The Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses Meta introduced last year are catching on with consumers — Meta sold more pairs of the new glasses in just a couple of months than the older 2021 Ray-Ban (then called “Stories”) in two full years.
Part of the glasses’ success could be attributed to taking criticism from the competition — and then hiring them.
The person who introduced the new Ray-Ban Metas at Meta Connect in October 2023 is its vice president of product, Li-Chen Miller, who stepped into the role at Meta in 2022, after working for a Meta rival.
Li-Chen Miller. Photo by JOSH EDELSON/AFP via Getty Images
According to a Monday Bloomberg report, Miller wrote a thorough email in late 2021 to Alex Himel, then Meta’s head of wearables, detailing her experience with the Ray-Ban Stories. She had bought them, and had thoughts and ideas about what to improve.
“She wrote me an email that articulated what she thought was good about the device and what was promising, and then a longer list of things that she would improve,” Himel told Bloomberg.
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At the time, Miller was corporate vice president of Microsoft Search, Experiences, and Devices at Microsoft and had worked there for nearly two decades in program manager roles. She had even shared the stage with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at a 2017 keynote event, where she demoed new workplace features.
Himel hadn’t asked for the list, though he agreed with most of Miller’s points.
The next year, Miller got a job at Meta leading the wearables division. The email she sent Himel played a key role in her taking on the role she currently has at Meta, per Bloomberg.
Miller could take the stage on Wednesday at Meta’s annual Connect event, where the company is expected to announce updates to its smart glasses.
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Meta has already indicated that wearables are a focus moving forward. According to a press release from earlier this month, Meta aims to “write the history of wearables” by drawing out its Ray-Ban deal beyond 2030.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also spoke positively about the Ray-Ban Metas at its latest earnings call in July and said the glasses had promising sales numbers.
“Ray-Ban Meta glasses continue to be a bigger hit sooner than we expected — thanks in part to AI,” Zuckerberg said. “Demand is still outpacing our ability to build them, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to meet that demand soon.”
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