Faith Tribe, the collaborative fashion platform and ecosystem devoted to open-sourcing fashion talent and unlocking new opportunities for creators, artists, and fashion businesses everywhere, with a dual-chain token ($FTRB) launched on the Ethereum (ERC20) and Polygon blockchains, is pleased to announce that retail, fashion and Web 3 veteran, Andrea A. Abrams, is joining as Chief Strategist, effective immediately.
Created by the owners of fashion brand Faith Connexion, Faith Tribe will allow creators to design and customize their digital and physical fashion assets, mint them into NFTs, and create and submit new original designs for access to Faith Connexion’s extensive design, manufacturing, marketing and commerce ecosystem. Faith Tribe co-founders, Wahid Chammas and Maria Buccellati announced Andrea’s addition as they start the expansion of the Faith Tribe suite of services to achieve the company’s vision of becoming the leading open-source platform for product creation, manufacturing, and distribution.
Andrea A. Abrams
Andrea is a retail industry veteran and global executive with a broad background in cross-border expansion strategies, as well as technologies for physical and digital retail and fashion. She is a retail technology and blockchain investor, board member, and advisor, participating in pre-seed rounds of notable blockchain companies, wearable NFT platforms, and technology startups for physical and digital commerce. After a long international career in the retail and fashion industries, including driving international expansion for a multi-national retail REIT, working on the launch of new retail concepts, advising international retail companies on their global and omnichannel expansion, and launching an incubator devoted to connecting talent and opportunities in fashion and entertainment, Andrea became a retail tech investor.
She was in search of technologies that would solve many of the issues faced by retailers, designers and product makers, such as inefficient inventory management, lack of uniform POS standards, and limited tools for sustainable production and distribution, when she got involved with the blockchain community in 2018. The solutions this new technology offered felt as transformational to her as the advent of Web 1 and Web 2 in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Andrea stated, “I believe that, in the same way that the internet ushered in the eCommerce era, Web 3 and the Metaverse represent the dawning of the iCommerce era, an immersive new way of consuming products and experiences.”
“The ability to create digital lives for real-life products is opening the door to a truly phygital existence,” Andrea said, adding, “and by connecting a global pool of talent with resources and opportunities – enabling collaboration, exposure and distribution in physical and digital worlds through Web 3 technology – Faith Tribe is helping define the new creator economy. I am honored to be invited to help shape the future of fashion with Maria, Wahid, the Faith Tribe team and the entire Faith Tribe ecosystem.”
“Andrea brings a unique mixture of physical and digital fashion, retail and lifestyle expertise to our team,” said Wahid Chammas. He added, “From the very first day we launched this project, we knew we needed to recruit a unique and formidable leader to propel Faith Tribe’s development and growth trajectory. The world has but a handful of marquee candidates who boast years of C-suite experience in Web 3 and the Metaverse, coupled with decades of experience in the fashion industry and with Fortune 500 companies – I am so proud we were able to recruit Andrea, a titan with the truly rare skillset necessary to help us run a global fashion brand and an appreciation for Faith Connexion’s rich history, while at the same time transforming our open- source design platform for a future on the blockchain.”
Prior to joining Faith Tribe, Andrea set out to create an incubator for the strategic incorporation of new Web 3 technologies and activities necessary to bridge the virtual and physical worlds. She founded PHYGICODE (www.phygicode.io) in 2021, bringing together a consortium of industry leaders from physical and digital areas of retail and fashion to develop a balanced conversation. Andrea will continue her work with PHYGICODE, while leading strategy for Faith Tribe, and is proud to point out that Wahid and Maria are members of the PHYGICODE ecosystem.
Prior to her work in retail tech, Andrea spent a large part of her career in executive positions in development, acquisitions, global merchandising and investment, expanding retail methodologies to new frontiers, with transactions in Turkey, Brazil and Central America. Her relationship with Faith Connexion goes back to 2017, when she was introduced to Maria at a time when unique and authentic product experiences were becoming a crucial component of the retail environment.
Andrea admired Faith Connexion’s DNA and the winning formula of bringing together fashion, music and art to create extraordinary and unforgettable in-store experiences and one-of-a-kind product. “Faith Connexion was ahead of the curve when it came to creative collaboration. Some of my favorite garments were customized by artists discovered by Maria and featured at her store events,” Andrea said. She added, “Taking this collaborative approach to fashion creativity to the Metaverse is a natural next step for the brand.”
Maria Buccellati said “Andrea has worked on the business and geographic expansion of prominent retailers and fashion brands and has personally participated in the curation of iconic retail projects around the world. She understands my passion for curation of product and experiences, bringing together talent from many walks of life.” She continued, “Andrea combines her experience in the fashion industry with her extensive corporate acumen forged after years of helping companies in the US, UK, Europe, Canada and Latin America, and most of all, she is extraordinarily passionate about Web 3. She is committed to showcasing the power of expanded self-expression though Metaverse identities and activities.”
Wahid Chammas concluded, “Andrea believes that the future is ‘phygital’ and that the economic integration of our physical and digital worlds will define the next decade. She embodies the values of our platform and devotes her time to defining new cultural currencies around consumption for access instead of possession.”
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