual worlds with me, because my very first project was through a family connection. At the time I got a project with a real estate company to create one of those virtual walkthroughs for luxury apartments in San Juan's Wood and the project was really big. It was something like 80K. I was 23 at the time, so it was a pretty big deal and I really didn't want to let it go and it had absolutely no means to build it. I had no idea. So I was like I'm just going to post a job ad on LinkedIn and see what happens from here, and that's how I met my co-founder. So I was really, really lucky.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 7:56

to be honest, SoundseeingDipidus, did you ever think that you were going to become a founder of a startup? Was that on your horizon? Was it a bucket list or did it just happen?

Olga Dogadkina: 8:06

I didn't think that I'd be a founder of a startup. I'd never thought that I would be running a tech company. I thought I'd have a business at some point. But yeah, didn't really have particular inclination, I would say, towards tech. Even throughout my days in uni I was very interested in technology and how it can impact fashion and retail, and because it just felt like that's where the future is, but at the same time I never really thought that's where my future necessarily is.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 8:33

Well, let's talk about Imperio then. For our listeners that don't know the platform, what is it specifically?

Olga Dogadkina: 8:40

Imperio is an immersive commerce platform, so we help brands build virtual stores and experiences that help them drive conversion rates, consumer engagement, bring more Gen Z in younger audiences by effectively creating these virtual environments that integrate directly into their existing e-commerce channels and are accessible from any device, whether it's mobile, desktop, vr headsets as well Now Apple Vision Pro, which is launching soon. So really about bringing this brand world and the level of immersion back into e-commerce and the digital front end.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 9:12

On the subject of the Apple Vision Pro, I mentioned it in the introduction. Did you pre-order it? Okay, have you got yours yet? No, there's not release yet, but the time this episode comes out it will have a release. Have you ordered yours? I?

Olga Dogadkina: 9:25

have. Yes, I already have ordered mine. It's coming in a couple of weeks, so I'm very excited for it.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 9:31

Do you think it is going to make such a difference to your business and to the space in general?

Olga Dogadkina: 9:35

Yes, I think it will change not just Imperio but the space overall, because Apple has this impressive power to change markets and bring things that people didn't know they needed and somehow make them incredibly popular. I think I tend to always draw a parallel between Apple Vision Pro and the iPhone moment. When iPhone came out and a lot of the criticisms that were there back then of who wants a $700 phone at the time. Well, now we all want a $2,000 phone. So I kind of would think the same would happen with Apple Vision Pro, just because it brings these amazing capabilities that we haven't had before and really truly blending the digital and the physical world, which opens so many doors to go to street sales, so many other opportunities as well. So I think it will be game changing.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 10:22

Indeed it's pretty expensive, the Olga, you know thanks.

Olga Dogadkina: 10:25

It is expensive. I think the price will come down at some point or they'll introduce financing and so on and so forth. I know for now it's very much started towards developers and early adopters and Apple fans. Nonetheless, they've sold 80,000 units in the first 15 minutes of the pre-order being opening. Yeah, the demand is clearly there. Even so, when we talk to brands now, I tell you, in the last couple of months since the announcement of Apple Vision Pro or general demand on anything VR has increased 800%. So at this point, pretty much everyone's going.

Olga Dogadkina: 10:58

Well, vision Pro is launching. What do we do about it? And I think Apple is taking a really great approach to it. Where it's not about gaming, like it is with Metagwest, for example, it's much more about how the device is applicable to all the other areas of your life, and that's where shopping really comes to play as well, because that's what we use phones and computers for today. So I think that's where it'll just seat into people's lives, regardless of the price tag at this point. But yes, it does, of course, feel expensive for the beginning.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 11:29

Obviously for you. 800% increase in demand for VR related activations. That's a huge number and I think brands are seeing the potential in the glasses For the general consumer. Obviously it's going to take a little bit of a while because of that. You know, that barrier of the cost is not necessarily that accessible right now. Obviously, for Imperia and your friends they need that to come down for it to be successful at some point. So I think time would tell. But in terms of talking about the technology that powers the Imperia platform, what is it and how is it game changing for the creation of virtual stores?

