Nothing opens its first store in Soho

A two-year-old brand takes a shop in Soho

At 11.30 on the morning of 10 December 2022, Nothing opens its first shop, at 4 Peter Street in Soho, London.¹ The company, founded in London in 2020 by Carl Pei, has released three products under its own name by then: the Ear (1) earbuds in 2021, the Phone (1) in July 2022 and Ear (stick), on sale since 4 November.² When it announced the store in October, Nothing wrote: "It's the physical expression of everything we stand for."³

The sentence sets the terms for what follows. The shop does not open a new sales channel, since the products are already sold online and through partner retailers.³ It gives a young brand, so far met mostly on screens, an address, and with it a place where its design language can be experienced at the scale of a room rather than a product page.

A boutique rather than a tech store

The space covers 785 square feet over two floors, with a bright, white, retro and transparent interior that follows the see-through look of the products.¹ Nothing names its references itself: industrial and mid-century design, among them the Olivetti stores in Italy, for a boutique "unlike the tech stores you've been to before".³ By pointing to an Italian office machine maker rather than to any current electronics retailer, the brand places itself in design history instead of next to its direct competitors.

The central feature is a specially commissioned wall of 4,000 flip dots, which can be programmed on site to show a constantly changing graphic story.⁴ Customer service runs through a transparent phone booth, where a Phone (1) serves as the store's official helpline.¹ Both details turn the product philosophy into furniture: a display built from single mechanical dots, and a help desk that doubles as a demonstration of the phone.

What the shelves carry

Alongside the Phone (1) and Ear (stick), the shop sells Nothing merchandise, audio products from the Swedish company Teenage Engineering and curated collections from fashion and design brands.¹ Spare parts are part of the range as well.⁵ The lower floor works as a white-box gallery for exhibitions and events.⁶ Nothing plans to use the space for community events, workshops, public events and product launches.⁷

The mix decides the company Nothing keeps. A phone shown next to fashion collections and Teenage Engineering's audio products reads as a lifestyle object rather than an appliance. The gallery floor adds something a conventional electronics store does not have, a room for work that is not for sale, which lets the brand present itself as a cultural address as much as a manufacturer.

Scarcity, community and a Soho address

The opening follows the logic of a fashion release. The first visitors can buy one of 100 numbered, laser-engraved Ear (stick) units, and the store sits down the road from a Supreme shop.^{1, 8} Ryan Latham, Nothing's general manager, calls Soho "the home of innovative design" and says that opening there "makes perfect sense".⁸ He describes the store as offering the community "a space where they can engage with each other and our products".⁸ The interior is meant to welcome existing members of that community as well as newcomers.⁵

The neighbourhood answers in kind. Samantha Bain-Mollison, retail director at the property company Shaftesbury, says: "We are excited to welcome Nothing to our Soho community of innovative design and independent retailers."⁶ Engadget describes the step as a gamble for a two-year-old start-up, with Soho rents estimated at just under 150 pounds per square foot, against about 64 pounds in the City of London.⁹ The rent buys what a website cannot: a fixed point where the brand is present every day, among fashion and design rather than among other phone makers.

From Peter Street to Bengaluru

The Soho shop remains the brand's physical anchor in the years that follow. In November 2024 it stocks the limited Phone (2a) Plus Community Edition from 16 November.¹⁰ In January 2026 the company announces a flagship in Bengaluru, which it says "symbolises a period of significant growth for Nothing", and names New York City and Tokyo as later locations.¹¹

The Bengaluru store opens on 14 February 2026 on 100 Feet Road in Indiranagar. It covers 5,032 square feet, takes its design from 1970s retro-futuristic assembly lines and workshops, includes a creator studio and a community area, and sells both Nothing and CMF products.¹² It is more than six times the size of the first shop, but it follows the brief written for Peter Street: a store as a medium for the brand, in which the products are only part of what is on show.