IoT at home at Target's Open House

The Midwest company has opened its doors to experiential retail.

Instead of just stacking up products along its store aisles, Target is boosting the shopping experience by letting customers try out 35 different connected home products in an experimental store in San Francisco.

The 35,000sqft Open House is a mock-Victorian home with acrylic walls. Various Internet-connected home devices are spread throughout the house, from a Ring smart doorbell to a Nest thermostat, with Target selling a third of these devices in its retail stores and planning to add more.

Target chief strategy and innovation officer Casey Carl told ReCode that IoT is an "impending mega trend - a multi-trillion dollar opportunity." Less than 16 percent of broadband-equipped households in the US had any smart home devices in 2014, according to Park Associates. Further, more than 60 percent of households were accustomed to such gadgets. Nevertheless, Target believes venturing into connected homes this early is an advantage. The retailer sees huge potential for growth and is pushing the smart home concept into a more mainstream setting with real-world scenarios.

The last is important because, as David Newman told ReCode, "The space is still largely B2G: Business to geek." Newman runs Target's EGI team in San Francisco.

But before these geeks run off to Open House, a word of warning. The smart home gadgets there use an app called Yonomi for cloud-based syncing. Target does not have control over Yonomi, which could result in disappointed Open House guests if any trouble comes up.

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