Agree - the firmware is never really a selling point. But a shop built around routers could have a few angles:

1) Privacy/ ad-protection native (as you say)

2) High security and performance (fully tuned DD-WRT). Even solving bufferbloat for end users would be amazing - the world is barely catching up on that.

3) Good software add-ons that aren't proprietary junk. Asset management/upgrade, sign-in/landing pages, monitoring and trafffic shaping that holds up, etc.

Bunlding FOSS to solve these problems well, even on some else's hardware, does seem like work, and work can be charged for.

I think the comment above is the winner here.

Back in the day I probably modded over 100 consoles for people, Xbox, Wii, DS, Switch, PS3.... I can't say that even once the person cared about hearing what XBMC was and all the things it could theoretically do. They just cared about being able to play/watch things with the press of the button without having to know any of the tech aspects.

Anyone I knew that could mod consoles just did it themselves.