The awesome part about creating an avatar from your self-ecosystem is the ability to generate revenue streams and fan engagement. In this article, let’s discuss how to create an actual digital avatar shop and what to sell and operate one.
While this article covers the Akiba-Kei sistas of the Afroasiatic paradigm shift, the brothas can also leverage the concepts for their avatars such as a race car driver or basketball player or mecha robot squad. This whole thing is a major economic driver and opportunity for both young and old and can be operational faster than other business models we have seen.
We covered digital avatar creation using AI and creating the branded merchandise. We want to cover the actual shop and the approach to getting one up and running.
Spotlight - Mimoka.Made.It
One of our most recent avatar artists now part of the MochaStar family is Mimoka.Made.It who will be a virtual vTuber and streamer as well as a multi-faceted artist and model. Mimoka is part of the DJ Nixze universe and is featured on DJ Nixze upcoming future-space trap project. Here is a world-premiere preview of Mimoka.Made.It on the upcoming project. Yes, Clara Ney is on the second track as she worked with DJ Nixze on several tracks.
As you see, we are getting more experienced and learning to build out better, more strategic avatar artists to generate multiple revenue streams. Mimoka can perform in English, Japanese, and Korean and her audience will be the biggest markets around the world where vTubers, anime, and Japan style culture are prevalent.
We are planning everything for this digital artist, including her own pop-up and virtual concerts and streaming channels but she may be exclusive to our MochaStar app. I hope Mimoka.Made.It gave you some inspiration and directions on how to proceed with your digital avatar. I’m showing you how to make your money while living overseas. I hope you are paying attention.
Online and Physical Shop
One thing I’m going to stress because I’m seeing others having problems and limitations - own and control your avatar and the operation. This means you originate everything from your web site.
From your web site, you provide content to social media and YouTube and e-commerce sites like Temu and Amazon. You don’t allow a third-party to demonetize or take down your space and you don’t have another channel setup. You stay in control and build your own site.
You want to manage your own web site, e-mail list, SMS notification, distribution of digital downloads to know your customers and stay engaged with them. Create your own tools to automatically post to social media and keep it fresh.
Even your pop-up shop or store can use your web site to take orders and fulfill orders as you can even grow into sending out orders via mail if you want that option as well.
Make everything a spoke to your web site as the hub and central nervous center.
Pop-Up or Fixture Shop?
One thing people want to consider is whether they should do a pop-up or a fixed location? I would recommend pop-up shop because it allows you to be flexible and go where your fans are at, not have them come to you.
You can set up your pop-ups in college towns, shopping malls, main street locations or at an Japan anime expo. And you can set up around the world in places like Medellin, Manila, and Barcelona.
The best option we are considering for the Afroasiatic Akiba-kei is create a space to host multi-brand pop-ups that like the Akiba brothas and sistas showcase their digital avatar and sell branded devices as part of the movement and economic vehicle.
Components of the Shop
This is a collection of my photos of digital avatar shops when I was in Tokyo and will describe the layouts I’ve seen there. The photo above was the pop-up in Ginza Six at the Tsutaya bookstore. They had a white wall and used a ceiling-mounted projector to show a slideshow or art but animation can also be considered.
I want to mention that it is possible to use rear-projection using a short-throw projector against a special black film on the clear acrylic that can show better high definition images.
In Shibuya at the Q-front on the top floor, they use floor-to-ceiling artwork on the wall. This allow people to take photos standing in front of it. Unlike the projection option, the room can have light fixtures above it for a clearer view. These walls are larger than life and definitely great for fan engagement. These should be epic murals of your avatar and could be designed to include a fan as part of the photo.
Same store in Q-front building, I’ve seen this a lot but another wall exhibit but this one has fan art contributions which is another cool idea to spread fan engagement and excitement. Imagine one of your avatar fans draw a piece and find out it’s on display at a pop-up like this - they will spread the word and go further viral. Notice the standee in the corner - I think the standee is misplaced, but this can be placed somewhere else in the store.
Back to Ginza at the Sony flagship store. This is a small enclosure of an upcoming movie but it has a lot of elements I want you to look at. It has the floor-to-ceiling wall art in the center, a preview of the movie looping on the monitor on the left, but on the right is what I want you to take a closer look at.
Those are sketches and model sheets of the anime characters displayed as artwork. One thing you want to do and I failed to capture a photo of, is a display of the handwritten notes, rough draft drawings, and other original works of the production and concept phase to display as an exhibit. You want to handwrite and save these artifacts to show your avatar as a work-in-progress as well.
This is an example of a centerpiece statue or monument that I saw at a lot of pop-ups. This is one of the smaller ones to be honest. But this is a large version of the character figurine and I believe they sell smaller versions of the same figurine. These are also good for a photograph spot and some stores have this in the center of the store that can be seen at all angles.
You should have a section for the publications such as a limited edition magazine, an illustration book, a comic book or manga series, or calendars, journal books. But notice the book is called “Staff Memorial Book” - this is the people who worked on the projects and their contributions and this is good to acknowledge the people who worked on the project or just maybe yourself and your favorite artwork, how you came up with the concept, and photos of you working on the avatar. This is your journey you want to share.
One thing I don’t think you should miss and that is a capsule machine like I saw at the avatar shop. People were crowded by these machines and this photo comes from the vTuber store in Akibahara. It looks like accessories for the figurines such as the purses the female figurines can wear.
Avatar Shop Operations
For operations, we recommend what you see in the photo - this looks like the Disney Zootopia pop-up that was on the ground floor of Shibuya Q-front building. The handbags are about $300 but these can be limited collectible items and look cool, especially for your digital avatar.
The little tags in front of the bag are tickets and it says “Please bring your ticket to the cash register” and I like this approach for several reasons. First, it is multi-lingual and if someone doesn't speak Japanese, just bring the ticket and they bring out the item and they can nod and just pay.
The second reason is to maintain your own inventory or allow the hosted store to manage their own inventory as well. The barcode is part of the store inventory and they scan it and bring out the item from the back. Some items do have barcode stickers like the buttons but having a ticket for the more expensive items is a great ideal.
You can also sell like Nike and the Apple store with a sales person walking around with a handheld payment device and have someone bring out the item and pay for it on spot and can walk out the store. That sales person can receive commission on each item they sell.
After sales, you want metrics and a tab on what performed well and what needs to be moved off the shelves. One thing you want to keep in mind is items that have different sizes or color and find out which color or t-shirt size is selling the most so you don’t end up with a bunch of unsold XXL shirts.
Summary and Additional Consideration
I hope this article helps you understand how to set up a store front for your digital avatar. In my personal opinion, the biggest benefit is not generating revenue and in some cases, it can be a loss lead.
I think the biggest benefit of the pop-up shop or shop is to spread awareness and give depth to your biggest fans out there. The visibility and being known from the shop may generate more long-term revenue from your artist than selling anything out of the store.
Think about a fan who takes a selfie with the photo wall, reads a portion of the staff memorial book, looks at the figurines - they are absorbing your avatar and will recognize them in the future as you promote and grow. You get more social media followers on the mailing list and will likely show up at the next pop-up event.
The takeaway is how powerful the Afroasiatic Akiba-kei culture is and how globally scalable they are and this model taps into the self-ecosystem and can be managed by the individualist. This is very big and you brothas and sistas better figure out how to get it together and put it together.