From the "wish we had thought of that" department comes the Selfie Stick. We first told you about this nifty smartphone accessory last Summer. Essentially a long pole that secures your smartphone on one end and has a grip on the other, the Selfie Stick allows you to hold back your front-facing camera so that the field of view is wider. It is perfect for snapping group selfies, even though some flagship handsets come with a wide angle front-facing camera for that purpose.
Now, a couple of businessmen named Neil Harvey and Steve Pengelly have produced their own version of the stick in the U.K. The pair call their product the Selfie Pod, which is also the name of their company. The most basic model comes with an extendable pole and relies on the self-timer on your phone to snap the picture. This basic Selfie Pod will cost you the dollar equivalent of $12.56 USD. Other versions of the stick come with a Bluetooth shutter release on the handle, and are priced starting at $23.56 USD. Overall, there are five different variants of the stick offered by the company.
The origin of the Selfie Pod comes from snowboarders and other extreme sports athletes, who fastened a smartphone to a pole in order to capture themselves in action. The fad caught on in Asia and was seen as a way to capture video of a band at a concert, unobstructed by the crowd. At famous tourist spots, more of the attraction could be included in a selfie, by using the stick. Harvey and Pengelly started their company after attending the wedding of a friend in Asia. The pair was stunned to see hundreds of guests attach their phone to a pole in order to take selfies. That was the "Aha!" moment when the pair realized that there was money to be made from such a product.
Harvey and Pengelly have sold 6000 Selfie Pods in the U.K. from August through November. The pair has ordered another 5000 units to sell during the holiday shopping season. But why not make this a world-wide phenomenon? The Selfie Pod sounds like the perfect product to pitch on QVC or HSN. Perhaps the co-founders of Selfie Pod should try to get on ABC's Shark Tank so that they can wag their stick at QVC Queen Lori Greiner. Better have some patents though, because the Selfie Pod seems like an easy product to knock off.
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Generic selfie stick being used outside a famous British tourist attraction
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