Transforming Meta Into a Lifestyle Retail Brand

Client: Meta
Industry: Consumer Tech
Output: Experiential

Meta's AI glasses had gone viral on TikTok, but third-party retail was broken: bad demos, untrained staff, no brand presence. Meta needed first-party retail fast.

DE-YAN authored Meta's first national 1P retail strategy, building it around a platform called Custom Culture, a framework rooted in local community and identity applied across every location. Each Meta Lab is localized to the city its in: the theme for the inaugural LA flagship was “Sweet & Low,” a celebration of lowrider culture that shaped everything from the activation choices to the collaborator roster. Permanent locations and pop-ups in New York, Las Vegas, Honolulu, and Barcelona each carry their own regional cues, partnerships, and material details.

These stores are centers for community and connection and include cafés, laser engravers, mixed reality lounges, CRT TVs and more, all linked back to the product. Live experts work the floor, and the entire space doubles as a behavioral research environment for a longitudinal study. The materiality and color palette DE-YAN developed went on to redefine Meta's brand guidelines globally.