Meta will open its first physical retail store next month, in a sign of the increasing importance of its hardware business as the company pivots to the metaverse. The “Meta Store” opens May 9th in Burlingame, California, close to the headquarters for Meta’s Reality Labs division. The store will showcase the company’s VR headsets, Ray-Ban Stories glasses and Portal devices; and will offer interactive demos for shoppers.
For Meta, physical retail stores are meant to help the company not just sell more hardware, but expose more people to its VR and AR technology. In-store virtual reality demos will play on a massive “wall-to-wall” LED display that broadcasts content from participants’ headsets. Mark Zuckerberg teased the display in a recent post on his Facebook page.
In a post Monday, Zuckerberg said the new store would help people “get a sense of what’s coming as we build towards the metaverse.” In addition to its existing products, Meta is also working on augmented reality glasses, a high-end VR headset and possibly a smartwatch.
Though the initial store will be somewhat modest — about 1,500 square feet near a company office — Meta’s retail footprint could eventually be much bigger. The New York Timesreported last fall that the company was considering opening stores all over the world. However a significant expansion of its physical stores would likely depend on Meta selling a lot more devices than it currently is. The company’s metaverse division lost $10 billion in 2021.