Olga Dogadkina: 12:06

Yeah, so our technology is very much focusing on bringing hyper realistic quality of 3D graphics and by hyper realistic I mean kind of cinematic, really true to life rather than replicating a physical environment or physical store and bringing that online and making it accessible from any device. Because what we've seen a lot to date is a lot of kind of almost pixelated 3D experiences or very, very gamified things that metaverse brought to market which didn't necessarily respond to what fashion needs in particular, and retail as a whole as well. We can't buy a product that doesn't look anything like a product. So we're very much focused on the quality of graphics and I'd say Imperia earned its reputation as probably the best looking platform out there, and what we've built is a set of tools that allow us to go from a gaming engine, on real in particular, all the way to a fully functional interactive experience that runs across any device, loads in under four seconds, even if you're on 4G in situations of low connection. So we have solved a lot of that difficulty that comes to bringing actual 3D environments, 3d worlds, to market.

Olga Dogadkina: 13:20

And that's where I remain the decision to also launch our creator tools, which are now available to creators and studios, to also build on Peria. So that is what is really at the core of our technology, and we then expanded further into making it extremely tailored towards e-commerce and towards what brands actually need from a virtual experience. So it's not just about the game, it's not just about being social, because that's what there is a lot of other platforms or things that are tailored towards a concert. So games are for, but e-commerce and brands and retail has their specific set of requirements so that we can actually drive loyalty, we can actually drive conversion rates and drive covers. So that's what we really really focus on when we think about our feature set in technology.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 14:01

You mentioned that that Imperia is known for creating pixel perfect imagery. For our listeners that haven't seen one of your activations, I would definitely recommend going to have a look, because they are visually stunning. Augusta, how soft to you and your team. And just obviously in the book If you do buy the book featured in chapter five there's some beautiful imagery as well of some of the imperious activations. I'll just put that a little bit closer to the camera if you're watching this on the video version. In the book as well, you talk about the lead times of the technology and how it's actually fairly a smooth and quick process to create a virtual store. Can you take us through that a little bit, how you've managed to crack that code?

Olga Dogadkina: 14:50

Yeah, absolutely. I think the very core of it is the technology and level of optimization and automation that we brought into our 3D pipeline. But in general, it takes us about six weeks on average to launch a virtual store from scratch and concept all the way until go live. To be honest, the vast majority of that time is spent on the actual creative process rather than 3D building in itself. That's where it's actually quite an exciting six weeks, both for us and for the brands. We often see that there's bigger and bigger teams that get involved because how excited they get about the technology, which is also great to see.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 15:28

Do you have a client that you have really loved working with so far from the creative perspective?

Olga Dogadkina: 15:34

I'd say probably. Lacoste is one of the greatest clients that we have From a creative perspective. Locsitan have also been great. We usually see a very productive collaboration is where we have a great flow between ourselves and the brand, because we have launched many, many virtual stores at this point and have a lot of data about what actually works, what doesn't work, how do people navigate, how do we accomplish different goals? I think where we have very clear KPIs and intentions from the brand of what they want to achieve and creative freedom between us and them, that's when magic really happens.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 16:08

Yeah, when I interviewed you for the book you had ordered on some really impressive projects. This was like what I think 10 months ago now. Something like that. How many clients have you had now today?

Olga Dogadkina: 16:20

We currently work with over 30 brands, predominantly in luxury and fashion and beauty sector, quite a few across retail as well Lula, lemon, dlaming, dells, locsitan all those I think we've added since our conversation.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 16:43

So you're featured in chapter five of the book, which is all about smart retail and stores of the future. Obviously, virtual stores is one way where retail is pushing the boundaries and pushing it forward. In the book you discuss the process of building virtual stores with fashion brands and for anyone to create their own virtual store. What starting point Do you advise? Is it about thinking about it from a marketing perspective first, or from a retail perspective? What do you recommend when you go into that creative office?

Olga Dogadkina: 17:15

I think it's really about the overall strategy and digital and e-commerce strategy and where you want to take that, because really, I think, especially with VR advances, it comes into recount physical stores as well, where we can dispel this technology and create a truly omnichannel experience. When it comes to particularly a digital implementation of virtual stores, that's where it really should start from. What do you want to achieve with it? Because if it starts from I want a virtual store there will likely be disappointment because it has to be targeted towards somewhere and something. The technology is highly customizable and can be built around different use cases, whether we want to focus on engagement or on conversion, or on bringing younger audiences or building loyalty like we've integrated loyalty schemes with quite a few of our clients and created token-gated rooms in virtual stores. All those types of features and functionalities really address particular problems, particular KPIs.

