Meta is opening its first retail store next month

Meta

Meta is opening a hardware store in Burlingame, California. The store will allow visitors to try out and buy Meta's virtual reality headsets. They will be able to demo the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses and get help ordering them online.

Users will be able to try out video calling features with a store employee in the demo area. Visitors to the space will get a 30-second mixed reality clip showing them playing a game, and will be able to try out several of the demos. They can try on different styles of the Ray-Ban glasses, which capture and share video with built-in cameras, and test their capabilities before buying. Meta is making it easier to find its products online by adding a shop tab to its website.

Meta is following in the footsteps of other companies that opened retail stores last year after several more limited pop-up stores. Ray-Ban Stories have appeared in the sunglasses company's own stores, and Meta has previously collaborated with Best Buy on demo stations for its virtual reality headsets. A major area of focus for the company is still-unusual virtual and augmented reality tech.

It is also a limited one. The small storefront is opening near Meta's Reality Labs headquarters rather than a major metropolitan area like Manhattan. It will be open from 11:00AM to 6:00PM on Mondays through Fridays. Meta store head Martin Gilliard says in a statement that the Burlingame location gives them more opportunity to experiment and keep the customer experience core to their development.

Meta's last big product release was last year, but the retail store is likely to provide a staging ground for showing off future virtual reality and augmented reality projects as they develop. It gives Meta an up- close look at how people will respond to this hardware in a real world setting, which raises significant privacy concerns.