Have smart glasses finally grown up? 

0:28In April, Monocle hosts the Entrepreneurs Live in Shanghai,

0:38Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's programme, we're heading for some winter sun in the UAE. First, we'll meet the team behind a company making smart glasses with features like real-time translation. I don't speak Chinese myself. I had the whole presentation in a big ballroom, translated directly in my glasses. And later, we'll hear from the boss of Harrods about the luxury retail opportunities in the United Arab Emirates. We've got a lot of tradition in the UK, whereas here, there doesn't seem to be any barriers to where they wish to go.

1:18And I think it's that lack of barriers that's the really exciting part. This is The Entrepreneurs, with me, Tom Edwards.

1:34You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Loyal listeners to Monocle Radio may well know that we recently descended on the World Government Summit in Dubai. Our team on the ground was broadcasting from our very own radio studio at the summit, speaking to leaders from the worlds of politics and business alike. Among the many illustrious figures we hosted at our pop-up studio were the very clever co-founders of Even Reality, a smart eyewear brand combining cutting-edge digital tech with timeless design. Even Reality's CEO Will Wong has a background in engineering and started the company two years ago.

2:09He was joined by his co-founder and CSO Nikolai Snor, a man with Denmark's celebrated Lindbergh Eyewear, amongst others, on his CV. Will, let me start with you, because this is an amazing business. Of course, it's about eyewear, but it's about cutting-edge innovation, being at the vanguard. Give us the elevator pitch. You must have done it a thousand times. Do it again for us. Right. Yeah. So the reason we got into this business is because I'm a hardware engineer. I love a mechanical engineer by training. I really love good products. I used to work at Apple, Apple Watch and iPhone. That's where I got really interesting to building wearables.

2:46Because wearables is just another different kind of tech where it's not only tech, it's also fashion. It's also lifestyle. It's health. Right. So it's everything. After building Apple Watch, I felt like what could be the next wearable tech form factor that would be even more interesting or impactful than watch? The answer is pretty apparent. It's smart glasses. I just decided, okay, if I really wanted to do it the way I wanted to make it happen, I probably should start my own business doing it. So I started my own business, really trying to bring the best talents from different categories. Because what I learned from my previous background is also, So when you wanted to make a wearable product good, you cannot only have good engineers.

3:26You should also have good designers. You should have people with good tastes. You should also have people with medical background so they know what they're doing with the optical, with the optometry side of things. So it's a really mixed team. So that's essentially what I started to do for the past two, three years to really scout the right people from different disciplines, the right experts. So like Nikolaj here is the expert from eyewear industry, formerly the chief commercial officer at Lindbergh, which is also one of the most renowned eyewear brands. But then also we have really expert medical staffs or hospital principals coming from eye doctor background or eye hospital background.

4:03So the team right now, it's a really good mix of experts from different fields. And we really believe that we wanted to make the smart glasses that's actually balancing out both the medical, both the fashion and also tech. but while providing you really digital meaning to your life. So that's also why we're naming the company Even Realities, which is bringing physical reality and the digital reality to an even point. Amazing. That's a very good pitch. You can tell you've done that a few times before. And we'll talk more about that amazing mix and what that mix of that interdisciplinary mix, that interesting intersectionality has done for the business.

4:42But you were mentioned there in dispatches, and we know the Lindbergh brand, you could have presumably just carried along in traditional eyewear. Why did this appeal? No, but when I left Lindbergh, Will came to me. We met up in Shanghai. I lived in China for 20 years and he asked me if I would like to help him to do this new smart glass concept. And I first said, no, I'm not really sure that I'm the right guy because I thought he first meant gadgets. But then we discussed a little bit further. He said, no, no, no. Let me explain what I really want here. I don't want to make a gadget. I want to make a pair of real eyewear with really good lenses with amazing technology into it.

5:22And when he started to explain to me what that was, I said, I'm on board here. I have been the part of building the best eyewear ever done in Limburg. Now I'm part of a team to build the best smart glass product that I've ever been around. And I think we are getting very close to it, hopefully at least. Hopefully, yeah. And tell me, though, it's interesting because you were talking, Will, about building this team of interdisciplinary talents. Right. But in this space, the huge players, Benji Nomi used to work for one, have so much advantage in terms of the clout they have. How do you compete? Yeah, so that's also the thing.