Olga Dogadkina: 18:12

I think the first part of it is the digital strategy in the long run, and how can a virtual store help you do that?

Olga Dogadkina: 18:19

Because this is something that we can also help discover. The other part is real longer term strategic thinking, because what we see a lot is where a brand would want to launch a virtual store as a particular campaign, it will only last a couple months. They will not think about marketing or promoting it either. So it's kind of like a virtual store out there and people are going to come, which doesn't really happen. Same as with physical stores If you just open one, don't tell anyone about it, they probably won't come.

Olga Dogadkina: 18:50

It's a similar process where they do need promotion, bringing in social media and so on. We now have our virtual stores SEO trackable, so all the products within them come up on Google search as well, which is a great addition to help drive traffic. So, thinking about this kind of long-term strategy and evolving the virtual store concept as well as time goes on, because we would typically launch and reiterate a lot in the first three months of the virtual flagship, where we really collect the data, we see how the particular consumers of that particular brand are acting and behaving in that virtual store and then adjust accordingly. And that's where the really powerful part of the technology and having so much data comes into play.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 19:33

Do you get many clients coming to you, or potential clients coming to you? Or go, tell the truth, do they go? I just want a virtual store. Make it happen. Does that happen?

Olga Dogadkina: 19:42

It happens a lot. Yes, it happens a lot. It happens a lot more than you think.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 19:47

So what do you do in that situation, olga?

Olga Dogadkina: 19:49

We typically try and discover what they might want to achieve, because, also, we want them to be happy and be successful with it. But if they don't know what success looks like for them, we try to help them discover it, because there are indeed cases where people are like this is really cool, this looks amazing, I just wanted and we try and kind of bring into the point where there's actual measurable set of KPIs that we can deliver on, beyond just the fact that it's really cool because, well, it is really cool when we're talking about fashion tech and fashion brands.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 20:21

When I speak to fashion corporates, quite often they're doing because it's cool and for PR purposes, and virtual stores definitely falls into that category. You know it looks cool and I can imagine that you have many people coming to you just to have that cool factor. I think there was something interesting when you said there that it's not just about launching and then seeing what happens. It's also about iterating that virtual store specifically at the start to improve it at that moment in time. How do the fashion brands and their teams react when you're saying like, okay, this isn't working, we need to iterate in some way?

Olga Dogadkina: 21:00

Usually by that point we would have a really open relationship and, at the same time, we're very much working towards building this trust where we can say, hey, look, this entry video, whatever is happening in the beginning is losing a lot of traffic, so we actually remove it and restructure the experience in a matter of a couple hours and remove the issue. The same thing comes with product placement and merchandising, where they typically would have access to our CMS platform to actually manage what's happening within their virtual store. So it would typically be a combination of us having a trigger hey, this is not working, or people are not looking at this product who might want to push it to a different place in the store and kind of executing together on the feedback and data that we're seeing.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 21:41

Really interesting to see how they, by that point, are open to iterating on the project, because I can imagine for some of the people it can be a little bit of a touchy subject when they spend so much time making it look perfect, xyz, and then you're like this isn't working. We've launched it and the date is telling us that the entry video is rubbish, basically, and we need to, we need to remove it. So, in terms of your clients, though, I'm just going to say some names you've had, do you all? You've had Harrod, you've had Ralph Lauren, you've had LaCoste at the start we mentioned Lottie Tan as well. So you have some really impressive clients, olga, and I remember you saying to me during the interview for the book that LaCoste was one of your favorite projects to date you've sent. Now, actually, that hasn't changed what excites you with, with workers who, like LaCoste that Crocodile, you know, in virtual reality, what makes like made you, you know, come to life by that project.

