The struggle of Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP), parent company of messaging app Snapchat, is well documented. Rival Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has largely copied Snapchat’s features as they were unveiled, gathering a crowd for its Instagram platform that SNAP and owners of SNAP stock can only envy.

Young CEO Evan Spiegel hasn’t exactly endeared himself to Wall Street and investors, either.

As the old saying goes though, expect it when you least expect it. In the same sense that Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) was once deemed unsalvageable but is now toying with an actual GAAP profit, SNAP may have finally figured out that its previous platform and focus wasn’t the ideal way to make a buck.

It’s a start.

Selling Stuff

If you’re a regular Snapchat user, you may have noticed something new in the “Discover” section of the app. The Snap Store is currently selling physical goods branded specifically for and by Snapchat. A semi-familiar dancing hot dog stuffed animal and a T-shirt sporting a dog “lens” are just a couple of the items available inspired by the digital stickers available with Snapchat’s picture-embellishing app.

SNAP stock owners may be understandably concerned. The company doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to designing and selling homegrown goods.

Case in point? The company lost $40 million on all the camera-laden glasses, called Spectacles, it had ordered a quarter ago. That wouldn’t have been so painful were it not for the fact that just a month earlier Spiegel was pounding the table on how much demand there was for the devices.

This is different, though, and not because an army of people are lining up for hot dog stuffed animals or yet-another silly T-shirt. The current array of merchandise is irrelevant.

This is different because it may well mean Snapchat is moving into a new kind of advertising above and beyond the ads it occasionally pops into users’ messages. The present product lines may be (hopefully) just a proverbial guinea pig.

It’s About Making Money

It’s the early innings for the Snap Store, and there’s no assurance the end goal here is to develop a product that will ultimately be opened up to advertisers.

There’s also no assurance those advertisers will care if it does. Small-screened smartphones aren’t ideal for browsing, and having a means of selling physical goods in the store means little if Snapchat can’t draw a decent-sized crowd.

And so far, it’s struggled on that front. The previously reported quarter’s daily user growth was the weakest it had ever been, with the company only adding five million users to bring the total up to 178 million.

For perspective, Facebook boasts 1.4 billion daily users, and its Instagram — arguably the biggest threat to Snapchat — keeps about 800 million users checking in at least monthly. Twitter, for all of its problems, enjoys a regular user base of more than 300 million. Most people just don’t have time or room for another social networking venue in their lives.

Snapchat continues to tweak, though, recently changing its platform around in a major way. Users mostly hated the change, but kudos to the company for trying something new when the old model wasn’t working. That, too, is a start. Spiegel just needs to try again. The right look and feel that optimize marketability with usability is out there.

Bottom Line for SNAP Stock

Don’t look for Tuesday’s Q4 earnings report to be boosted by the new Snap Store, primarily because the store didn’t exist until after the quarter ended. It’s not going to be of any real benefit in the quarter currently underway either. It could take weeks if not months to get it ready for third-party advertisers, if that is indeed the ultimate goal.

Still, though I’ve been a rather vocal critic of many of Snapchat’s ill-advised decisions, I’ll also be the first to say we’re seeing more and more of a business mindset from the company.

That’s not a guarantee of success. The fact of the matter is, even a “perfect” Snapchat may not be interesting enough to enough users to make it a marketable and profitable platform. It’s certainly something to watch, though, as SNAP is starting to think about what users and advertisers want rather than telling them what they should want.

We might have a better feel for what the goal here is by Tuesday evening.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter, at @jbrumley.