
Snap sold fewer than 42K Spectacles, down 35% in Q2 - ljk
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/10/snap-spectacles-sales/
======
pavlov
Based on my brief exposure, Spectacles is a very polished product. Everything
about it had an aura of breezy, forward-moving fun that is usually absent from
tech: the purchase experience at a super-cute vending machine that displays a
rendering of the glasses on your face; the yellow carrying case that doubles
as extra battery for the glasses; the effortless installation experience; even
the round video that invites peeking to discover hidden content at the edges.

I don't think Snap deserved their IPO valuation, and the company is
uninvestable anyway because of the share structure that locks voting power
forever away from common stock holders. But I'll be sad if Snap goes away
because they're so different from everybody else in this space.

~~~
vm
They're doomed by the slow UX for uploading: 1) record w/o really knowing how
the content is coming out (it's like stepping back into the Kodak age after
using an iPhone for 10 years), 2) open Snap app, 3) reconnect the Bluetooth
for 1-2 min because the connection is crap from the glasses to my phone, 4)
upload all the videos from my glasses which takes another 1-2 min, 5) select
specific video snips to share, 6) select people to share / upload to story,
etc.

Seemed to take 5 min when I did it. Enough to kill the moment. Sharp contrast
to how fast Snap is on iOS.

Plus the glasses are uncomfortable and have large blind spots, so I can't wear
them all the time (i.e. not good for driving)

~~~
slackoverflower
I don't think your the target audience. Snapchat UX is amazing and an entire
generation uses for all communication purposes. Facebook of OUR time.

~~~
brazzledazzle
The UX might be good but I've heard nothing but complaints about the app
quality from teenagers and that's on iOS. They are starting to straddle snap
and Instagram.

~~~
eat_veggies
Teenager here chiming in, Snapchat is great but kind of slow on my (Android)
phone -- It takes like 5 seconds for it to even load who has new stories, and
I used to be able to swipe up to show my stats and snap code but now it's a
bunch of related/nearby content ("top stories") I don't care about. Ads
between stories are kind of annoying but I understand they need to monetize
somehow.

It's great for sharing photos and quick texts but no one uses snap maps, the
sponsored content is cringe, and I have yet to see spectacles in real life
because unsurprisingly, we don't have the money to buy $100+ camera glasses.

I should also add that a lot of my friends do use Instagram stories, but a lot
of the time it's just a picture with the text "AMOS: {sc_username}" (AMOS
means "add me on Snapchat") so take from that what you will.

~~~
wonder_bread
Same thing I've noticed, and even beyond that people still seem to feel the
need to put a final layer of effort into their insta stories relative to Snap
stories, I'd say Snap still has a definite role

------
relyks
They may need to have better marketing, like have an ad that mentions it in
the app. I didn't know that Spectacles are selling on Amazon now and I don't
believe many people know either. I think most assume that they're still being
sold at those exclusive kiosks.

~~~
dmix
I also went to the website
[https://www.spectacles.com](https://www.spectacles.com) and I had no idea
what they were until I googled other news articles about it.

\- Extremely vague besides "push a button to record video".

\- No mention of battery power, length of charge, app integration, quality of
video, etc, etc.

\- It seems to be only targeted at women? There's no pictures of men wearing
them.

\- What do the sides of the glasses look like? All pictures are the front
angle. Does it look bulkier because it has a camera?

\- I see a prominent "Find a Snapbot" button, I had no idea "Snapbot" meant
pop-up store until I read about it in a news article.

I could go on...

The pictures are visually appealing but having zero sales copy was a terrible
idea. How can you sell something without explaining it?

I too would have liked to see an Amazon link, I prefer using that over a
custom online shop every time. And Amazon forces them to write an actual
description about what the product does.

~~~
ben174
I think the mysteriousness is part of the marketing. Makes them seem more
obscure and thus desirable to some.

~~~
JavaOffScript
That's part of snapchat's brand, they make all their shit unintuitive,
obscure, hard to discover and use. It's supposed to make it so that you feel
hip and in the know when you finally discover how to make that mustache appear
on your face or make text float in the background of your video.

