LittleBits, an electronics company that aims to “democratize hardware,” opened its first pop-up shop to the public today on West Broadway in SoHo. The store’s grand opening is planned for Aug. 13.
LittleBits’ pop-up shop opens today at 355 West Broadway in SoHo and will remain open through the holiday season. The location, which is both a creative lab and a retail space, is the first independent storefront to be opened by the company.
Photo courtesy LittleBits
LittleBits’ products are electronic building blocks, like Legos with a current running through them, which snap together with magnets and can be combined to create almost any electronic device. The company’s goal, according to CEO and founder Ayah Bdeir, is to empower anyone to create.
LittleBits products have been on sale online and in retailers like Microcenter, Barnes and Noble, and the MoMA Design Store since 2008, but this new location offers visitors a new and different experience: the ability to make a LittleBits creation in the store. You can then either buy what you’ve built, or leave it at the store, free of charge, to be completed or expanded upon by someone else.
Photo by Gwendolyn Plummer
The possibilities at LittleBits are nearly endless. Visitors can step back into the lab space to invent almost anything they set their minds to, from a remote-controlled car to a thermometer, Synth Board, or a device that sends a text message to a user’s cellphone when the doorbell rings. Kids can build light-up shoelaces, paper lanterns, or a coloring wheel – a spinning device that grips a colored pencil or marker and draws shapes on a sheet of paper.
Photo by Gwendolyn Plummer
LittleBits has “recipe cards,” which give direction on building something specific, or customers can sit down at the workshop table and invent freely. Qualified staff members are also on hand to help with the inventing and experimenting.
The store also features a “Musical Twister Wall,” an upright musical wall inspired by the famous FAO Schwartz floor piano.
LittleBits popup shop will be open through the Christmas holidays, Monday-Friday from 11am-7pm, and Saturday-Sunday from 10am-7pm. For more information, visit littlebits.cc/store, or call 917-924-2302 x102.
