Amikaverse debuts on Roblox for hair care fans

Amika is a hair care brand that is launching its Amikaverse brand experience on Roblox today.

Ecommerce builder Obsess helped create the Amikaverse along with Brooklyn, New York-based Amika to create a first-of-its-kind experience for a premium U.S.-based hair care brand. This immersive virtual venture aims to foster community engagement and self-expression among its users.

Targeted at women, the Amikaverse on Roblox serves as an extension of Amika’s commitment to inclusivity, responsibility, and sustainability, embodying the brand’s core values. Roblox itself is happy to draw this kind of brand to its platform.

“Hair customization and curation is more popular than ever on Roblox, and our research shows that avatar hair is the second most important element for 67% of Gen Z consumers to customize on a daily or weekly basis,” said Justine Higueras, head of beauty, CPG and QSR at Roblox, in a statement. “The opportunity for hair brands is massive on Roblox where over 70 million people connect and communicate daily – nearly half of them Gen Z – and it’s great to see experiences like Amika’s that lean into the creativity of the Roblox community and the power of digital self-expression.” 

Named after the Esperanto word for “friend,” Amika invites users to explore a virtual world where they can learn about the brand, play unique games, create virtual hair care products, and interact with characters in the Amikaverse environment, said Kelley Martin, senior vice president of marketing at Amika, in an interview with TechForgePulse.

“We stand for friendship. Community is really important to the brand. And when we think about our larger brand and marketing objective, we know that we’ve a huge opportunity to drive brand awareness in the market,” Martin said. “There’s a really big opportunity to get more eyeballs on the brand. We also know that we have incredible traction with the 18-year-old to 34-year-old customer who uses the brand right now.”

And those who aspire to join the brand are in the key demographic that Roblox reaches and engages every day.

“We’re really going after that younger consumer. And we know that they’re engaging in gaming. And so it’s a chance for us to introduce the brand to this audience in a really relevant way,” Martin said. “So launching the game and interactive experience on Roblox makes perfect sense because it’s giving us a chance to get awareness and eyeballs and interaction. We want brand awareness, we want new users to the brand. We really want to build community through this game experience.”

Upon entering the Amikaverse, users choose a “Bestie” character – a Stylist, a Gardener, or a Recycler – who guides them through the virtual experience, said Martin. She said each Bestie leads players into different themed spaces featuring mini-games that make learning about Amika’s brand pillars enjoyable.

In the Salon mini-game, players address different hair concerns presented by a diverse cast of characters by choosing the right Amika products and solving quick puzzles. The Garden game allows users to grow and harvest ingredients for Amika products, while the Recycling game involves collecting recyclable materials to create packaging inspired by Amika’s iconic designs, Martin said. You can grow something like Sea Buckthorn, an ingredient rich in vitamins that goes into drinks.

Previously, Amika sponsored Riot Games’ Valorant tournament in what was dubbed a “Bestie Battle.”

Neha Singh, CEO of Obsess, said in a statement, “The Amikaverse immerses visitors in a fully gamified virtual experience that is visually stunning and perfectly aligned with the brand’s look and feel.”

The Amikaverse also features user-generated content (UGC) gifts, UGC products available for purchase in the Roblox marketplace, and coins redeemable for digital products like Amika-patterned hair and hair clips for avatars. In addition to the Roblox experience, Amika and Obsess are set to launch a web-based virtual store mirroring the Roblox offering on Amika’s ecommerce site in 2024.

Amika, known for its clinical results and sea buckthorn-powered formulas, emphasizes its commitment to being a friend to hair, hair stylists, the planet, and consumers. Certified as a B-Corp, the brand pledges to achieve Net Zero by 2030.

Obsess’ Singh said in an email to TechForgePulse that Obsess designed and developed the entire Amikaverse virtual experience that is available on Roblox, ensuring that the immersive environment reflects Amika’s brand look and feel and aligns with their customer acquisition and engagement strategy.

“We also created the games and digital items inside of the experience,” she said. “For instance, we created a garden-themed game that allows customers to grow and harvest the ingredients that make up Amika’s products. We also created collectable digital items that users can purchase inside of the Amika experience, and then wear anywhere in Roblox—such as a jetpack made of hair dryers, and brightly colored, patterned hairstyles.”

Singh said that Obsess has now built more than 300 virtual stores and experiences for brands in the beauty, fashion, CPG and retail spaces—and we are excited to bring these experiences cross-platform to a new generation of consumers through Roblox.

Obsess has created web-based virtual stores for beauty brands including e.l.f., Charlotte Tilbury, Olaplex, Laneige, K18, Ralph Lauren, J.Crew, Universal Music Group and Mattel.

The company dedicated a full account team—including design, content, product, and engineering—to this project.

To make it fun, Singh said, “We incorporated an array of elements that let users tap into their creativity and play fun games to complete challenges. Part of what differentiates these games from other Roblox experiences is that there is very powerful storytelling behind each of them.”

She added, “The games really contextualize how Amika shows up every day in their customers’ lives. There’s a huge focus on diversity within the experience—from the digital items to the non-playable characters (NPCs) in the games, which we knew was important to Amika from the start and is something that we’ll continue to optimize over time.”

She noted that gamification plays a big role in each themed space within the Amikaverse—the Salon, the Garden and the Recycling space—with each environment offering a mini game that makes it easy and fun for users to learn about amika products.

“In the Salon challenge, a diverse cast of characters will present different hair concerns to users, who have to choose the right Amika products to address the issue and then solve a quick puzzle. In the Garden challenge, users can grow and harvest different ingredients that make up Amika products,” Singh said. “And in the Recycling space, visitors explore the Amikaverse to collect pieces of recyclable materials, which they then combine to “recycle” into one of five different packaging options inspired by amika’s iconic patterned designs. Once users have the necessary hair knowledge, ingredients and packaging, they can then create their custom product, which they can also choose to gift to friends within the experience.”

Users can also shop for digital hair and accessories that they can use to customize their avatars. And there’s also a digital giveaway—a digital limited-edition amika-patterned jacket—that visitors who complete the Salon mini game 10 times will receive.