Secretlab opens its first US stores on November 18, including 15 Best Buy spaces

Secretlab will open a dedicated retail store at 8464 Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood on November 18, alongside branded spaces at 15 Best Buy locations across nine US states. The Singapore-based maker of gaming chairs and desks has never operated its own physical retail in the American market. Now it wants customers to sit in the product before paying for it.

The timing is deliberate. The launch lands just before Black Friday, the busiest shopping window of the US retail calendar. A chair that often costs several hundred dollars is a hard sell through product photos alone. The company has not disclosed what it spent on the expansion, nor any sales targets for the new locations. Those numbers would tell us whether this is a pilot or a committed rollout.

What do the stores actually offer?

The West Hollywood store will showcase Secretlab's most popular products and offer one-on-one consultations with staff. It will also display special edition and limited designs, including the company's Pokémon collaboration line. The first 50 visitors on opening day enter a lucky draw to win a Secretlab Magnus Evo desk.

The Best Buy partnership reaches further. The 15 dedicated spaces span California, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, Washington, Idaho, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Each will carry a Secretlab retail setup with hands-on access to its chairs and desks. The company says more stores are coming, though it gave no count, no dates, and no states.

Stock will be on hand at these locations. Customers can take products home the same day rather than ordering online and waiting for shipping. That detail matters for a company whose business has been almost entirely direct-to-consumer through its own website.

Why does a chair maker need showrooms?

Secretlab's product lineup has a heavy physical focus. Fit, cushion firmness, and lumbar support are hard to judge from a listing page. A showroom answers the single biggest objection in the category: the buyer cannot try before paying. Returns on bulky furniture are also expensive, and every avoided return protects margin. The company has not published return rates, so the size of that problem remains an estimate.

The retail push also comes as Secretlab widens its product range beyond gaming. The company recently unveiled the Secretlab Atlas, its first task chair aimed at office work and productivity rather than play. The Titan Evo remains its flagship gaming chair. The Magnus Pro and Magnus Evo sit-stand desks round out the core lineup. An office-oriented chair broadens the addressable market, and a retail presence puts that product in front of buyers who would never browse a gaming site.

Is this a gamble or an inevitability?

Physical retail has punished plenty of digital-native brands that expanded into malls too fast. Secretlab is taking a measured first step: one flagship plus shop-in-shop spaces inside an established retailer, which shifts much of the overhead to Best Buy. The company claims demand for hands-on trials drove the decision, but it offers no survey data or waitlist figures to support that claim.

What is confirmed is the schedule. Doors open November 18 in West Hollywood and at the first Best Buy locations, with additional stores promised but not yet specified. Whether the showroom model lifts sales enough to justify further expansion will show in how quickly Secretlab names its next wave of locations.

By Sophie Lindqvist, Chip Dispatch