But of course that doesn't seem to transfer that well to selling hardware.

~~~
thinbeige
> they make all their shit unintuitive

Why so aggressive?

There is a clear reasoning for this strategy. People and especially press talk
more about the product.

Btw, I think Snapchat is quite intuitive. Some features might not be easy to
find or to know about. But once you know it is very intuitive and fast to use
them. I think it is similar to Vim, if you don't know anything about Vim you
cannot even quit Vim but once you know all the stuff Vim is one of the most
intuitive editors because UI and most commands are well designed.

~~~
tigershark
You are clearly using a different definition of intuitive from anyone else.
VIM is the least intuitive editor that I know. Even you are saying that people
don't even know how to quit it, how in the world is that intuitive??? If you
need to know all the stuff to use it that is by definition not intuitive.
"adjective: intuitive using or based on what one feels to be true even without
conscious reasoning; instinctive. (chiefly of computer software) easy to use
and understand."

------
drzaiusapelord
I'm very surprised how feminine this design is. It has strong overtures
towards 50's cat-eye frames and looks exclusively marketed to women. I just
ran through all the media/PR stuff I could find for this and can't find any
official photos of a man wearing them. I wonder if they would have better luck
also selling a male-fashion oriented model. This isn't a hypothetical as I
would probably pick these up for ease of vacation photos/videos, especially
for those of us with active children who are difficult to photograph well. I'd
much rather wear these on a boat than try to take a video or photo with my
$700 smartphone begging to end up on the bottom of the Atlantic.

Most of the reviews on amazon are from men and most of those complain about
the style or being too small, so clearly men were very motivated to buy this
product.

I think there's a fundamental marketing mistake here with wearable cameras.
Its not really going to appeal to sexy instagram addicts who can't selfie with
them, but to busy parents and older people, especially those with limited
mobility or inability to quickly pull out a smartphone. I think its obvious
that those kinds of markets don't bring in SV money, so here we are pretending
women actually want to buy and wear these ridiculous looking things all day.
Sorry, but the huge graphics around the lens mar an otherwise tasteful design.
Clearly the market chose against this concept.

I'm also skeptical an always facing camera, be it on glasses, wearable
watch/pedant, etc will ever be socially acceptable. Apparently, the Google
Glasses problem hasn't been solved yet and may not ever be solved in the
consumer space.

>Snaps from Spectacles do not directly go to your phone. You can save Snaps
taken with Spectacles to your phone by exporting them from Snapchat Memories
to your Camera roll

Also the implementation sounds wonky. I'm guessing this is a iOS limitation?
On Android you should be able to write directly to the camera folder.

~~~
softwarefounder
You seem to be getting down-voted, maybe by the feminine comment, but you're
right; it's clear that their marketing is towards women
([https://www.spectacles.com/](https://www.spectacles.com/)), and they're
missing a huge market. (Why not two styles?)

Edit: Imagine if they would've had a male styled version, and tried to get
Kanye West, or some other pop/style star wearing them.

Huge miss.

~~~
ghostly_s
Imagine it they would've done a female styled version, and got Kim Kardashian
wearing them? Why is that less legitimate? The parent is being downvoted
because of the implicit criticism is that a female-first targeted rollout is a
mistake.

~~~
coltonv
I think the parent would have drawn the same criticism if the exclusively
marketed towards men.

I think his point was simply that their marketing misses 50% of the market.
His point is not that it's wrong to only market towards women, his point was
that it seems weird from a revenue perspective to only market to to half the
population.

~~~
caseydurfee
A lot of products start with half the population, though, and it's not
considered weird. The old euphemism is "shrink it and pink it" \- originally
design for men, then put out a women's version.

If Spectacles take off, they can always "grow it and bro it" later. Starting
off with a focused target market seems like a reasonable approach to me.

------
Splendor
42K is low but the product appeals to a very small segment of consumers:
Snapchat users, who don't wear prescription eyeglasses, who happen to have a
face shape complimented by the single size/style of Spectacles.

~~~
ghthor
Was easy to get prescription lenses for mine. Lenses cutter in Rochester cuts
all kinds of strange lenses types.

