Snapchat’s Spectacles were only made available through its New York City store in the corner of Fifth Avenue and a pop-up vending machine that traveled the country. Now, Snapchat is planning to make it easier for people to get their hands on the trendy wearable tech.
Just before it filed to go public on Thursday, Snapchat’s parent company Snap wrote on its SEC S-1 filing that they “plan to significantly broaden the distribution of Spectacles,” according to The Verge. Snap says that it plans to make substantial investments in marketing and distributing the device in 2017.
For the uninitiated, Snapchat Spectacles are a pair of sunglasses equipped with a small camera for recording short videos. The device is connected to a user’s Snapchat smartphone app and allows them to instantly share videos that they’ve captured.
Spectacles are Snap’s first ever hardware/physical product, and its only second official product overall next to the Snapchat app. The camera-equipped sunglasses was originally pitched as a limited edition accessory and was first made available last fall.
With plans to widely distribute Spectacles, it looks like the device has been received well by consumers despite its limited availability. This also means that Snap is confident about its product despite not being able to generate much revenue for the company. However, that may change when its broad distribution plans move forward.
Snap also said on its S-1 filing that it plans to widely distribute Spectacles “will increase our costs and overall financial risk,” according to VentureBeat. This may have been the company’s way of warning potential investors about how unpredictable and risky their endeavor is.
“We have limited manufacturing experience for our only physical product, Spectacles, and we do not have any internal manufacturing capabilities,” Snap wrote. “Instead, we rely on one contract manufacturer to build Spectacles … Any errors or defects in that third-party technology could result in errors in our products that could seriously harm our business.”
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