Launched by two Westminster alumni Olga Dogadkina, Co-Founder and CEO, and alumna of the Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Enterprise Development MSc course, and Simonas Holcmann, Co-founder and CTO, and alumnus of the Computer Games Development BSc course, Emperia has recently raised $10m in order to expand its “virtual e-commerce” offering to new markets and retail sectors.
Emperia is an immersive virtual store creation and management platform, used by brands across multiple retail sectors. The company’s retail stores in the metaverse aim to increase customer engagement and sales. Since its establishment in 2019, Emperia has been working with prestigious brands, including Burberry, Dior, Lacoste, and Bloomingdale’s, just to name but a few.
Talking about the success of the company, Olga Dogadkina, Co-Founder and CEO of Emperia said: “We started Emperia with the conviction that e-commerce was the future of retail, but 2D websites were merely a tool that enabled an online purchase through a simple grid of images and text, and lacked the customer journey, story-telling, the ability to provide the customer experience and product discovery retailers’ physical stores strive to achieve.”
“Our aim is to bridge the gap between the transactional nature of an e-commerce purchase and the personalised shopping experience brands can cultivate in store. Using technology, Emperia aims to make virtual worlds into the future of e-commerce, expanding the reach to new and future online shoppers, increasing brand loyalty and creating a completely new shopping experience,” she added.
The new funding will be used to grow the Emperia team, improve their virtual store, the SaaS platform and its data suite, and expand their global market presence. The company plans to use virtual store customer data, allowing retailers to personalise the customer experience. Emperia will also work with its partners to bring virtual e-commerce solutions under one roof, and to advance its position in the fast-growing Web3 ecosystem.
Tautvydas Marcinkevicius, a student from the Computer Games and Development BSc course, joined Emperia with a placement for the previous year and has continued working part-time as a Junior Unity Developer at Emperia during his final year of studies. Talking about his experience at the company, Tautvydas said: “It has been an amazing experience that had opened my eyes to the industry that barely existed when I started my course. It has been really fun and interesting to learn a whole new side of tech and Emperia's team and culture are amazing, I am glad to be a part of it.”
“We are delighted to see this success story of our alumni being recognised within the immersive industry. Their achievement is inspiring to the University and the course community. Working with companies within the immersive sector like Emperia has helped our Computer Games Development BSc course in forms of placements, graduate opportunities, industry mentorship and academic advisory support,” said Markos Mentzelopoulos, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for the Computer Games Development BSc course.
Learn more about Computer Science and Engineering, and Business and Management courses at the University of Westminster.
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