Best Buy has managed to survive, defying the expectations of experts and shoppers, by creating themed mini-stores and price-matching its online competition. Now the company has a new idea: teaming up with companies that make popular crowdfunded products to get them on the shelves of Best Buy.

In addition to displaying products in a special section online and on the website, Best Buy promises to hook creators up with PCH, a firm that helps get new products from the “cool idea” phase to mass production.

Signing on to sell popular crowdfunded products isn’t new for Best Buy, of course: the company made a deal to sell a Kickstarter success from a few years ago, the Pebble smartwatch, early on.

It may have been a little too early, since backers complained that there were watches on Best Buy’s shelves before they received the backer rewards that they had paid for.

Best Buy’s first store section using this model is in its store in (where else?) Silicon Valley, where shoppers can check out items like the RoBo 3-D printer in action.

For the rest of the country, we might see other products from the crowdfunding world on the shelves of our local stores, but not necessarily in a dedicated section.

The idea is similar to that of Amazon’s Launchpad, also a mini-store dedicated to bringing crowdfunded hits to retail sale.

Best Buy will highlight products by start-ups in section of store, website [Minneapolis Star-Tribune]

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