Too many people confuse distribution and product development.
While I laud the OPs suggestion that retailers like Best Buy might be more competitive if they could source products that Amazon cannot, there is an existence proof for this called "Pier 1 Imports" whose "special sauce" consisted almost entirely with seeking out niche suppliers, locking up a retail relationship with them, and putting their stuff into stores. Great for craft kinds of things but not so much consumer electronics.
Now if you want to go so far as to say there is an emergent market for 'craft' electronics (and there is some evidence on Kickstart to suggest this looking that the Blink project for example) then perhaps what should really be the point is to create the 'Pier 1' of those electronics. The seeds of that would seem to be in Makershed.
The way I understood the article is that BB (would) buy these small companies out (and thus lock up the distribution and lock out the Amazons of the world).
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This.
Too many people confuse distribution and product development.
While I laud the OPs suggestion that retailers like Best Buy might be more competitive if they could source products that Amazon cannot, there is an existence proof for this called "Pier 1 Imports" whose "special sauce" consisted almost entirely with seeking out niche suppliers, locking up a retail relationship with them, and putting their stuff into stores. Great for craft kinds of things but not so much consumer electronics.
Now if you want to go so far as to say there is an emergent market for 'craft' electronics (and there is some evidence on Kickstart to suggest this looking that the Blink project for example) then perhaps what should really be the point is to create the 'Pier 1' of those electronics. The seeds of that would seem to be in Makershed.
>Now if you want to go so far as to say there is an emergent market for 'craft' electronics
You can also check out: https://www.tindie.com/
But Amazon has Marketplace and 3rd-party sellers, so how could Best But get any product that Amazon cannot?
The way I understood the article is that BB (would) buy these small companies out (and thus lock up the distribution and lock out the Amazons of the world).