For $3,500, a shopper could buy 35 pairs of J.Crew chinos, or 500 packs of liquid concealer from e.l.f. Beauty. But both of these brands are hoping that wealthy shoppers will spend that money on a Vision Pro headset instead, and download their new apps.
E.l.f. and J.Crew are two of a handful of retail brands, along with others including Lowe’s and Wayfair, that deployed immersive shopping experiences on Apple’s spatial computing device in time for its official launch last Friday. Vision Pro has mainly been touted as an entertainment device and, at $3,500 a pop, not a very accessible one. Yet some marketers view the headset as a must-have channel for their e-commerce efforts, and a first swing at a technology that could revolutionize shopping.
“When you have a brand like Apple standing behind this, [you] have to believe,” said Ekta Chopra, chief digital officer at e.l.f.
Streamers were promoted by Apple as being the first wave of developers for Vision Pro, with giants such as Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery leveraging the immersive environment for movies and TV shows. But other big media players, including Netflix, YouTube and Spotify, decided to sit out the launch (YouTube has since said it will develop an experience, The Verge reported). Netflix’s co-CEO, Greg Peters, said the device is currently too subscale to justify developing an app, per an interview with tech newsletter Stratechery.