The Sharper Image tried this, along with Radioshack and arguably Best Buy, but with the advent of the internet each was forced into their own market niche.<p>Best Buy and Radio Shack now cater to the late adopters target market, specifically those who do not shop online very often or need something immediately (hence economic hold up with the Monster Cables). The Sharper Image ditched it's brick and mortar locations and is purely an online store for "cool" gadgets.<p>If you're going to ride the wave of a "hardware revolution", I would look at what a fledging hardware developer needs to get their next successful good off the ground and cater to that, even if Kickstarter already exists in this space. Creating a BnM store just isn't the best way to reach the early adopter target market anymore.<p>Or, you could go for the regional 3D printer business model that people have been talking about but nobody has implemented yet. Try and help product developers rapid prototype their electronics.
Price and specs are very important. So are a good website, fast shipping, clear communication about order status, security (CC data), and warranty/customer support. Newegg has historically had a very good combination of these, as have many other successful hardware sellers.<p>Also important are what we <i>don't</i> want: spam, deceptive webpages that try to trick users, spammy emails, an unclear or difficult website, survey spam, byzantine RMA policies, limited shipping choices (USPS parcel vs UPS ground is not good enough), customer service people who can't speak/type local languages clearly.
This seems like a space that is just waiting to get occupied by some entrepreneurial wizardry. There is a huge gap in terms of where to discover and buy relatively nascent technology; a hole somewhere between graduated Kickstarter projects and Best Buy. Where do these somewhat untested vendors go to hawk their novel products? Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc certainly wont be selling items that are just trying to break into the market yet show a great deal of promise.
Grand St seems like they're on to something here...
Probably as important as a physical store is developing a customer base of early adopters, tinkerers and modders who will support/modify/bugtest/buy early hardware projects. Whether you reach them via a store/site or events (annual/monthly/quarterly) is less important, than for a hardware startup with a new product to know that YOU are the place to go to launch the product/find beta testers etc.
Why not try the Warby Parker approach where you mail people trial versions of 3-5 gadgets at a time?<p>This lets you avoid all the the B&M problems.
I’m looking forward to checking this out once it’s out of beta, but for now, I’m pretty happy with SparkFun and Tindie, and I can see what they’re selling without handing out my e-mail address.
You might think we've all moved on from price being important because everyone you've talked to has a lot of money. But there are plenty of hardware nerds who are also price conscious.