Meta will open a physical store soon

Meta yesterday announced its plans to open its first physical store in Burlingame, California to let the public try out its products, including Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest 2 headsets. Opening on May 9, the store will feature areas to try out demos of Meta's tech products, test video calls with Portal, and personally test the operation of all products related to Zuckerberg's metaverse. «We’re not selling the metaverse in our store», explained Martin Gilliard, head of the Meta 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». 

The store's location, not in a city but on the Meta campus itself, next to the Reality Labs division, suggests that the initiative has less to do with the commercial success of products and more to do with product development and testing with the public. The need to have the public try out products that allow them to connect to virtual reality makes sense, given the unfamiliarity that large segments of the public still have with this type of technology, but nonetheless underscores the importance of any company's physical locations in its dealings with the public.