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Over the last three years, gaming platform Roblox has become a go-to for fashion labels targeting Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Brands such as Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger and Givenchy have invested heavily in building virtual brand worlds in the platform, connecting with Roblox’s 70-plus million daily active users.
Gaming studio The Gang, which launched in Stockholm in 2019, is the engine behind a series of Roblox’s popular games and brand experiences, including the Gucci x Vans co-branded world; Givenchy Beauty’s winter world and footballer Jack Grealish’s appearance in Roblox’s Gucci Town. It designs and executes Roblox worlds and experiences, with mini games and interactivity tailored to each brand.
The Gang is one of a wave of startups that saw opportunity in Roblox post-lockdown. The Gang, which employs 250 people across Stockholm, Lisbon and Kuala Lumpur, was profitable in its first year of operation (2020) and is now an eight-figure business, up 60 per cent from 2022 to 2023, and on track to grow 20 to 30 per cent this year.
Besides brand experiences, the studio creates its own games to help it better understand the Roblox audience. Its most successful, Strongman Simulator, has had 1.2 billion visits and is consistently ranked in the top 50 Roblox games. “We use our own games to test, then we can do crazy things for brands,” says co-founder and CEO Marcus Holmström. “Our games don’t have to work, so we can test and fail. With brand projects, we want to know what works before we do it. I think that’s been one of the keys to success. We test, test, learn and apply.”
Roblox: A hard nut to crack?
When Holmström first ventured into building Roblox games in 2019, he thought it would be easy. A serial founder, he sold his second marketing company in 2003 and turned to investment, joining the board of gaming organisation A Sweet Studio. After its sale, Holmström and A Sweet Studio’s CTO and co-founder Gustav Linde came together to launch The Gang, working with a small team of game designers specialised in high-budget, high-profile gaming.
They learnt the hard way. “2019 was before everyone was talking about Roblox, so the competition looked very, very easy,” Holmström says. “The games didn’t seem well made, with low-quality art. So we were like, we’re gonna nail this, we’re going to become number one, easy!”
However, The Gang’s first game on Roblox, he admits, was a “total crash and burn… Everyone hated the game. We had tried to build it for a more mature audience, and we made it in the style of regular games, rather than looking at Roblox or other UGC platforms specifically,” he says.
It was a good lesson. Holmström and his team flew to Silicon Valley to meet with Roblox and understand what it was all about. They took down the game they’d built and rebuilt it, following Roblox’s advice. “It was a good learning experience, to understand that we didn’t actually know anything. It’s good to admit that, right?”
Holmström realised that if he and his co-founders could misunderstand Roblox, so would brands trying to enter the platform. His mission was to get to know Roblox users and translate brands into experiences these users might want to be a part of.
“Roblox users are not after a PR campaign. That’s like watching the commercials instead of the movie,” Holmström says. “Brands may believe that people are just going to come to their Roblox world because they are iconic as a brand. But even if that happens, if it’s not a good experience, they’re going to leave the area and leave a negative review.”
Interactivity and gamification
Vans was The Gang’s first big brand partner in 2020. “We wanted to include the iconic skateboards and the checks, but take it further,” Holmström recalls. “So when you enter the world, your avatar holds a skateboard right away. You click one button and then you can skate around and it goes faster. You can also create your own Vans shoes for your avatar, picking the model, the design and the colourway.” Vans World has had over 100 million visitors to date.
In January 2023, The Gang created Roblox’s Gucci Town with Manchester City footballer Jack Grealish, which received 45 million visits. That was followed by the Gucci x Vans world in April, which also garnered tens of millions of visits. While brands started out using Roblox for PR purposes to connect with the platform’s 270 million monthly visitors, they’re now understanding the broader potential of gamified, interactive experiences. At the Gucci x Vans experience, users could complete tasks and buy products linked to items in the physical world, sold through the retail platform Gucci Vault.
Romain Spitzer, CEO of LVMH fragrance brands, which oversaw the Givenchy Beauty House, says that the response has been “very positive”, with millions of visitors to date and “solid engagement with the minigames and UGC items”.
In the single-brand Vans World, several million Roblox users have created their own virtual Vans for their avatars, Holmström says, representing a huge opportunity for The Gang going forward. It’s still early days. “Very few brands have scratched the surface when it comes to Roblox co-creation,” Holmström says.
Using Roblox as a testing ground
The opportunities are exceptional for accurate product development, suggests Holmström. “Instead of you creating the only design and pushing it out there, Roblox users will help you design what’s actually cool, just by making their own virtual products,” he says. “It’s like when brands do [focus groups] but virtually, with millions of people, rather than a small test group. You know right away what’s going to fly and what’s not.”
The Gang can ring-fence certain experiences for certain demographics, so brands can target different age groups with different activations. Roblox CEO David Baszucki recently shared that 55 per cent of the platform’s users are older than 13, the platform’s fastest-growing demographic is users between 17 and 24 years old — and the 17 to 24 age bracket represents 22 per cent of Roblox’s player base. Luxury players tend to skew a little older in terms of visitors, compared to a brand like Vans, Holmström says.
Roblox is still a young platform, particularly for fashion players. “A lot of brands are a bit afraid at first because it’s a new medium. Brands don’t want to get it wrong,” says Holmström. “It’s important from the start that we understand what they want. Is it a short-term project focused on monetising a digital product? Is it to promote a physical product, or is it a long-term project for brand awareness?” The Gang will often start small with a brand, and keep iterating and scaling the collaboration as it understands what works.
In 2023, The Gang worked on an experience in Fortnite with American Express and is now exploring alternative platforms. “We are testing the waters, because we have a lot of clients that are interested in testing different platforms, with one provider for all the experiences,” says Holmström. The Gang 3D models all of its worlds, which makes it simpler to take the designs into other platforms and layer the programming on top.
Collaboration with Roblox users is also on the cards. Fashion on Roblox is underpinned by its creators: once accepted onto the Roblox UGC platform, these creators can create clothing and accessories for people to purchase for their avatars. In June 2023, the UGC creator platform had around 2,000 members, who typically sell up to 500 items each.
Holmström is now focused on working out how to partner with these young creators on the platform, perhaps working with brands to create branded digital garments for virtual brand worlds. It’s early days so he doesn’t want to say too much, but The Gang plans to create some “cool things” with UGC creators. “It’s going to be very, very big,” he says.
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