Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: FB), Facebook's parent company, has announced that it will be opening a 1,550 square foot brick-and-mortar retail location on the company's Burlingame, California, campus on May 9. The primary purpose of the store is to give customers a chance to try out new Meta virtual reality features like Meta Portal and Ray-Ban Stories, but the Meta virtual reality products will also be available for sale.
"Step inside the Meta Store and you'll discover how Ray-Ban Stories help you capture and share memories without taking you out of the moment," the announcement states. "And you can try on a range of style, color and lens variations to find the perfect fit for you."
"You'll also be able to check out Meta Portal in a special demo area. Once inside, you can place a video call to a retail associate to fully explore its capabilities, see Smart Camera in action and play with features like Story Time," Meta continues.
The store's "immersive demo area" will also allow customers to try out the Quest 2 virtual reality headset to play virtual games like Beat Saber and VR Fishing, with the gameplay from the user's headset appearing on a large curved LED screen.
"The best way to understand virtual reality is to experience it," Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.
This also isn't the first time that Facebook has taken a hands-on approach to introducing customers to new products. Starting in 2018, the company began setting up pop-up kiosks to let customers try out the new Oculus hardware in airports
The physical retail space will be the next step in Meta's comprehensive transition into augmented and virtual reality products and services. Meta's primary mode of business up to this point had been selling advertising on its free software products and platforms.
For more than a decade, Facebook has dominated the market, but competitors like SnapChat (NYSE: SNAP) and TikTok have been catching up, leading to the first ever decline in Facebook users in the fourth quarter of 2021. Selling more virtual reality products will help make up for that weakness. However, increased competition isn't the only reason why Meta is looking to transition into virtual reality.
A recent change in Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone privacy rules made it so that platforms like Facebook would have to request permission before collecting users' data. Meta said in an earnings call that it expects to lose $10 billion in revenue in 2022 due to the rule change. By switching services onto Meta augmented reality devices, Meta will still be able to target users with advertising.
Currently, the majority of Meta's user base isn't familiar with virtual reality, which is a major hurdle in the tech giant's path. Zuckerberg has said that he expects widespread adoption of augmented reality products like Meta's Ray-Ban glasses to take years. Projects like the Meta Store are intended to facilitate that process.
"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," Martin Gilliard, the Head of Meta Store, is quoted in the company's announcement. "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."
Other steps towards the virtual world that Meta is expected to take soon include adding an NFT marketplace, virtual payments, and other financial services.