SnapBot Drop Locations so far:
November 10: Venice Beach, California
November 13: Loma Vista, California
November 15: Oklahoma near Tulsa
November 17: Santa Monica, California
November 20: Lake Mead National Recreation Area, near border of Arizona and Nevada
November 21, New York, New York
November 26, Florida State University
Approach it from the side and you might mistake Snap Inc.’s new Spectacles vending machine for a sleek, yellow refrigerator.
But make no mistake. The weird vending machine is SnapBot, which will travel across the country selling the company’s first hardware product: video-capturing glasses. The vending machine will first sell the $130 sunglasses in Venice Beach, near Snap Inc.’s headquarters. Two spectacles are limited per customer. They come in coral, teal and black.
Demand for Spectacles is at an all-time high. The sunglasses are reselling at upwards of 1000 percent on eBAY and long lines at vending machines are to be expected.
A video posted on Twitter from entrepreneur Ross Sheingold shows a line developing across from the beach around Speedway and Sunset Ave.
I just bought @Snap‘s Spectacles from the “Snapbot” in Venice. Very fun!
In an echo of the application’s disappearing photos, the pop-up vending machine appears for about a day in locations revealed 24 hours earlier. Snapchat has a map that shows Snapbot’s location. To find out whether a SnapBot dropped near you using the Snapchat app, you must have Location Services on to see the Spectacles GeoFilter, according to CNet.
In an email, Sheingold said he stood in line three times to buy five sunglasses. Snap Inc.’s opening sales push for Spectacles is reminiscent of marketing tactics celebrities use said Sheingold.
“The pop-up shop model has been huge for cultural icons such as Kanye and Drake,” said Sheingold, Chief Innovation Officer of social media agency Laundry Service & Cycle. “This is Snapchat’s version of that. The “Snapbot” is super-creative and playful, which is fitting for a product like Spectacles. ”
SnapBot customers can try on the glasses virtually from the machines using a circular display similar to Snapchat’s augmented reality filters. The Spectacles website also has a QR code that allows you to try on the Spectacles.
Spectacles shoots 10 seconds of video and has a 115 degree angle, reflective of a person’s normal field of vision, according to Snap Inc. The company says customers will only be able to buy Spectacles through its vending machines.
Snapchat debuted Spectacles at the end of September when it rebranded itself as Snap, Inc.