Does your avatar know how to make actual money? Bernadette Duponchel’s does. She was recently at the National Retail Federation conference with the rest of her team, presenting IBM’s take on virtual worlds for the fashion design industry.

This is the second consecutive year IBM has demonstrated the use of virtual worlds at the NRF. The brief demo highlights the benefits of real-time collaborative design, short feedback loops when tweaking materials and costs, and even pre-selling the item before it is physically manufactured.