Can brick-and-mortar stores help Meta sell its wearable devices?

Move over, Apple Store: Meta wants to greatly expand its footprint in the world of physical retail. Mark Zuckerberg‘s tech giant is looking to open more brick-and-mortar stores that would sell Meta Quest VR headsets and other devices, according to internal communications cited by Business Insider.

The communications indicated that Meta will hire retail employees to staff its new stores, but the company didn’t specify how many stores it plans to open or the timeline for its retail expansion. Any number of openings would increase Meta’s brick-and-mortar presence. The first (and thus far only) Meta Store opened in 2022 at the company’s campus in Burlingame, California.

Other social media platforms have experimented with real-world retail as a means of promoting creators and their ecommerce endeavors. FYP faves from TikTok recently went on display at a retail location in Santa Monica.

Meta has shown a link between its library of creator content and purchase intent, but its latest brick-and-mortar push doesn’t look like a typical ecommerce play. Instead, Meta is poised to use physical stores to sell more wearable devices, including its Quest headsets and the Orion smart glasses it launched in tandem with eyewear brand Ray-Ban.

Some consumers got their hands on Orion devices at a physical pop-up Meta launched in Los Angeles earlier this year. That location now looks like a trial run before Meta opens permanent brick-and-mortar shops in the future.

Meta made a big bet on wearable tech when it acquired Quest for $2 billion more than a decade ago, and the company doubled down on its gamble when it changed its name from Facebook in 2021. Despite Meta’s bullish attitude on wearables, its metaverse aspirations have largely fallen flat. The Horizon Worlds hub that opened in 2021 is a virtual ghost town, and Meta dialed back multiple ecommerce programs amid large-scale layoffs that occurred in 2022.

The 2025 hire of former RealReal CEO John Koryl as Meta’s VP of Retail showed that Zuck and co. were not giving up on the sales and marketing potential of wearables. Several factors inform Meta’s commitment to its commercial push. The most obvious reason is sheer volume: More physical stores means more Quest sales, which translates to more people immersing themselves in metaverse experiences.

The fashionable nature of Orion glasses is also relevant. A pair of Ray-Bans is a classic mall purchase, and Meta has an opportunity to present its own stylish eyewear to window shoppers.

In the end, however, it all comes back to ecommerce. Meta wants to build Roblox-style experiences and has brought existing Roblox content to Quest headsets. Constructed worlds have tremendous ecommerce potential, so it’s no surprise that Meta wants more Quest buyers — and wants to get them hooked into to the metaverse.