Olga Dogadkina: 22:41

As a founder, as someone working with those friends as well, I think you always blend the end output with the process in your mind and how much the people and the teams behind it as well. And I'd say personally, I shop from almost every virtual store that we have, and something that they always find really nice is when either my friends or family would go to me like I don't know my mom going to me like oh, I thought Locsit and wasn't really there on the map anymore, but I saw the virtual store and I bought so many things because I loved it. So it's those kind of reactions that really connect me with it. And at the same time, now is the Imperial being at the size that it is. It kind of brought me to the point where I don't see every single project until we come to a point of launch. And that's where, like I remember when I saw Locsit and I was like whoa, guys, this is incredible, like how did we do this? So I think this point of being really, really impressed with even what we've done, because I haven't seen the process necessarily every step of the way, even though it's still very involved it's what really excites me and at the same time with particularly Lacoste.

Olga Dogadkina: 23:41

There's the same with Locsit then is it openness to having different features and functionalities. So with Lacoste we integrated with their loyalty scheme when we had the NFT access gating room plus the mini game that then collected emails and created sort of a raffle for people to win discount codes. So those types of functionalities and things that go beyond just shopping. With Locsit then we had, particularly with the one that launched at Christmas, this customizable Christmas postcard that they could create in a virtual store, share with their friends and bring more people back into the store but also share their kind of custom wish list. So those types of things that both drive activity and drive commerce but also create much more value from a virtual store beyond just like here's the store and you shop there, you actually interact with so many other things that are really targeted towards making the consumer more engaged. So I'd say those would probably be the core reasons that why would really come connected with one of the projects.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 24:39

Does your mother go into every store? Olga, you mentioned that she went shopping.

Olga Dogadkina: 24:43

I mean, she does go into everyone. I don't get. This is absolutely incredible for every single one. I think when it first started, it took quite a long time for me to explain to my parents what am I actually doing.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 24:55

Yeah, same for me. It's all good, like when it comes to fashion tech, if anyone not in the industry, they're just like what is happening? What is this and why is this related to fashion? I get where you're coming from. I love the fact that you mother still goes and checks every project and goes shopping as well, which is very cute From a number's perspective. In the book you mentioned an average of 11 minutes engagement time in your stores, a 73% uplift on conversion rates and about 750% ROI. Have these numbers changed? Do they still hold true?

Olga Dogadkina: 25:31

They still hold true very much. So I think generally, when it comes to engagement time in particular, it slightly does depend on the amount of content in a virtual store and the size of the experience as well, because if we're launching something much smaller like a single room experience with maybe just one feature, we would expect something between seven to nine minutes. But generally some of our larger experiences like whether the cost of looming down is a loxatane consistently hit over 11 minutes. So that's always really great to see.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 26:02

And when you're speaking to a brand about KPI, so expected KPIs, is there something that you want them to focus more than the other on, or is it depending on the brand itself?

Olga Dogadkina: 26:14

It really depends on the brand and what they want to achieve and where they are right now.

Olga Dogadkina: 26:19

Because something that we usually always highlight is well, if you want to say, target Gen Z, for example, and bring in more younger audiences, if the only thing you're doing about it is a virtual store, it will bring results, but it likely you will need to do more activities around your brand and product collection.

Olga Dogadkina: 26:35

What other things that you're doing, like, say, what Lacoste is doing, and kind of almost to complete rebrand that they've gone through over the last couple of years. So we would usually highlight both what they couldn't strive for based on their overall strategy. And I think usually a great approach is, if the brand doesn't really know what to expect, to walk us through what is their overall goals for the business, regardless of whether we're looking at virtual store or not, and we can then find and kind of slot the piece of the puzzle on what would the good KPIs look like and, at the same time, throughout the process, if we are met with resistance and certain design decisions or things that the brand wants to do, we would always flag as well okay, if you wanted this KPI, we should really do it this way. If we do it the way that you want, we will likely achieve this and this and this type of numbers. So I think it's just about transparency and setting correct expectations for what you're doing.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 27:27

So let's talk about your entrepreneurial experience then, Olga. What has been the hardest part of the Imperia journey today?

Olga Dogadkina: 27:35

There's been a lot of hard parts. I think it's easy to talk about the highlights, but I think any founder journey always gets A lot of harder parts, whether it's going through procurement process with brands or, ideally, really wants to fall in your part, or it's fundraising process, which is always hard for any founder. I don't think I've heard of anyone going. I really love fundraising and it's like my favorite thing in the world. So there's definitely been a lot of ups and downs, but that only makes it more exciting.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 28:03

What would you say has been the hardest part, though.

