Dive Brief:
- Continuing its digital eyewear push, Facebook’s parent company Meta on Friday opened Meta Lab, a temporary pop-up shop in Los Angeles, the social media conglomerate announced. The pop-up will run through Dec. 31.
- The experiential space is dedicated to Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Shoppers can try out the Ray-Ban Meta eyewear’s smart AI assistant, customize their glasses cases and attend gatherings with guests such as singer Tinashe, comedian Desi Banks, podcaster Madeline Argy and chef Cassie Yeung.
- Meta Lab will open a shop-in-shop location in Phoenix by the end of January, according to Creative Director Matt Jacobson.
Dive Insight:
Meta’s new pop-up shop in Los Angeles builds upon its previous brick-and-mortar store experiments. In 2022, the company unveiled its first Meta Store, a space where shoppers could try Ray-Ban Stories, Portal and Quest 2.
The Los Angeles pop-up will highlight custom culture in two phases. The first is California lowrider culture featuring the work of photographer Estevan Oriol, model maker Armando Flores and artist Jacqueline Valenzuela, among others. The second phase will be introduced in early December and highlights DIY style including upcycling, thrifting and vintage culture through artists including rapper Tierra Whack and creators Joe Ando, Wisdom Kaye, and Frankie Gaw.
“We can’t scale a hundred of these, but we can build a few of them at locations around the country, and then fill in if we decide we want to do more first-party retail,” Jacobson said in a statement. “This is aspirational, inspirational. They’re not easily scalable in terms of what they look like, but in terms of experience, they are.”
Luxury eyewear conglomerate EssilorLuxottica extended its partnership in September with Meta to create more smart eyewear products. The companies first partnered in 2019 and have released two generations of Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses since that time.
As Meta promotes its smart glasses, other brands have released their own digital eyewear. Last year, Innovative Eyewear entered into a global licensing deal with Authentic Brands Group to develop the Nautica Smart Eyewear collection. Innovative Eyewear released an Eddie Bauer Smart Eyewear collection in May that features voice access to ChatGPT, among other features.
