Facebook parent Meta has opened its first brick-and-mortar retail location in Burlingame, California, to get customers to experience its suite of products for the metaverse. Martin Gilliard, the director and head of the Meta Store, joined Cheddar News to talk about the immersive experience that he hopes for the customers who visit. "We thought it was important for people to actually experience the products," he said. "When you are building for things like the metaverse, it is an experience that you actually need to have, and we needed to build this so that people can actually see the experiences that this hardware is creating for them."

Between Bells

Meta Wants You to Experience Virtual and Augmented Reality in Its Physical Store

switching to our next guest meta maybe moving into the metaverse, but it's now it's setting up shop for the real world. The company formerly known as facebook opened their first retail store today in burlingame California. So for more let's bring in our senior reporter Michele Castelli, Oh hey Michelle, thanks maker joining us now is Martin Gilliard, he's director and head of the new meta store. So martin thanks so much for joining us from the store. What can we expect? Thanks for having me, Michelle. Uh what what you can expect when you walk in the store is the opportunity to have experiences with all of our products from quest to which is our VR headset to portal that I'm actually using to make this call today and Robin stories, which is our augmented reality glasses. So why open a physical space at this time to sell meta products? We thought it was important for people to actually experience the products when you are building. For things like the metaverse, It is an experience that you actually need to have and we needed to build this so that people can actually see the experiences that this hardware is creating for them. So, you know, you talked about how people should see things that they should, the what the hardware can do um what products should people check out if they could make it to burlingame? Well I think you should try all of them, but if I'll walk you through with the VR headset, you're able to have these immersive experiences and games for fishing for workouts for beat Saber uh and the thing that's so amazing about the screen that we created is that now everyone who's watching you play the game can also experience what you're experiencing. And we also created a digital asset so they can share it with their friends and family across social media. We also have portal where we built it to be set up in a home environment, so you can see how it actually works at home for me. This this hits close to home because you know during the pandemic, my son would read stories to his grandmother at night. And so I, you know, I've been a user of the products for years then obviously we have revenge stories which allows you to record video or take pictures with your glasses, which eliminates the need for your phone to do that. I always tell all my friends, I think my phone has watched my son grow up in these glasses that give me an opportunity to actually watch what I'm actually recording to share with them as well. This is so cool and it gives people a little taste of what they could do in the metaverse. So how does this store help build on the company's goal to expand into that digital space? Well, I think the metaverse is going to be built by a number of companies and what we have built is hardware that gives you a glimpse of what the metaverse could be, it's still in its early stages. But we think that the experiences of building presence when you can't physically be there are the things that our products will allow you to do Now. The meta store falls under reality labs which is the category but it's a separate division from your family of apps. What else can we expect from this division that may end up on meta store shelves? Well what I what I can share is that any any things that we sell to the market will be available in the meta store. Uh And so that's from our VR headset to our glasses, the portal. And I think what people end up seeing is like how all these things come together and bring the community into the into the next phase of what's happening? Which is the metaphors. Now I know this is the first store and it's in Burlingame, but are there plans to bring meta stores across the U. S. Kind of like apple stores? That's a great question. Um Right now we're focused on what we're building in Berlin game. It was important to put it here because it's where we build the products and what we learned from this experience will be able to leverage in whatever strategy we decided to take next and final question. Um If there is something that should be on everyone's wish list at the store, what should it be? I think everyone should absolutely try the mixed reality experience with quest to everyone who walks out of this. They really get a sense of what does it mean to build a presence in a place where you can't be there? It really does transport the location that it's in. Um it's the one that we received the most feedback on. Awesome. Well, thanks so much to martin Gilliard, he's the director and head of the new meta store.