~~~
crispytx
Hell yeah, I want some Rx Spectacles! Lost my Rx Ray-Bans in the lake this
summer.

------
iamleppert
I have a friend who wears the glasses to every social/party event in my larger
friend circle and to public parties, and is one of the biggest attention
whores I know.

Not even he is narcissistic enough to post the video up. I've never seen one
video from the glasses.

Best I can tell he wears them as some kind of fashion statement in the weird
and quirky SF gay tech scene.

------
leereeves
To clarify the headline, TechCrunch is estimating Snap sold less than 105k
Spectacles total, 64K in Q1 and 41K in Q2.

> Snap revealed during its call following weak Q2 earnings that it generated
> $5.4 million in “Other” revenue, which would equate to around 41,500 pairs
> of its Spectacles camera sunglasses at a $130 price point. That’s compared
> to $8.3 million in Other revenue in Q1, or fewer than 64,000 pairs

~~~
erdle
Everyone has to estimate bc Evan didn't discuss it specifically on the call...
he could have... but did not...

------
empath75
Literally, the only people I saw talking about those stupid glasses were
people trying to shill the IPO online.

~~~
myusernameisok
I wasn't even aware they existed until I saw this thread.

I don't understand why companies feel they need to start selling average
household products, but with cameras, microphones, wifi, and bluetooth. Maybe
I'm just paranoid but I don't even like my laptop having a camera.

------
zitterbewegung
I think this wearable from Snap had multiple objectives.

1\. Allow more people to be tied in directly to snapchat and make users more
loyal and provide a better experience.

2\. Create a new revenue stream based on wearables.

3\. A PR vehicle to drive more users into the platform.

I think it accomplished #3. It may be able to accomplish 1-2 but we should
wait and see. Also, something like Spectacles probably need a price drop to
drive more people to buy it and the fact that this wearable doesn't drive
people to upgrade to new spectacles would be an issue also.

~~~
tenpies
4\. Allow the IPO underwriters to pretend that the company is not a single app
company but a lifestyle brand.

------
wonder_bread
Were the Specs ever meant to be more than a hype vehicle though? Obv. if it
had blown up into an international phenomenon Spiegel & Co. would have taken
it but I feel like it was more just a power strut en route to their IPO to
show that people are excited about their platform more so than "Big Brother's"

------
overcast
I don't understand the target audience. The reason smartphones are so popular,
is because they do basically EVERYTHING for the common person. They aren't
going to carry around another silly device to take pics, that was called a
camera, and we see how popular those are now. For anyone that is serious, they
are already carrying separates.

~~~
randyrand
IMO id rather they made a gopro competitor. Maybe ditch the sunglasses part.
Not sure.

I bring my gopro on all my trips. Its a great way to record memories without
using up your phone storage or battery. It's also easier to hold, has better
FoV, and much better video quality. It's a no brainer. I'm surprised action
cams have not hit mainstream as far as trip-devices go.

~~~
thinbeige
No offense, but I can't believe that an additional action cam brings so much
extra value. Bulky and has to be charged as well. My iPhone can record
memories too. Battery doesn't drain fast when recording and I have 256GB
storage and media is anyway uploaded to a cloud provided shortly after. If you
get an Android phone with microSD you can get even more local storage.

And why should the video quality be better? The samples I see on Youtube are
ok but better?

Yes, you can fix an action cam to your helmet or surf board but this is the
only feature a phone lacks.

~~~
randyrand
I assume you don't own an action cam.

There is no comparison.

Easiness to hold and wide FOV are game changers.

I often record for 5-10 minute chunks. Holding my phone for that amount of
time while walking around would suck.

A phone is great for a 30 second video clip here and there. but if you really
want to record a whole day of activity a phone sucks to use.

In my most recent trip i took 4 hours of footage over 10 days. I would never
enjoy doing that on my phone.

~~~
thinbeige
Who does want or watch 10 min videos?

~~~
randyrand
These videos are mostly for my own and my family's enjoyment.

