LYCRA + QIRA — From Field to Fiber VR Tour
The problem
A sustainability claim that is true and invisible. QIRA is made from field corn, and believing it means believing a supply chain that runs from an Iowa farm to a fermentation plant to a spool of fibre.
The approach
Bring the farm to the buyer instead of the buyer to the farm — capture the whole chain on location and let a textile customer walk it themselves.
What was built
360 capture at Kuiper Farm and the Qore facility, assembled as an interactive tour and shipped as a standalone Oculus application rather than a streamed video.
The outcome
Published by Grounded World as a case study.
The LYCRA Company had a problem that is common to sustainability claims and hard to solve with a brochure: the story is true, but nobody can see it. QIRA is a bio-based ingredient made from field corn, and the argument for switching to it depends on believing a supply chain that runs from a farm in Iowa to a fermentation plant to a spool of fibre.
Grounded World, the agency on the account, framed the brief plainly on its own case-study page: it would be hard — and unsustainable — to bring everyone to an Iowa farm. So the farm travelled instead.
The capture covered Kuiper Farm and the Qore production facility around Pella and Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 2024, and was assembled into an interactive 360 tour that shipped as a standalone Oculus application rather than a video anyone had to stream.
The production carried its own voices rather than a scripted narrator — the farmer and Qore’s chief executive, recorded on location, which is what lets the tour explain the process in the words of the people running it.
The choice of a standalone headset build matters more than it sounds. A trade audience gets approached at conferences and showrooms, where there is no reliable network and no time to onboard anyone. An app that runs on a headset handed across a table is a different product from a 360 video on a website, and it is the reason this works as a sales tool rather than a film.
Why it mattered
Sustainability marketing usually asks for trust. This asked for ten minutes in a headset, and let a buyer walk the ground themselves. That is a narrow, practical use of immersive media — not spectacle, just proof — and it is the kind of brief that keeps paying after the novelty of the format wears off.
It would be hard — and unsustainable! — to bring everyone to an Iowa farm.