Target creates 3,500 square foot Open House in San Francisco store to showcase and sell 35 internet-connected devices
Target's Tech Open House Demonstrates Internet of Things — San Francisco is home to technology. Now it's home to perhaps the most technologically-advanced house, too.
Context & Ripple Effects
In mid-2015, Target carved 3,500 square feet out of its San Francisco store for the Tech Open House, treating connected-home gadgets as something shoppers need to touch before they buy rather than another SKU on a shelf. Two months later, Salesforce launched its own Internet of Things Cloud at Dreamforce, signaling that the software side was racing to catch up with the same wave of devices Target was merchandising.
First-order effects
- Shoppers in the San Francisco store can now interact with 35 internet-connected devices in a live home setting before purchase, and the device makers behind those products gain a high-traffic retail distribution channel they could not have bought on their own.
Second-order effects
- The showroom model pressures other players to follow: within about a year, Apple remodeled its SF flagship around a more consultative Genius Grove format and Google opened a Made By Google pop-up in NYC with hints of permanent stores — experiential retail became table stakes for selling hardware.
Third-order effects
- If connected devices stay fragmented across ecosystems, the retailer that owns the physical demo and curation layer sits between competing platforms and the buyer — the same curation logic Target later formalized digitally with the Target+ third-party marketplace.
The trend: Big-box and big-tech retail are converging on the showroom-as-platform model, where the store's value shifts from holding inventory to demonstrating and curating an interoperable device ecosystem.