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There are many places you can buy cool technology products on the web — ThinkGeek, Wantful, Amazon, etc. But the next place on your list of sites to buy from might just be Grand St., an online marketplace for buying “creative technology” products that has received $1.3 million in new seed funding.
Grand St. highlights a new tech product every other day and each product is delievered directly from the company. It promises to make the buying of personal tech products easy and insists that each product it features has been “tested, held, and played with by someone from Grand St.” Ideally, since the products for sale change so frequently, it encourages people to come back or get on the email list to see what the latest awesome gadget is.
Products Grand St. has sold recently include Neurosky’s MindWave Mobile (pictured), the Ubooly iPhone-enabled doll, Swissvoice’s ePure Mobile telephone, and Orbotix’s Sphero iPhone-controlled toy.
“The future of creative technology belongs to independent inventors, and we feel privileged to have the opportunity to work with such talented creators,” Grand St. co-founder Amanda Peyton told VentureBeat via email. “The magnitude of what’s happening in new hardware is incredibly exciting, and we see Grand St. as a medium for these delightful products to find their ever-growing audiences.”
Grand St. is based in New York City, and its name comes from Grand St. in Brooklyn. The team’s co-founders spent a lot of time together at a coffee shop on Grand St. and decided it could be a good name for their business.
The new funding was led by First Round Capital, with participation by David Tisch’s BoxGroup, Gary Vaynerchuk, betaworks, Collaborative Fund, MESA+, Quotidian Ventures, and Undercurrent.
“I am completely convinced that hardware is the next ‘thing’ so being able to be associated with such a passionate team and leader in such an interesting marketplace becomes a no brainer,” Vaynerchuk said in a statement.
Top photo via Grand St.
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