Raphael Thys
Geoffrey Perez during the Bloomberg Tech Summit in London, om Sept. 28.Photographer: Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
Snap Inc.’s head of luxury is betting on augmented reality and other advanced kinds of video filters to showcase clothing and other branded products.
“Every day we have 250 million people engaging with augmented reality on our platform,” Geoffrey Perez said at the Bloomberg Technology Summit in London on Wednesday. “Not just to try dresses on, but also jewelery and makeup.”
Wearing a pair of Snapchat’s augmented reality spectacles on stage, Perez said, “This is how we see engaging with the real world in future.”
Snap works with retailers to develop tools that let customers try on clothing virtually. Eventually, Snap could expand that into an “AR enterprise business,” charging a startup fee and small transaction fees to merchants using the technology, Snap Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel said earlier this month.
The company may also eventually look at ways to use the so-called metaverse to sell products, though augmented reality is its primary focus for now, he said.
The “metaverse” is a virtual universe that blends aspects of digital technologies including video-conferencing, games like Minecraft or Roblox, cryptocurrencies, email, virtual reality, social media and live-streaming. Quite how these pieces will fit together is a work in progress, but some tech giants already see it as the future of human communication and interaction.