Why can't it be both? It acts a bridge between an unmet demand and an unmet supply: there are consumers thinking, "I wonder if X has been invented? I would pay money for that." And there are designers thinking, "I wonder if anyone would buy X if I made it?"
It's conceptually a great match. The hard part was making it credible enough to gain trust. That's Kickstarter's biggest strength.
I think it can be and sort of is both right now, yeah. And I'm loving it, but it also makes sense for people to have different expectations from a store than from a project they are backing.
When I give a store money, they owe me a product. When I back a project, they owe me their effort.
So it's a bit weird to me when the language being used is mostly store language rather than funding language. I don't think anybody has purchased a Pebble yet.
I love that their brand's credibility enables projects to launch that wouldn't have been able to otherwise. But, once a project far exceeds its launch goal Kickstarter becomes a store that charges 5%.
It's conceptually a great match. The hard part was making it credible enough to gain trust. That's Kickstarter's biggest strength.