Olga Dogadkina: 28:05

I guess building the team as the most rewarding and the hardest part at the same time. Thank you, because you're kind of well. You have to be open minded and trust people, but also make sure you're keeping in touch with things. I'm finding great talent is always a challenge. That people say, all well, everyone's getting laid off. These days it's easier to find great talent. That's not true, because great talent never gets laid off. So I think that's kind of the premise where I'm really lucky with my team and really grateful for what we've been able to build with my co-founder and management team together, because that's where, if you have a great team behind you and a great team building division, the product is going to be great, clients are going to love you and everything else is going to kind of fall into place and all the other challenges in the end are easier to overcome together.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 28:55

I completely agree with that. All the team is everything and a start, and when I'm obviously meeting startups or looking at pitch decks, that team slide and even though it's no one's like in the deck. Of course, the business idea itself is very important, but Especially at the early stage level, the team is going to make a break that starts up specifically. Would you have to do anything differently than all good on your journey?

Olga Dogadkina: 29:21

well, I think if I was starting another company will definitely get where we got now much quicker because of all the things that I know now. So I think some of the some of the decisions that I've made some hiring decisions or so the engineer decisions we've done we probably would have done differently. At the same time we tend to use things as well. I'm a person powder, so a lot of things are going to go wrong and even when I'm twenty five time founder, things still going to go wrong, because every business is different, every situation is unique and you also have to adapt to market conditions All the time, because what we see in twenty twenty two was a complete boom on everything. Metaverse that has done died down last year, which Actually was quite good because we started seeing people being more consistent with things and strategic versus kind of just driven by the high. So I think those kind of things and just being adaptability is probably the greatest, greatest level of any sort of learning so what's next for imperial, then what's happening?

Olga Dogadkina: 30:21

We're now launching our creator to get so we're really excited to enable everyone outside of imperia and 3d artists, 2g or creators, even brands themselves, to have 3d teams to build on the platform, because up until now, we were quite reserved to having our own team build the spaces and just for the brands to use our CMS platform To manage the spaces.

Olga Dogadkina: 30:45

Between now bringing everything we've learned about 3d and the level of optimization and how fast we can do it and open it up to everyone else and just what we're super, super excited about Because I think the more experiences are out there and the easier it is to build them because generally, to build a virtual experience without Supportive tools would take you somewhere around three to six months. You would need at least six, seven people to 3d artists, coders, qas so many people to just execute one single experience versus was was what we built. We can do it with one single 3d artist and in a matter of a couple of days, so that's something that we're really, really excited about. Our vision pro product is what we're also buzzing about, because we've been working on that for the type Pretty much from the moment of the announcement, vision pro coming all the way until now.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 31:40

So that's been really exciting and very much focusing on building More functionality into the platform and bring even more value so, by the time this episode comes out, it means that people out there can start playing with the imperial platform then exactly, which is pretty exciting. Is it your ambition, then, to be something like a Shopify or a square space for virtual stores?

Olga Dogadkina: 32:04

Yes, exactly so we had say when I described my vision to people especially outside of outside of fashion. We do indeed aim to be a Shopify version of e-commerce. I know going a bit deeper even outside of e-commerce with the 3d tools that we are launching, really supporting the creator industry, the fashion industry, in building in covers in the store front end of the future sounds amazing, so I just want to finish off this episode with a quick fire round of questions.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 32:33

The first answer that comes to your head are you ready, olga? Yes, I am. Have you read fashion tech applied yet? Not yet, but I can't wait to get my hands on it it's coming racing to you was your favorite fashion retail or art or virtual stores.

Olga Dogadkina: 32:49

Definitely fashion.

Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: 32:50

I'm a bit of a fashion addict, so anything to do with squads, accessories so very major roots then, basically from our roots of talking about fashion in class. Last virtual store you shot from in Luxiton. One brand that you'd like to work with Louis Vuitton. Best piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs trust your intuition.

Olga Dogadkina: 33:10

Keep your ears and mind open, but trust yourself more than anything else. Thank you so much for your time. Olga, absolutely pleasure and thanks for having me.