B8ta, a new shop in downtown Palo Alto, puts cutting-edge gadgets on its shelves within days of their release and provides sellers with instant feedback.
Each product in the new B8ta store—many of them new techie gadgets you probably last saw on a crowdfunding website like Kickstarter— sits next to an iPad showing real-time pricing across multiple online sites versus B8ta’s in-store cost. B8ta takes a small cut of each in-store sale, but overall the process is meant to be agnostic; customers are encouraged to order from whichever outlet they wish.
The point is to mimic the sales environment customers encounter online. Product makers set their own in-store price and can change it instantly, bringing e-commerce tactics like flash sales into the real world.
Even the products B8ta offers are normally constrained to the Internet. At launch, it will carry the Hexo+ and Lily drones ($1,349 and $799, respectively), which are built to autonomously film their users. An in-store mock kitchen will invite you to brew tea with the Internet-connected Teforia tea maker ($699). A space is even set aside to test the Internet’s farthest-fetched products like Avegant’s Glyph ($599), which is a pair of headphones with a strap that converts into a virtual-reality screen.