French retailer Carrefour has announced its first step into the metaverse, with the launch of an address in The Sandbox, a virtual gaming environment.
Announcing the launch of address number 33,147 in The Sandbox, Carrefour e-commerce chief Elodie Perthuisot posted on LinkedIn, "Here is our first address in the metaverse, on The Sandbox. [It is] a virtual field, and above all a field of innovation for Carrefour, in the logic of our digital transformation."
The Sandbox is a virtual metaverse in which players can play, build, own, and monetise their virtual experiences.
Founded in 2011, The Sandbox offers 'a suite of tools, tailor-made to empower artists, creators, and users to come together and design engaging experiences across the metaverse', according to its website.
For Carrefour, the launch will enable the retailer to "understand the evolution of retail and consumption that will come," commented Perthuisot.
"Concrete projects will follow soon," she added.
On vient de récupérer les clés, c’est officiel : Carrefour est l’heureux propriétaire d’un beau terrain dans le #metaverse !
📍(33,147) @TheSandboxGame. pic.twitter.com/wffvvodt6F
— Elodie Perthuisot (@ElodiePerthuiso) January 31, 2022
'Global Leader' In Digital Retail
Last November, Carrefour set out its plans to become a 'global leader' in digital retail, setting out its strategy to 2026 at a Digital Day in Paris.
This will include an acceleration of e-commerce, a ramping up of data and retail media activities, the digitisation of financial services, and the transformation, through digital, of traditional retail operations.
The group aims to triple its e-commerce GMV (gross merchandise value) in the period to 2026, to reach €10 billion.
Read More: Retail In A Flash – Inside Carrefour's Newest Retail Format
"As a successful first transformation plan comes to its end, we now want to transform Carrefour, a traditional retailer with e-commerce capabilities, into a Digital Retail Company, which places digital and data at the heart of all its operations and its value creation model," Carrefour chief executive Alexandre Bompard said at the time.
In recent months, the retailer has signed a partnership with Meta (Facebook), unveiled a new concept store in Paris, and invested in a number of food tech startups, as part of its digital transition.
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