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Evernote gets physical: Why a software maker's turning to tangible goods
What the hell is Evernote doing selling backpacks and socks? That's a question asked by many yesterday, when Evernote revealed a plan to expand its business well beyond productivity software by opening up Evernote Market. The Market, revealed at the third annual Evernote conference in San Francisco, debuted selling a selection of high-end bags from Côte&Ciel, notebooks from Moleskine, a scanner from Fujitsu, a stylus from Adonit, plus a smattering of T-shirts, posters and the aforementioned socks. The stylus packs the smallest tip on the market and is designed to work with note-taking apps like Penultimate. And the scanner integrates tightly with Evernote software, too -- it can scan a pile of varied documents (business cards, receipts, invoices, etc.), then sort and deposit the results an appropriate notebook automagically. At first blush, selling physical goods seems odd for such a company. To hear CEO Phil Libin tell it, however, the move into retail is a logical one, should you be willing to make a bit of a cognitive leap. The key to this strategy was revealed during his day two keynote, when Libin said that his company is in the business of AI. However, those letters stand for augmented, not artificial intelligence.
