Meta, the parent company of social networking giant Facebook, will construct a retail store in the San Francisco Peninsula that will offer virtual reality devices encompassed in its virtual space.
The team said on Monday that a retail location in Burlingame, California, will open on May 9 to provide interactive demos for the company’s hardware products, which include virtual reality headsets, video communications displays, and smart eyewear.
The store, which will be on the company’s campus (the company’s offices are in Menlo Park), will include a wall-to-wall curved LED screen that will show what consumers view when they wear their headsets.
Meta to provide hands-on experience to its customers
“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.”
Martin Gilliard, Head of Store
The Store features a compact footprint for an engaging experience, at around 1,550 square feet. They also wanted to open the first Store near Reality Labs’ headquarters, where they were working to construct the metaverse.
Martin Gilliard, Store Director also said that having the shop in Burlingame allows them to explore more and maintain the consumer experience at the forefront of their growth. He also said that the key points that they discover at the store will help them to establish a retail strategy in the future.
The final objective with the Store is to demonstrate what is now feasible with their products while also providing a look into the future as the metaverse comes to life – ideally demystifying the notion in the process.
In October 2021, Facebook rebranded, stating that its emphasis was moving beyond social media at the moment and subsequently introducing its Metaverse ambition for linking online social interactions with the actual world.
Despite the fact that software companies such as Apple have physical locations throughout the world, Facebook’s 2.9 billion members have not been able to visit one since the business was created in 2004.
Many companies are buying virtual properties in the virtual world, with electronics giant Samsung opening a metaverse store in the blockchain-powered realm of Decentraland in January.
According to reports, large stores such as Walmart are also planning to enter the realm.