Meta, the parent company of social networking giant Facebook, will launch a retail shop on the San Francisco Peninsula selling virtual reality devices.
Meta said on Monday that a retail location in Burlingame, California, will open on May 9 to provide interactive demonstrations for the company’s hardware products, which include virtual reality headsets, video communications displays, and smart glasses. The shop, which will be housed on the Meta campus—the company’s offices are in Menlo Park—will have a wall-to-wall curved LED screen that shows what Meta headset users view.
“The Meta Shop will help customers make that link to how our items may be the entrance to the Metaverse in the future,” said store head Martin Gilliard. “We are not selling the Metaverse at our shop, but we hope that people will come in and leave knowing a little bit more about how our items can help link them to it.”
In October 2021, Facebook changed to Meta, stating that its emphasis was extending beyond social media and subsequently presenting its Metaverse goal of linking online social interactions with the real world. Though software behemoths such as Apple have physical storefronts throughout the globe, Facebook’s over 2.9 billion members have not had the option to visit a business retail store since the firm’s inception in 2004.
However, many companies are acquiring virtual assets in the Metaverse, with electronics giant Samsung opening a metaverse shop on the blockchain-powered planet Decentraland in January. According to reports, large stores such as Walmart are also planning to go Meta.