5:56I also came from that big tech background. So I actually also know what they're good at and also got frustrated by what they're bad at. So essentially, what I notice is, at least nowadays, the big tech companies, although they say that they're going to invest, for example, in the smart glasses category, the organization is just so big that they cannot just focus on one clear single vision that sharply as it came down before. So I wouldn't like being pointing fingers, but like all those companies right now, they have different strategic focuses and even just for one direction they have multiple visions.

6:32The department head, they will have their own idea. The founder will have their own idea. CEO will have their own ideas. So it's just really hard to really carry out a clean slate a vision in those bigger companies. So at the end of the day, we like to make an analogy where we're all trying to shoot a target where the bigger companies are trying to shoot a target with a shotgun probably 100 meters away. So no matter how many ammo I gave it to you, you cannot shoot a target because you are not really aiming straight. You just think that you have so much ammo you're just going to spray around. But for us, we only have one bullet.

7:10but we're using a sniper gun, right? So we can shoot it like 500 meters away from it, but we're aiming really straight. So that's how we're competing, to have a really, really clear vision. And on top of it, you need to have, like I said, the world-class team. Obviously, Apple, Meta, Samsung, those bigger players, they also have a great team, but they might not have a great team that's really working coherently together, right? They get the best talents from everywhere, but also the culture is mixed, and also everybody has their own agenda. But versus us, we only have like one mission. Everybody have the same value, shared value and shared culture.

7:47We also have like way less layers. So I get to every individual very easily. So I actually like right now we have 200 people where I know every one of them. It's different. I think in different momentum, different culture, different ways, how speed things are going. It's a different. It's a reverse economy of scale. It's that nimble. It is. B2B fleet of foot. And does that take some adjustment? I mean, Lindbergh is a very big player. You've worked, as you said, in these big corporate machines. Is it fun to kind of be back in something that's got that nimbleness to it? No, I'm a little bit back to where I started in Lindbergh, where with a small team, we build with talent, we deal with agility.

8:24We have a clear vision of what we want. So it makes a lot of fun to be in a startup environment. People are working extremely hard. We have a team from all over the world from day one. That's also something I like when Will, he said, I'm not looking for people coming from this country or that country. I'm looking for the best talents. And where do we find the best talents? Let's look for them. We have people sitting now in Berlin. We have people in London. We have people in Switzerland. We have people in Portugal sitting. We have people in the US. We have people in China. Very nice to sit in Portugal.

8:51Yeah, so we really try to sit that team. And I think just to come back to what Will said, look at Dyson. Look at Tesla. Look at Dreamy. This is brands for 10 years ago, nobody ever talked about. They are leader in their category today. So it's not impossible to fight against the big ones if you test better. It's all about having a better idea and having good execution. Well, let's talk about good execution. Let's talk about the product. That is the hero after all, Will. Tell me, you're wearing the glasses. What are you seeing? What's the interface? I know it's hard on radio because you can't show people.

9:27You already tried it. Kind of give us the UX. Yeah, so essentially it's an everyday display, smart glasses. It's supposed to replace your everyday glasses with your prescription. Why not? And then on top of it, it has this HUD, green monocolor HUD that's floating around 2 to 5 meters away from you. You can adjust how far away it is. And then also it's sort of like a hologram display where you have different layers. So we actually designed the UI, UX to be multi-layer where some of the information is further away, some more important information, more urgent or instant information is closer to you.

10:05So it's actually easier for you to change your attention between different topics. And then on top of that, we really focus on daily productivity tools instead of trying to build a gadget or entertainment device. So essentially all the features are revolving around how to help people work better or how to help people be more productive. So for example, some of the best used features, one of them are really suitable for the summit here is the teleprompter. It's upload your scripts from your phone and edit it on the fly. And then you hit start. And then the script will be floating right in front of you, two, three meters away from you.

