May Brings Meta’s First Physical Store
Retail Wire | April 26,2022
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, will be opening its first physical store in May.
The tech giant will open the Meta Store on May 9 in Burlingame, CA, according to a release on the company website. The store will focus on allowing customers to test out Meta-developed hardware such as Ray-Ban Stories (Ray-Ban’s smart glasses created in conjunction with Meta), the standalone video calling hardware Portal and the immersive VR headset Oculus Quest 2.
In its pre-Meta incarnation, Facebook attempted to run Oculus demonstrations in Best Buy locations with limited success, despite dedicating prime store real estate to devices and demos, according to a Washington Post article on the new store. The immersive nature of the experience may have made it an off-putting product for people to try in stores full of strangers. The demos ended with the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Some of the products planned for the Meta Store, including the Oculus Quest 2, remain available in major electronics retailers like Best Buy and general retailers like Walmart, according to Tom’s Guide. Were the Meta Store to scale beyond a single store, it could put Meta in more direct competition with its own retail partners.
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