A physical app store, believed to be the first of its kind in the world, is coming to Boulder.
Boulder-based startup Open space plans to open a retail location at 1911 11th St. on Tuesday that will feature “app gurus” to help visitors find the latest and most useful software programs for their gadgets across all mobile platforms, such as Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.
The guru service will be free, and the store won’t initially sell any products, said Open space founder and chief executive Robert Reich.
“It’s really a service back to the community,” Reich said. “Further on down the line, depending on how the community responds to it, if they like having the service, I can easily see us starting to include software that we sell directly to the consumer.”
The company has secured $1 million in funding, led by Boulder-based Foundry Group.
Openspace will put together so-called app collections that cover themes or categories, such as games a 10-year-old girl would enjoy or the best programs for making music on an iPhone.
“If you want to know what’s a great camera app to use for the weekend on the mountain, you’re not going to find that in a general photography category,” Reich said. “What we’re doing is leveraging the community and our app gurus to be able to have all of these different micro-niches that we then present to the consumer.”
In addition to downloading apps within a collection of interest, consumers can follow that niche, and when new apps are added to the group, they’ll be notified. If the service catches on, Openspace hopes to ultimately sell the app collections directly to consumers via its website or in the physical store.
