#53 | Home Depot Looks To NFTs For Virtual Stores???

Estimated Read Time: 8 mins

Hey friends,

Lovely to have you join us today! Continuing a trend from the past few issues, we're seeing more and more big brands enter the web3 space by utilizing NFT technology in their existing business models — from home renovations, traditional print media to hotels and even coffee shops. Let's dive in!

Home Depot Takes First Steps Into NFTs

Even if you're located outside of North America, you should know about Home Depot — it's the world's largest home improvement retailer with over 500,000 employees across USA, Canada and Mexico. And now, they're stepping into NFTs as evidenced by their recent trademark filings.

Earlier this week, trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis reported via Twitter that Home Depot has filed 24 new trademarks for its name, logo, and brands; with plans to join the metaverse and NFT space. These also included trademarks for 17 of Home Depot’s brands including Hampton Bay, Husky, and Lifeproof, covering plans for NFTs, virtual home improvement goods, retail stores for virtual goods, promoting goods in virtual worlds, as well as educational services in virtual and augmented reality — all strong hints at the overall company's plans to ready itself for the emerging world of Web3.

Digging a little deeper, the filing also reports “software integrating electronic data with real-world environments for purposes of entertainment, education, communicating, and social networking; providing non-downloadable digital assets in the nature of NFTs”.

Let's take a second to think about what this means for Web3's integration with retail businesses: why waste fuel when you can just shop from a virtual store with a headset? Why watch DIY tutorials when you could have full-blown augmented reality? Why not have access to virtual representations of your favorite products? We may not have guessed that a home improvement retail chain would have business in NFTs, but the specificity of these filings undoubtedly shows that The Home Depot sees the benefit of transitioning to Web3, and further supports the notion of NFT use-cases only being limited by your imagination.

French Magazine Launches NFT Membership Cards

At Morning NFTea we love covering stories that make you question your understanding of NFTs and their use cases. Now, we can cross 'Magazine NFTs' off our bingo card with Science & Vie’s new membership cards.

Founded in 1913, Science & Vie (Science and Life) is a French monthly science and technology magazine with a monthly circulation of over 180,000 magazines to their community of enthusiasts. Earlier this week, Science & Vue launched a partnership with Web3 platform provider Eniblock which will see a new NFT membership that pushes the boundaries of Web3-ifying subscriptions.

The limited number of 110 membership cards entitles holders to a lifelong digital subscription, join a special community of enthusiasts, have open contact with editorial staff, invitations to exclusive virtual & real-life experiences, and access to prizes, games, and draws amongst others.

Well-known for over 100 years of iconic covers, Science & Vie's adoption reveals another benefit of NFTs — as an awesome opportunity for fans to collect and immortalize special editions that are attached to their membership cards. These benefits mentioned just prior have only been facilitated by the recent development of NFT technology, and provide an excellent example of how communities are being empowered by new opportunities to interact with their interests, while also benefitting the company through new monetization methods, repeat royalties, and new avenues to interact with their customer base.

Costa Coffee Creates NFT-Backed Footwear

If you haven't heard of Costa Coffee, the 1917 England-founded brand is Europe's largest coffee chain with 3,263 outlets. Its reputation as the Starbucks of Europe has left the American competitor playing catch up; with Costa Coffee bringing in nearly 3x the customers of Starbucks in the United Kingdom.

This coffee goliath is next to dip their toes into Web3 through a partnership with fashion brand Artisan Lab to drop a collection of you guessed it, NFT-backed physical sneakers. Through the initiative, 20 handmade Italian sneakers dubbed “The Drip 1” will be created using Costa's famous “Mocha Italian Blend” to dye the footwear.

The limited edition highly-collectible items will also come with a unique NFT that digitally immortalizes the shoe, but Costa is also using the NFT as a way to provide a certificate of authenticity for the owner. This interesting coffee/fashion/Web3 hybrid was launched on International Coffee Day to reward fans through a competition on the Costa TikTok channel.

The Coca-Cola-owned brand didn't have to involve NFTs with its fashion shoes, but its decision to do so further demonstrates how Web3 and NFTs are not only becoming a new and highly sought-after way for brands to interact with their communities, but also reward them with unique non-fungible experiences.

InterContinental Launches NFT Collection With Travel Rewards

To round off this mixed bag of recent NFT utilizations, luxury hotel brand InterContinental has recently announced its collaboration with world-renowned artist Claire Luxton to launch an exclusive NFT collection merging high-end digital collectibles with unique travel benefits. This initiative is used to celebrate the brand's nearly 6,000 hotels across over 100 countries through 10 NFTs inspired by the beauty of global travel.

With artwork created exclusively with Claire's signature flora and fauna aesthetic (and physical counterparts fetching up to $4,000 USD), these digital pieces are brought to life through new animations that mark the first time people can digitally collect Claire's artwork.

The InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) isn't just using NFTs to enable digital artwork, they are adding real-world utility for their high-end customer base by attaching IHG Ambassador status which provides exceptional benefits through Platinum Elite status in their rewards program. The NFT will also come with a free one-night stay at the new InterContinental Rome Ambasciatori Palace, opening in 2023.

To wrap up this story, let's hear from IHG's Vice President Tom Rowntree on the initiative:

What's the NFTea?

Last week, we asked you "Who’s at fault for the bad sentiment surrounding Valhalla’s pre-reveal?" . Unsurprisingly, the predominant answer was: everyone.

This week, we're tapping into some fruity NFTea surrounding the upcoming mint of project OwangeNFT (which will be minting today).

It all started with a thread insinuating the team was wash-trading a small supply of the minted tokens from the collection to build hype:

...which culminated in an official response from the team including a 50% reduction in the mint price, 1 day before mint.

So here's our question to pose to you — what did you think of the team's response? Was it an agile pivot away from committing a bad mistake, an admission of guilt that the original pricing was too greedy or just the best way to appease the whitelisted crowd (via reducing the mint price)?

Huge thanks as always for joining this edition of Morning NFTea! We hope you enjoyed it and we also hope you have a great couple of days while we curate the next round-up. Take care!

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DISCLAIMER:

None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.