Oh buggery bollocks, I wrote a reply to Lando about Eyetech while at Uni, but it doesn't seem to have submitted.
Anyway, basically I said that Eyetech were never a 'little computer shop', they were an industrial and commercial systems company. They happened to use Amigas in some of thier systems (CD32s and A1200s IIRC) and opened a sideline in computer retail.
The A1 was supposed to be their way of replacing the Amiga systems they used. Unfortunately it seems they got in way over thier heads.
If you want a better info, the omnipresent Don Cox is the guy to ask, he wrote an article for AA about Eyetech (Half about Eyetech themselves, half review of one of thier Amiga based systems)