Often, the new must-have gadget is not something you can pick up at Best Buy or find on Amazon. It is something you find on a site like Kickstarter, or a product produced by a small start-up company.
Grand St., a new start-up based in New York, wants to be the one-stop shopping destination for all of these quirky electronics wares. Every other day, it lists a new product for sale. Previous choices have included at-home sous vide cookers, smart watches, portable phone chargers and headsets that monitor brainwave activity. The company, which has slowly been building its audience since it put up a Web site this year, announced on Tuesday that it had raised $1.3 million in venture financing for the site. The round of investment was led by First Round Capital, Collaborative Fund, Betaworks and David Tisch, among others.
“Consumer electronics is a dated term right now. The industry is going through a fundamental change because of the rise of indie electronics,†said Amanda Peyton, one of the founders of the company. “It’s not just a few companies making products anymore. Everyone is making products.â€
Ms. Peyton also said that she initially wanted to start her own hardware project on Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site. But after she talked to other people who were  working on developing and selling new categories of hardware, it became clear that they all had one thing in common â€" difficulty dealing with the selling, marketing and distribution of their projects. Ms. Peyton and two developers, Joseph Lallouz and Aaron Henshaw, began working on Grand St. The name of the company comes from the location of their first office, a hip, eclectic street in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg. The company scours design and technology blogs for interesting devices it wants to sell, then contacts the creators to get a demo unit. If the team likes it, Grand St. buys devices in bulk and sells them through its Web site. The company sends e-mail newsletters advertising new products.
Right now, Grand St. is an invitation-only site. Ms. Peyton said the company was trying to ensure that it managed its own inventory and avoided excessive overhead. The new financing should help the business grow, she said. “We’re looking at social activity and the velocity of sales to determine how many items we think we’ll sell,†she said.
Before Grand St., Ms. Peyton worked on a messaging application called MessageParty, which has since been shuttered. Her two co-founders worked as developers at Hashable, a social networking app that has also closed. But they are banking that Grand St. will prove fruitful.
“When we first started this, it seemed like it was a niche market,†said Ms. Peyton. “But we’re realizing that there is a lot of pent-up demand and consumer interest around the market for independent electronics.â€
