Ray-Ban + Retail: Meta Lab Opens Its Doors November 8 in Los Angeles

At Connect 2024, we introduced Meta Lab, our newest experiential retail space—and our first dedicated to Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Attendees got a sneak peek through a pop-up store on our campus in Menlo Park, and on November 8, we’re opening a temporary brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles to the public.

Rethinking Retail

The focus is on experiential retail—a reinvention of the traditional shopping experience. At Connect, when people entered the Meta Lab pop-up, they were given a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses to capture photos and videos that were then downloaded and given to them to take home as a memento of their experience.

“That’s a lot different than going to a big-box store, right?” says Creative Director Matt Jacobson. “When you let somebody try out a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, you become the best salesperson ever. Getting these on people’s faces so they could play with it and discover Meta AI, that is really magical.”

That magic starts with the entrance to the flagship Meta Lab in LA, where the façade features a larger-than-life pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses, complete with the trademark LED light.

“I wanted the arch to be the nose bridge,” says Jacobson, “and I thought it was really important that we have the privacy light on it.”

There are three archways in total in a subtle (if unintentional) nod to Meta Quest 3. “The other two are not as important as the nose bridge arch,” Jacobson jokes.

Test & Learn

When the Meta Lab project kicked off in earnest in February 2024, Jacobson envisioned three phases. “The first was at Connect, which would be a pure pop-up,” he says. “The second is in LA, which is our version of a flagship store but for a limited time. And then the third will be at the end of January in Phoenix as a real shop-in-shop. Can we build a store inside somebody else’s business? Can we drive traffic to it, and can we leverage their marketing as well as ours? By the end of January, we will have tested all three expressions of our experiential first-party retail.”

Backed by a team of 50+ people from across the company in what Jacobson describes as “one of the most inclusive cross-functional projects that I’ve been involved in almost 20 years at Meta,” the entire endeavor is driven by a learning agenda to find out what works—and what doesn’t—to help inform our future efforts, while also benefiting ​​EssilorLuxottica and our third-party retail partners. Yet although these retail spaces are ephemeral in nature, it was important to Jacobson that they feel permanent.

“The materiality had to feel permanent,” Jacobson explains. “It’s funny because a lot of people expected the Connect pop-up to be a tent or something. They were surprised that it had real walls. It was a statement: We’re testing this—we’re really trying. And we learned really interesting stuff.”

All-In On AI

Chief among those insights was the immense popularity of Meta Lab’s AI wall, where visitors could test out our smart AI assistant on the glasses. While an immersive recreation of Whittier Boulevard ranked highly among attendees in terms of their enjoyment, the AI wall ranked highest.

“The really good news about that is that the AI wall is really easily replicable,” says Jacobson. “The whole thesis here is testing and learning so that we can share with EssilorLuxottica for their 17,000 stores as well as our third-party partners. If people had said they wanted Whittier Boulevard, that would have been really hard to do.”

Custom Culture → Conversions

Over 90% of Connect attendees went through Meta Lab, and over one in four made a purchase—even though most of them already owned a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

“When you offer true experiences in retail, we can make magical things happen,” notes Jacobson. “And the LA store is such a beautiful space. This is some of the most beautiful millwork I’ve ever seen. There’s an immersion experience room where you can go with your friends and capture yourself in this AI-generated version of the beach at Malibu with 17-foot bespoke-built fiberglass palm trees. It’s nuts.”

Speaking of LA, the brick-and-mortar store is themed around custom culture, which will take shape across two phases. The first celebrates Southern California lowrider culture and the iconic work of photographer Estevan Oriol, model maker Armando Flores, artist Jacqueline Valenzuela, designer RC Patina Guy, and filmmaker Danny Hidalgo. The second phase, which kicks off in early December, highlights DIY style with a nod to LA’s upcycling, thrifting, and vintage culture. Featured artists will include Tierra Whack and creators Joe Ando, Wisdom Kaye, and Frankie Gaw.

“We really believe that customization is key,” Jacobson explains. “If you talk to any of our cohort of customers or designers that we work with, everybody wants to feel like they’re putting their personal stamp on something.”

And while Ray-Ban Meta glasses offer some degree of customization through different frame and lens color combinations, there are only so many permutations available. At Meta Lab, people will be able to have their glasses cases customized while they shop—whether or not they make a purchase. It’s a deliberate nod to the tattoos that are so endemic in lowrider culture.

Initial Inspiration

“I did a couple of trips to Japan with colleagues this year to show them what an experiential retail space looks like,” Jacobson says. “At Dover Street Market in Tokyo, there is no men’s or women’s department. It’s all unisex, and you kind of walk through this whole experience. It’s constantly evolving, and it connects by a bridge to UNIQLO, which I think is super interesting because it connects the high and low. It elevates UNIQLO, and it makes Dover Street feel more accessible.”

On one of his excursions, Jacobson checked out Kith, which had been running an activation with Hot Wheels, including a large track inside the retail space. “They just had the remnants of it,” he says. “I was still really excited, and I went back to the hotel and called my wife, who’s a big Japanophile as well. And I said I wanted to do something in retail with Hot Wheels and she goes, ‘You can’t do that because it’s already been done.’”

Not to be deterred, Jacobson stayed up all night looking for inspiration—and eventually struck gold.

“I came across a film, a little short film that was made about Armando Flores, who has become an expert and an artisan in miniature lowrider cars,” Jacobson recalls. “He’s basically recreated his youth of growing up in East LA in miniature. And it’s global—I mean, the guy who’s the biggest supplier of parts is in the Netherlands.”

Jacobson soon got in touch with Flores through the filmmaker, followed by Eric Padilla and photographer Estevan Oriol, and the pieces started falling into place.

“I thought, ‘Well, if we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it right,’” Jacobson explains. “This isn’t about appropriating lowrider culture. Lowrider culture is having a moment. Petersen Automotive Museum, which is less than a mile from our shop, has a huge lowrider exhibit that goes through May. The Smithsonian is just taking a lowrider into their permanent collection—the most famous lowrider ever built. So I said, ‘We’ll start with that.’”

Connection + Community

Meta Lab will allow shoppers to experience Ray-Ban Meta glasses as a product, but more importantly than that, it will let them experience a taste of the local culture and community.

In fact, Meta Lab will have regular programming, inviting in guests from the community, from stand-up comedy with Desi Banks and a live podcast with Madeline Argy to a paint and sip night with Tinashe, a Ray-Ban Meta-focused workshop with Director Drex Lee, and a cooking class with Cassie Yeung.

“I want people to come away from Meta Lab feeling like, ‘Wow, these guys are serious about this,’” says Jacobson. “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. This is aspirational, inspirational. They’re not easily scalable in terms of what they look like, but in terms of experience, they are.”