Reporter | Peng Xin
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Meta (formerly Facebook) opened an offline store in the Bay Area of California, using the name of "Meta One-Stop Hardware Store". On May 9, it officially opened.
Image source: CNET
The 140-square-meter store displays hardware products from Meta's own and partners. After several years of development, Meta has accumulated two main product lines in video conferencing and VR headsets, in addition, the smart glasses Stories jointly developed by Meta and Ray-ban have also been highlighted.
Image source: SFGate
Compared with the retail stores of technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft, and Microsoft, Meta's offline stores have a relatively small footprint and are relatively compact, which is related to the fact that there are fewer Meta products.
But Meta also mentioned that fewer product lines help customers experience products better in-store, especially for VR glasses, so the store looks more like an experience store for Meta products.
SKU is not enough, the store chooses to make a fuss about decoration and space design, warm white tones and marble floors make the store look less cold, there is a sense of simplicity.
Martin Gilliard, head of meta store, said in an interview that he hopes to make the store feel like home or work, so that users can intuitively feel what it is like to use these devices at home.
Image source: Meta
VR glasses Quest Go is obviously the star product of the store, and the store has built a VR exclusive experience space, just like the VR experience area popular in shopping malls a few years ago. Enough space helps the experiencer to move and wave their arms, and the large curved LED display screen on the surrounding wall will display the virtual picture seen by the experiencer in real time, which will help the surrounding masses to watch.
Image source: SFGate
In terms of VR content experience, games are naturally the best demo projects. For example, the popular "Rhythm Lightsaber", "GOLF+" and the fitness game "Supernatural" and so on. Obviously, for some players familiar with VR games, these works, while well-known, are also too "popular" and simple, lacking some complex big-scale products to attract attention.
Image source: Meta
However, these popular VR content is also more suitable for first-time testers who are curious about VR, and the work of guiding these first-time testers to try VR is not too simple, and it requires patient teaching by employees. In addition, employees have to answer questions such as privacy, device usage, and product prices.
Image source: Meta
Meta's smart glasses Story, which Meta and Ray-Ban have partnered with, are another eye-catching product, with a stylish shape, two cameras that can take pictures, record videos, listen to music and answer phones, and look more suitable for fashion trendsetters who pursue technology.
However, this glasses is the only one of Meta's main products that is not sold in Meta's own store. If you want to buy Stories, you need to go to Ray-Ban's official website to buy it.
Image source: Meta
In addition to VR headsets, smart glasses, and video conferencing hardware, the store also sells some accessories.
Ever since Meta underwent a name change, "Metacosm" has become a label that the company can't tear off, and founder Zuckerberg has not forgotten to mention their virtual world vision in any public occasion. However, judging from the content displayed in offline stores, it may be somewhat unworthy of the name compared with the "metaverse".
It is still an offline store that sells consumer electronics, in addition to building a brand, enhancing the experience and services, these common rhetoric, whether it is Apple's Apple Store or Microsoft or Meta's store, one of the purposes of their offline store is to break through traffic restrictions and obtain new customers. Before opening its own offline store, Meta usually relied on channels such as BestBuy to display its hardware products offline.
However, Meta's new store location strategy is still a bit special, it is not located in a popular location in the city, but its virtual/augmented reality team Meta Reality Labs is located in The Northern California Silicon Valley Burlingham's new office building, which is an industrial park, and some experiencers say that it takes a little effort to find it.