Snap Inc.’s Spectacles vending machine is back at the Los Angeles shopping center.
Snap Inc.’s cartoon-like Snapbot is back at The Grove.
The Spectacles-dispensing vending machine made an appearance at Caruso’s The Grove shopping center in December and marked a return for a longer-term stay Friday. The bot will sit next to the center’s fountain, where it will remain for what a Caruso spokeswoman said would be the “foreseeable future.”
The concierge at the Grove, beginning Monday, will have Spectacles for visitors to check out and use during their visit to the center. That service will remain at the Grove for the same run as the Snapbot.
The real estate firm has been nimble at trying new concepts at its centers to keep the attention of shoppers. Its dedicated glass pod for pop-up spaces at The Grove brought Clique Media Group’s social media brand Obsessee into the real world for the first time last summer. In December, Caruso signed a yearlong deal with Snap that brought Snapchat’s location-based geofilters to Caruso’s retail properties. The deal was Snap’s first on-demand geofilter deal with a business. In February, The Grove served as the backdrop for an all-day series of events that capped with Rebecca Minkoff’s fashion show.
The Snapbot joins the only other Spectacles physical location: a storefront quietly erected on beachfront property in Venice, Calif., earlier this month, housing four Snapbots.
Snap released Spectacles in November. The sunglasses come camera-enabled, allowing the wearer to take Snapchat snaps directly through the accessory. The sunglasses retail for $129.99 and come in three shades: black, a coral pink color and seafoam blue. The company has also been selling them through Spectacles’ own online shop, promising delivery in one to two weeks.
Snap called Spectacles in its prospectus “our latest effort to reinvent the camera.”
It’s unclear how Spectacles will shake out in terms of dollars for the business. The investment, the company’s first delve into creating hardware, has not yet generated “significant revenue.”
Snap said in its SEC filing it will continue to invest in Spectacles, but “we are not yet able to determine whether users will purchase or use Spectacles in the future.”
Snap shares closed down nearly 2 percent Friday to $22.74 for a recent market value of $21.41 billion. Snap began trading on the New York Stock Exchange earlier this month with an opening price of $17 per share.
By Kari Hamanaka