UK’s Sknups raises $3.5 mn; partners with Dolce&Gabbana

Sknups, a UK digital collectibles platform for fashion and beauty creators in the metaverse, has raised $3.5 million in pre-seed funding from fashion and web3 innovators, including Redrice Ventures, Blue Wire Capital, and Adelpha. Sknups has announced a worldwide partnership with Dolce&Gabbana to bring their Italian signature style into games.

To commemorate the Dolce&Gabbana announcement and lead into the first collectible campaign, a new inaugural digital drop is now live at the SKNUPS website.

Founded in 2020, Sknups empowers gamers, crypto, and fashion followers to level up their skins across web2 and web3 digital worlds. SKNUPS launched in stealth open-beta in December 2021 and has since signed a mix of global fashion brands and emerging young streetwear designers such as Benny Andallo and James Mack. Sknups will shortly be announcing further collabs with leading brands and cultural icons, the company said in a press release.

The Sknups team has built a hybrid web2/web3 ownership platform which combines digital fabrication with massive metaverse reach. The team creates digital collectibles with couture 3D models crafted in Sknups’ metaverse atelier. The Sknups platform scales to billions of users and includes airdrop tools which offer democratic drop access to the whole community of fans, with climate-friendly Solana NFTs for collectors, social flexing tools, fan composability and web2 + web3 game integrations.

“Our mission is to enhance online self-expression by bringing unique skins and collectibles to people’s favourite digital games and worlds. We are passionate about design and craftsmanship at the highest level combined with imagination and innovation - we want to give the best fashion creatives a scalable platform in the Metaverse,” Fred Speirs, co-founder and CEO, Sknups said in a statement.

“Brands and creators who want to establish a scalable presence in digital worlds have to balance high-end with access. Fashion in the Metaverse should be accessible beyond a small core of celebs and high net worth VIPs to communicate the transformative power of style and craftsmanship to the next generation of fans,” Speirs added.