10:43And then you can read off of the script. And the AI is picking up your voice. So you know exactly where you're reading. So it's scrolling for you. So that's actually... Is that happening now? Now I'm becoming... No, I can't see. We unscripted this. We could have been... Now it's off script, but... They are. They are very good at talking about it. Right, right. But yeah, like this morning, I was at a round table. I actually had my talk points written on my glasses. So it was really helpful. And then we have a multiple. We actually run into few speakers that they're using our glasses. And yeah. Okay.

11:13That must be an amazing moment. Yeah. Like I was calling out, like people are saying, oh, are you a real familiar artist? I was like, yeah. And you can do the other way around too. I was going to speak in Chinese a few days ago, one half hour. I don't speak Chinese myself. I had the whole presentation in a big ballroom translated directly in my glasses. Wow. So it's kind of like watching a movie with a subtitle. So it's like life with subtitles. Exactly. You're suddenly in the conversation. How smart can it get so it can work in another language? Can it start to decode body language? Is it going to start to say, oh, look, this person in the bar is actually making a move.

11:48Can it do that? Is that in the potential reach? That's the thing. It's not that hard for the AI to realize that, but that requires you to add a camera on the glasses. And that's actually what we, at least for now, we're against because we feel like this should be an everyday essential tool. It shouldn't be something that might potentially make people uncomfortable, right? Like, for example, sitting like this, if all of a sudden you wear camera glasses going into those meetings, everybody will feel uncomfortable like you're recording. So we feel like we wanted this to be something that people can feel safe about.

12:20Just like when you wake up every day, put on your everyday glasses, you wouldn't be thinking about, okay, can I actually wear it? Should I wear it in this location? Yeah, so that's what we care about. There is definitely more contextual AI features that we're building. For example, one of the features we're calling a conversate. Essentially, it's what you can turn it on during any important conversations where the AI will try to start do live transcription on what we're talking about and also try to fill in. while we have this little prompt called AIQ, where it's telling me what you're talking about, explaining some of the details, or if you said some technical jargon I don't understand, it'll just pop up and tell me what it is.

13:04A person's name. Yeah, I was going to say, it might struggle to make sense. You say Tony Blair, and I might not know who that is. And then suddenly Tony Blair will be like a person, and then say former prime minister, da-da-da-da-da. Let me ask you a question about integrating this tech seamlessly into great design? Because you keep talking, you mentioned Limburg. We know what, well, I imagine we know what people associate with that brand. Yeah. Great design, simplicity of design often. Were you concerned about the capacity you'd have as a design object to integrate all of this technology elegantly?

13:39My biggest concern was weight. So that was something we discussed and said there is a certain range for normal everyday glasses can weight. If there's more than that, you will simply not wear them every day. That just doesn't work. And we are more or less in the mid-range of what iWear is. So we see, we are average, but we have to remember, we have two batteries, we have two microprojectors, we have two CPUs, we have a cord, the cabling in. We got into a weight that you actually can wear, and a battery time, the last two days at the same time. I must say, it doesn't, they don't look like they could contain.

14:14Exactly. I mean, I know there's micro, micro. That's the whole idea. That's the whole idea. So we basically wait exactly the same as in every pair of glasses. The battery time is, like I said, is 48 hours. So that means they become in everyday glasses. And then there's a third thing that you just ask is, how good are they to be adjusted to the face? Because every nose, every ear, every face is different. And that was my concern in the beginning. Are they able, are they going to be like a scaffolding in your face? They're just like, you have to change the face to the glasses, or can the glass be changed to the face?

14:45and we will manage to make them so bendable in the material and will can maybe talk a little bit more about the material to the adjustability on the nose on the ears so they become comfortable because that is something with weight this is something with weight balance this is something material choice and something with flexibility all that have to go hand in hand in order to make them an everyday device you can wear from seven o 'clock in the morning until you go to bed at night without being disturbed well we'll talk about that because i guess one thing that people like about eyewear and actually my glasses kind of do look a little bit like yeah yeah same same shape but people really like to express their personality through their frames it's a very singular thing if you're like me and pretty blind you wear them now almost well not 24 hours a day well you know most of them what's the capacity to allow more people individual expression yeah exactly i think that's also one of the concern we had going to this because we know that most brands, our brands have like hundreds or even more SKUs, right?

