Quirky, Inc. – Turn Your Ideas Into Reality

Suppose you have what you consider to be a great idea for a product, but you don’t have the time, the money, or the know-how to turn your idea into reality. There may now be a solution for your problem.

Serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman–who created mophie and kluster–has just launched a new enterprise called Quirky, Inc. Leena Rao from “TechCrunch” called it “social networking for product development.”

So, how does it work? Basically, you submit your idea–along with $99–and you get feedback from the Quirky community, a chance to be chosen from among the other ideas submitted that week for prototyping, and the possibility that your idea will make it to the marketplace.

Quirky’s business model is very interesting, and if you have an idea bouncing around in your head which you would like to see developed, or if you’re just interested in discovering how a product goes from being an idea in someone’s head to sitting on a shelf at Walmart, read the explanation below.

The Quirky Process

Here, in a nutshell, is the process they use at Quirky to develop a new product every few days, based on ideas submitted by the community.

One. You visit the Quirky, Inc. web site and submit your idea, along with $99.00. Kaufman explains that there’s a submission fee to make sure that people only submit those ideas which they think have a real possibility of being viable. Submissions must be non-electronic consumer products that can be retailed under $150.00.

Two. The Quirky community–that is, anyone who creates an account for free at Quirky–offers feedback on your idea in the form of comments. They offer their opinion in terms of the viability of your idea, whether it’s something they would be interesting in buying, if they’ve already seen a product similar to what you’re proposing being sold somewhere else, and so on. They also propose ways in which you could improve upon your idea.

Three. Members of the Quirky community decide which ideas to vote for among all of the ideas submitted in any one particular week. The idea that gets the most votes is the winner for the week.

Four. Quirky, Inc. has a team of professionals that will get to work on creating a prototype of the product that won for the week. During the development of the prototype, the Quirky community gets to weigh in on every step of the process: your product’s design, name, packaging, color scheme, and so on. Keep in mind that if your product is chosen you lose all rights to the product. However, you don’t have to pay anything to have the product developed, and you do get compensated, as is explained further down below.

Five. Based on your product’s price point, Quirky will determine how many units need to be pre-sold through Quirky’s online store before they can really go the distance and actually manufacture the product. In theory, the Quirky community will help pre-sell the product by telling their friends what a cool product it is and basically conducting word-of-mouth marketing. In other words, they will evangelize your product.

Six. If enough products are pre-sold–that is, if the threshold amount predetermined by Quirky is met–your product will be manufactured and will be made available for sale.

Seven.What do you get from all of this? If your product is manufactured you get 12 cents out of every dollar your product earns. (And remember, the only money that you pay throughout this entire process are the $99.00 that you paid in the beginning when you submitted your idea.)

Eight. The members of the Quirky community that participated throughout the whole development process get 18 cents out of every dollar your product earns distributed among them. In other words, even if you don’t have a product idea you can contribute with comments and suggestions to the development of all the products that are currently in the pipeline at Quirky and maybe even make some money from your contribution.

Here’s An Example: Sukido

Avi Goldfinger submitted the following idea to Quirky, Inc.: A game called “Sukido” which is basically based on the popular sudoku game, except it’s for kids. It uses large, colorful game pieces instead of numbers to make it more appealing to children. (Avi’s product was already pretty developed when he submitted it to Quirky, Inc.; some people simply submit doodles of their product, or even just a written description, which is fine.)

In the comments section over at “Quirky” you’ll notice people expanding on the idea and making it better with suggestions such as the following:

• On the back of the blocks have the numbers written on them. This way kids could choose to play with the “numbers” side up when they’re ready.
• Change the name to “Kidoku”.
• Add magnets to the pieces so kids can play with the game in the car or on plane trips.
• Sell replacement pieces to cover missing pieces.
• Have a web site so that parents can download tiles with new, more difficult puzzles on them.

As you can see from the comments, the Quirky community provides useful feedback.

What If Your Idea Is Not Selected?

If your idea doesn’t get chosen–that is, it isn’t validated–then you retain the rights to your idea. Did you just lose $99.00? The Quirky team argues that you don’t lose your money because you get the following:

In-depth, real-time idea evaluation from the Quirky community, and a demographic profile of those who supported your idea and of those who did not. In other words, you now have more information with which to make the decision whether or not to proceed with your idea on your own.

Conclusion

This article is not meant to be an endorsement of Quirky, Inc. It’s meant to showcase an interesting, new business model–Quirky, Inc. was just launched last month–, to give you something to consider if you have an idea you would like to see developed and are unsure of how to proceed, and to direct you toward a site where you can see first-hand what the product development process looks like.

In addition, Quirky, Inc. is an interesting application of social networking: it’s product development through social networking.

The blog “TechCrunch” published an article about Quirky, Inc. on June 1st titled “Quirky Is A Social Network For Product Development”, and a heated discussion took place in the comments sections (with Ben Kaufman making an appearance). Some people say in the comments that it’s a great idea, and others say it’s just stupid to pay $99.00 to give your ideas away.

Some things to consider:

• Are you paying $99.00 to give your ideas away?
• A brilliant idea that is not executed is worthless.
• Product developers could be watching the Quirky, Inc. web site waiting to snag good ideas.
• If your product does not get chosen, is it worth it to pay $99.00 for getting community feedback in real time about your product and market data on who liked your idea and who didn’t?
• Is a 12% return on investment for your idea good (in fact, it’s more than a 12% ROI because the only money you put down is the submission fee)?
• Would you be better off developing your idea on your own?

So, what do you think?  Is Quirky, Inc. a good idea?  Watch the YouTube Video below (50 seconds) and let me know what you think in the comments section.

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photo credit: striatic

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