With its ingenious marketing campaign, Snapchat’s camera glasses, or ‘Spectacles’, is poised to become a massive hit. It has become so popular, in fact, that hawkers have been able to sell the fashionable gadget online for 20 to 40 times its original price.
Snap Inc., as the company is now known, first showed off a sneak peak of the product back in September. Featuring a camera lens on its right side and a LED indicator on its left, the pair of tech shades are seemingly designed to target teens and millennials simply allows users to record 10 seconds worth of video just by the touch of a button — and that’s basically it.
Two months after it was unveiled, Snapchat Spectacles were then sold via vending machines known as SnapBots which have appeared in select locations, reported TechCrunch. So far, machines have been spotted at a beach boardwalk in L.A., a national park in Big Sur, California, and near establishments off Route 61 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Eager buyers went out in droves to be the first to get their hands on the product.
At $129.99 per pair, the Spectacles can be considered a decently priced buy. The package includes a case, which looks equally cool and doubles up as a charger for the shades. By making the product’s availability extremely limited, Snap has created an artificial scarcity, giving some people the opportunity to sell them online for huge markups.
Prices on eBay have the Spectacles going for around $800 to $2000. The most expensive spotted so far was a listing at a ridiculous $4,500 — all for a pair of glasses that can record short videos.
The product, dissimilar to the unsuccessful Google Glass, does not offer a plethora of Augmented Reality features. Somehow, the simplistic design and functionality was enough for its target market. Even with a mediocre product, Spectacles’ packaging and excellent marketing may prove to be a runaway success for Snap Inc.