------
mrfusion
Can you use these without uploading to Snapchat? I wouldn't mind getting one
just for making videos. (Or is there a better glasses product for that?)

~~~
nerfhammer
Yes, you can get the video files and don't need to upload them to snapchat.

~~~
Fricken
Viewing the videos on Snapchat you rotate your phone depending on whether you
want a horizontal or vertical frame, which is actually pretty cool. When saved
outside of Snap the videos save to some standard video format as a circle
within a rectangular frame, which makes them kinda useless.

------
OzzyB
Spectacles was nothing more than a smart PR campaign that promised a steady
drip of positive press leading into their IPO.

It was gimmicky, with no real-world use case, and "sold" as some kinda of
geffen good that was only available in limited quantities.

------
pier25
Even if the execution was flawless why would anyone think this was a good idea
in the first place?

------
jaredandrews
I personally wouldn't wear Spectacles, but I did expect them to do much better
than they have. It seems like people don't feel silly wearing GoPros or
carrying selfie sticks so they looked like a logical next step to me.

Some anecdata: I have been traveling the U.S. for the last year, stopping in
mostly major cities, and lived in Boston prior to that. In all that time I
didn't see a single pair of Spectacles until last month... in Houston, TX of
all places!

------
gre
I wonder how much revenue their geofenced custom filters bring in?

~~~
ghostly_s
What's the revenue model on these?

~~~
gre
You can make custom filter for a location for a time and the price scales for
both. You can only use the filter from that geofence.

Something like $70 for a half square mile for a day on the geofence I drew in
Santa Monica. It's $5 for an office building in downtown Austin for a day.

Their ui is really fun!

~~~
ben174
Can you go into more detail? Or provide a link explaining this?

~~~
gre
A friend showed me last week and I've never used it. Here's a link, try it
out.

[https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters](https://www.snapchat.com/geofilters)

------
Raphmedia
No surprise there. There is no appeal to wearing your smartphone's camera on
your face on a generic pair of glasses.

People spent hours carefully choosing their glasses. You won't be able to get
everyone to buy the same design.

------
rubidium
My reaction: wow 46,000 sold in q2 seems pretty good for a niche product.

~~~
valuearb
The Apple watch is a niche product. It did nearly 10 million units and $6B
it's first year.

Spectacles is a disaster.

------
digitalneal
Legit forgot they were still for sale. After all the hype and lack of product
availability it simply skipped my mind that they were now readily available to
the masses!

------
ZenoArrow
As I said last time...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14988588)

------
0xbear
That's still almost $5.5 million. Less than the cost of development, but
probably not that far off.

------
ransom1538
Birth control you can wear on your face.

~~~
joeyspn
^ Best review. Honest and politically correct.

------
cptskippy
How many were they expecting to sell? This is an incredibly niche product.

------
adamnemecek
I'm not surprised. Selling a hw product is hard.

------
crispytx
I think the spectacles are pretty baller. Somebody send me some.

------
wcummings
They're not even available where I live, can't say I'm surprised.

~~~
rtkwe
You can just order them via Amazon now. I think the initial exclusivity worked
ok to build a bit of excitement and hype around what probably would have been
a lackluster launch if they'd just dropped them onto Amazon. Though even with
that all the people I've seen using them were mocking them half the time for
being ridiculous.

------
module0000
"Trendy" company selling highly-niche product? Short that company. The
probability they are the next iPhone is very low, it's a low-risk short.

------
ddmax
All of those spectacles, eventually, will go in the trash and into landfills.
Few people think about that. If you buy a spectacle, you are literally buying
future pollution. In 300 years, those spectacles and their batteries will
still be polluting the ground and the water. Is this how we measure progress?

------
keepper
You mean people don't want to wear douchetacles? Color me surprised!

And before you downvote me, realize that basically, this is a gimmicky
product, even if you think it is cool.

While you are allowed to film anyone in public, the act of having an "always
pointing highly visible camera", will elicit more negative reactions than
positive ones... So unless snap is pretty tone deaf, this was known to be a
non long term product, more of a product to appease their top producer base.