15:43They wanted to provide different shapes, different colors, different designs, like you said, individually express their own tastes. But we also noticed one thing that even if these brands have like hundreds of SKUs, the best sellers are almost always the top five. The top five takes up like more than 90 % of the sales, and then all the rest are like long tail, right? So we kind of figured, okay, people might not be that individualized, right? Like when you come into picking up frames. Because also, there aren't that many people would go to the extreme to find something that's not that company looking, right?

16:20So we ended up thinking, okay, probably five different shapes will just be enough to fill the whole population. But then still for us, five at the early stages of the company is still too many, right? Because you were talking about tech product, not just a frame product. If you look at iPhone, there's only certain models, right? There wouldn't be like 10 different models one year. You simply cannot make it. So we figured, okay, if we cannot make five, what would be the minimal we can do at the moment? And we found out it's two because there are by nature square ones and rounded ones, right? So then the question became, if we only have one square and one round, how can we make those two the best or the most compatible ones for most faces?

17:06So that's essentially what we did to try to tackle this issue. For each shape, we actually ran through hundreds of iterations. We have hundreds of models made just for one shape. At the end of the day, the square and the round we end up with looks good when we're putting it on different faces. Sometimes there's too much optionality, right? If you restrict yourself, it can actually be liberating. I come from the world with about 5 billion combinations. and when we talked about curate the collection and like will just said you have to restrict yourself into two three or four shapes you know that's kind of an exercise to do but it was possible to do it when we did that whole exercise of making two three hundred shapes and fitting them down to two to cook them down and that will fit about 90 of all phases good discipline um look a final thought yeah give us some ideas about the growth of this business in terms of what you've done already how ambitious are you being in terms of expansion and markets and product range and so forth it may be a little early in the journey it's still such a young business it's always hard to believe but give me some give me a couple of a couple of numbers we did a little bit uh on orthodox approach we decided to approach the most high-end opticians in the world and they're located in europe so we took the most difficult part first and say if they will accept the product in all aspects, means the shape, the lenses, and the tech.

18:35If they will accept, anybody will accept the quality of our product. So we took basic up the mountain peak at the beginning, and we were able to roll it out in four or five months to 350 top-end opticians throughout Europe. Now we expand into US, Middle East, into Asia as well that's the next step we're doing our online platform we have as well and then we will look into other channels as well so that's kind of the starting point we do get more difficult as we could have done but we think and we know now there was the absolute right decision to do so we are placed in the best optical jobs now throughout the world already yeah and at the end of the day we definitely wanted to be the absolute category leader yeah that's really leading the category defining the category, sort of like we were mentioning EV, you will think about Tesla.

19:27When you're mentioning about AI model, you will think about OpenAI. So that's where we want to put Even Realities at. Not to just build a really small niche brand, avoiding competition with the bigger tech companies, but to actually being able to lead the category and have them follow us. That was Even Realities CEO, Will Wong, and his co-founder, Nikolai Snor. You can find out more about the business by heading to evenrealities.com.

20:02You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. We're staying in the United Arab Emirates, but heading along the coast to Abu Dhabi now. The capital has just hosted the first Middle East edition of Shop Talk Lux at Emirates Palace. The event drew more than 2 ,000 guests and top names in premium retail, highlighting the region's growing influence on worldwide consumer trends. Among the attendees were the managing director of Harrods, Michael Ward, and Monocle's own golf correspondent, Inzimam Rashid. Inzimam Rashid caught up with Michael to chat about the global luxury landscape. He began by asking him how the UAE is carving out its own lane.

20:40Well, I think the two things is, firstly, as a luxury retail, the top stores are always in the UAE. So it's natural that luxury gravitates here. And this is a younger generation of people who have learned luxury and grown up with the brands. So it's natural that they move forward and progress with those brands and become more demanding and want experiential. They want the other side to touch that brand, not just simply, I'm going to buy a handbag. And what are you finding out about here specifically? Are they doing luxury different to how you've experienced in your many years in the UK, in Harrods?

