Why isn't Make attached to a store that actually sells DIY kits and parts? Seems like a clear business model to me. Or at the very least, better than print publishing.
Now, they probably don't have the capital or wherewithal to start selling electronics now, but a company like Adafruit or Sparkfun should take over the Make mantle and just use it to put out good guides and drive kit sales.
They have had a very solid store business at one point selling electronic kits. (Pi's, Arduino, etc).
A few years ago the kits were even in every Barnes and Nobel ni the country at Christmas. (And sadly most of them were in the clearance bin in January...)
It mostly only sold kits, drones, 3D printers, stuff like that. Very little in the way of individual parts and tools. Which always struck me as a bit of a problem -- it more-or-less sold a strict subset of the actual DIY stuff that you could get at competing retailers. So maybe they'd sell someone their very first Arduino starter kit, but it must have been really hard to retain repeat customers. Having bought that Arudino kit and completed all the introductory projects, when the time comes to start getting more creative, you're going to have to go somewhere else to buy, say, an LCD display or a fistful of capacitors. And you'd presumably stay there, since there were so few things you could get at Makershed that you couldn't also get somewhere that sells the other stuff you need.
In short, it was kind of a lot like what Radio Shack had become in the end, only even more so.
Now, they probably don't have the capital or wherewithal to start selling electronics now, but a company like Adafruit or Sparkfun should take over the Make mantle and just use it to put out good guides and drive kit sales.