the owner of Facebook, Meta Platforms Inc.will open its first retail store in California, hoping to introduce people to worlds of virtual reality and the ability to try products before they buy.
Meta’s store will open May 9 in Burlingame, Calif., displaying the company’s hardware products. Visitors will be encouraged to “interact with everything,” including the Portal video call center, Quest 2 virtual reality glasses and Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses.
Tech firms have regularly established, and then closed, brick-and-mortar stores. In 2020, Microsoft Corp. said it would close its brick-and-mortar stores permanently but continue to invest in online sales. In March Amazon.com Inc. said it would close its physical bookstores, “Amazon 4-Star” locations and pop-up kiosks in malls as the world’s largest online retailer scales back its physical push into the grocery sector.
“The best way to understand virtual reality is to experience it,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said as part of the announcement. Meta previously tested this through pop-up stores in various places. The company declined to share plans for future stores.
Over the past year, the social media company has increasingly focused on the metaverse, a future version of the internet made up of immersive worlds accessible via headsets, which Zuckerberg believes will be the next big computing revolution after mobile phones. The company changed its name from Facebook to Meta in October to underscore its dedication to its investment.
Meta has explored partnering with EssilorLuxottica SA, the world’s largest eyewear company, to sell its accessories. The two firms teamed up to produce Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses, which were sold in some of the Franco-Italian company’s 8,000 retail stores around the world.