21:18Are you finding that they're going about it a bit differently here? Is it a different way of doing it? I think there's a modernity to it. We've got a lot of tradition in the UK, whereas here there doesn't seem to be any barriers to where they wish to go. And I think it's that lack of barriers that's the really exciting part. If you look into Dubai, the number of restaurants opening every year is just eye-watering. And it's that momentum, not only in the hospitality sector, that then goes through to new and developing brands. So there's some real creativity across the whole board here. And that's the important thing as well, because, you know, a lot of people have seen the UAE, the Gulf, as a huge importer to a lot of these brands.

22:01but actually now we're seeing that there are many brands coming from the region as well into spaces like Harrods. I mean, that must be quite a nice thing for you to see. Well, it is, and we're a great supporter of Fashion Trust of Arabia, where we look at young designers and we showcase those young designers in the store because we have got almost the other side of the crowd. We'll have a product for you, but we've got to look at that next generation, and therefore that's why we do Fashion Trust of Arabia. And we also do, next week we open Labelhood, which is showcasing the very best of Chinese young talent.

22:36So actually giving the world stage to young talent is important to us. Why is it important for Harrods, this staple, this absolute kind of concrete position that it has in the UK and globally? How important is it that you are reaching out to the rest of the world, that you are keeping the doors open to invite kind of global talent into Harrods? Our position is only earned every year. The worst possible thing a person can be is complacent. So we have no natural right. We have to go out every year and we have to earn it. And we have to earn it by helping the young of that area. We have to earn it by getting the most exquisite brands.

23:16And we have to earn it by actually delivering amazing service. So there is nothing that we can take for granted. And obviously you can't dismiss this region. You obviously have a huge affiliation with Qatar, with Doha. Tell us a bit about that relationship and why the region, I guess, is so important for Harrods. Doha is ownership. They're a sovereign wealth fund and a great shareholder to have. What we've got to be is consumer-centric, not shareholder-centric. And this area for us is, if you look at all of the statistics, this is where the money tree is going to be. So we would be silly if we didn't come here and every period of time make sure that we were relevant to this customer.

24:00Talking a bit about your targeting of high net worths and ultra high net worths, I want to understand from your perspective, in the position that you have, how are you constantly changing and adapting to ensure that you are giving the best possible experience to that market that is always looking for something new? Well, it's quite interesting because it's not just a market. So what we do is we have a set of personas, and those personas are absolutely based on purchasing habits and what we perceive of you, with many touch points. But those personas vary by region. How you consume information in Saudi Arabia and how you present yourself is entirely different to Kuwait, is entirely different to Dubai.

24:43So what we have got to look at is going backwards. What do you communicate with? What are your brand preferences? and with social media now and with insights, we can actually get all of that information. But there is an allure of Harrods and its absolute tradition which really pulls in the people from this region, right? You go there now and every third person you see is someone from the GCC. But that's our DNA. We are quintessentially British. How we attract and seduce that customer into coming to us has got to be on their terms. we have to understand their product requirements and making we presented in a traditional quintessential way but that doesn't mean that we can't be playful with product and how are you keeping the brand fresh how are you keeping it so that yes okay you've got these years of history you've got these years of tradition but in this kind of ever evolving world that we're in and the way that luxury is going it feels like a lot of brands are doubling down on luxury as well when and we're talking about, you know, we're just hearing you on the stage about hospitality, about airlines as well.

25:51How are you staying fresh and keeping the Harrod brand moving forward? We're in a constant hamster's wheel. As I say, we've got constant change. We've got the best merchants in the world. Those merchants are constantly looking around the world for the very, very, very best product. And that's where we actually go through because we then become relevant to those companies because they want to be in Harrods. so we can get the new, the interesting. The fact that we have got a boo-boo boutique in the store is testament to the fact is, yes, we've got this heritage, but we know that's what our customer wants because they want it on their Birkin.