Meta Opens Its First Retail Store So You Can Explore The Metaverse Hands-On
Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, which has been the main driver behind the advent of the metaverse, will open the doors to its first physical retail space on May 9 in Burlingame, California.
Poised to be a one-stop-shop for customers to experience the brand’s myriad products hands-on, shoppers will get to try out a range of interactive demonstrations, including making video calls to retail associates via Portal, trying on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses for the perfect fit, and playing around with an immersive Quest 2 trial.
“At the Meta Store, we want you to interact with everything. We want you to pick stuff up. We want you to feel it,” the company said.
The 1,500-square-feet store was strategically placed near the firm’s Reality Labs HQ, its basecamp for work on the metaverse, as it allows Meta “more opportunity to experiment and keep the customer experience core to our development.”
“What we learn here will help define our future retail strategy,” quipped Martin Gilliard, Head of Meta Store.
Ultimately, the company hopes that by having a physical space, it will demystify the concept of the metaverse for shoppers, enabling them to better understand this up-and-coming arena by enjoying a tactile experience of what the future could hold.
“The Meta Store is going to help people make that connection to how our products can be the gateway to the metaverse in the future. We’re not selling the metaverse in our store, but hopefully people will come in and walk out knowing a little bit more about how our products will help connect them to it,” summed up Gilliard.
