Have you ever thought of a quirky but innovative product that might be useful to the masses but didn’t follow through with the idea? Sometimes these flashes of genius get lost in the shuffle. Startup quirky is hoping to be the platform for product ideas that are born on napkin doodles and in other unorthodox ways. The site then tries to use crowdsourcing to develop the product, by engaging participants in collaborating on every aspect of product creation – from ideation, design, naming, manufacturing, marketing, to sales. It’s like a social network for product development.
Founded by serial entrepreneur Ben Kaufman (he created mophie and kluster), quirky lets users submit their product idea for $99. Users can also vote, rate, and influence other people’s product ideas. Every week users can post ideas on quirky to be rated by the quirky community. After a seven day evaluation period, the quirky community chooses one product from the pool of submitted ideas to move forward through the process. quirky’s community engages and contributes to every part of the product’s development, weighing in on everything from naming to logo selection to packaging.
The product is pre-sold at the quirky online store. Once the product hits a pre-sales threshold, credit cards are charged, and the product graduates to production and delivery. $0.30 of every dollar generated from the sale of a quirky product goes back to the creators, and the people who voted, commented, and rated the project idea along the way, giving the community an incentive participate and engage in each product’s development. The creators are given $0.12 of that $0.30.
With the launch of the site, quirky has also revealed its first product, created by friends and family of quirky employees. The Sling Back is a universal wire retractor that holds up three feet of any type of wire ( headphone cords, small power cables, USB cords, firewire cables, or printer cords) up to 1/8″ in diameter. On the development page of the Sling Back, quirky lists the creator (in this case, Ben Kaufman) and the top “influencers,” the people who contributed to the development of the retractor. The site says that so far, two other products are currently being developed. Each product lists the stage of development they are in and how much time is left before a decision will be made. For example, “The Ouch Pouch,” a designable sling that has pictures and decorations needs a logo.
quirky seems like an innovative idea although, I do think that the creators of the product which ends up being developed may get the short end of the stick when it comes to sales, especially given that they are putting up $99 per idea. But, on the flip side, these ideas, which may be otherwise discarded or forgotten, are given the chance of being created. The site is similar to one of Kaufman’s previous ventures, NameThis, and other sites IdeaBlob and Innocentive.
$19 per idea is way to too low. This concept as you rightly said is not new after Name This and Idea Blob.
Excellent example of using technology to solve problems that DO NOT EXIST.
Wonderful opportunity for owner to walk away from train wreck of idea and volunteer to work in soup kitchen. Plant Trees, tutor kids, etc.
Incredible waste of energy and time that he will never get back.
Zowie!
I appreciate the concept. At least, we can hope some very innovative idea will will go live from sketchboard. And crowdsourcing will take care of modifications and features.
Well if people are willing to hand over their IP to the masses for $99 to take a shot at (as I understand it) a 12% return then good luck to quirky. Its a great idea – i will certainly be sitting around watching the ideas emerge with my development team standing by….
Give away your awesome ideas for free. Where do I sign up.
No no no, you pay them to give away your awesome ideas.
it’s like watching this –>
http://www.yout...ature=topvideos
I believe there is a bit of an inconsistency – “…quirky lets users submit their product idea for $99.” in the second paragraph and “..putting up $19 per idea.” in the last paragraph. Probably just a typo.
It would really be great if this network takes off… Would save developers of a lot of effort
Wow, let’s put the idea of a chinese version of quirky and on the english version of quirky!
So these guys want me to shell out $99 to give them my idea and then offer me 12%?
No thanks. I’d rather just give it away for free.
Yet another pyramid scam that somehow made it into Techcrunch. And there’s nothing new about this service.
Lets see how this one takes off. Not sure how many people will be willing to give their ideas for such little return.
what happen to kluster?
nice idea but you should be able to submit ideas for free; paying to submit is a real put off.
Let me explain a bit.
Currently, users can submit ideas into our development projects and earn money as an influence without paying a dime… We do currently charge $99 for submitting an idea into product evaluation phases.
The reason for our fee is two-fold:
1. We feel this is a great self-selector. If you’re not willing to put $99 bucks up to see your product get made… then you’re probably not that serious about it.
2. You get something in return. At the end of an evaluation project, people who submitted a product idea get a link to comprehensive analytics &market research on their product concept. They’ll be able to see a realtime break down of the demographic of the idea’s supporters, as well as those who did not like the idea. Above this, they’ll get a stream of comments/ideas from the community on how they can improve their idea to push it over the edge.
If your idea does not win, the idea will be taken off the site, you’ll retain all rights to your idea… as well as all analytics/market research gained through the process.
I’m going to use your service to steal ideas. Thanks!
Would not BootB be something similar to this, but slightly different? http://www.bootb.com/en/
Not only do you have to pay $0.99, but the payment certificate is not even secure!
Our product submission page is definitely SSL..
https://www.qui...y.com/ideas/new
Kaufman:
How about You have these same kids come over to your house and pay you to paint your fence?
Similar logic behind that idea and yours.
Counteroffer: Let’s pay TC readers 25 cents to articulate how incredibly stupid/self-absorbed/profoundly useless your idea really is.
Doesnt it seem weird they dont even secure the payment page? Whats up with that?
RT
http://www.real...nonymity.pro.tc
How are these products going to be manufactured? They show nice renderings of the slingback and say it will cost $9.99. In order to sell at that price you would need to invest thousands in injection mold tooling. I don’t see any cad models to show how this thing actual works.
This is at best wishful thinking of a bunch of people with no basis in the reality of bringing a product to market. At worst it is a scam.
Quirky will manufacture and distribute, and sell all products that reach presale threshold.
This is wishful thinking, but from people WITH a basis on bringing products to market.
I myself founded mophie, and together with my team we developed hundreds of products which have been sold into 27 countries worldwide. The mophie juicepack is among the top accessories at the apple store currently.
keith brown, our lead engineer comes with 20+ years experience in design and manufacturing… he was an engineer at OXO, one of the most well respected consumer product brands in the world.
Most people don’t realize that 12% is a great return on an idea. I have had hundreds of great ideas that never earned me a dime.
$99? Chicken feed. It keeps out the riff-raff that think putting a windmill on top of a car will give you energy to charge your batteries.
But what is the scope of the products? Imagine a great idea that takes $100,000 to build a prototype. Is Quirky going to try it?
I have this idea for a cell phone that will make it twice as popular as the iPhone…
current constraints just that the product is consumer focused and can be retailed for under $150.
What did happen to Kluster? How come it seems that there’s 1 website after another (Kluster, NameThis, and now Quirky) that don’t really do anything?
All the sites you mentioned are powered by kluster.
Namethis is naming 5-10 new companies a day… Private Klusters power collaborative strategy across thousands of businesses worldwide (ad agencies, etc)…
5-10 companies a day!!! The economy must really be turning around if Namethis alone is reporting that over 1800 businesses will be new and need names this year. But even at 5-10, is Namethis really a success? What good is Kluster really if it’s private? Besides, $99 to submit an idea and if not chosen I get just market data? C’mon, this has to be the biggest scam after NameThis and Kluster, no? Why should anyone participate aside from making you money?
The figure of 5-10 companies a day is incorrect. I have been talking to regular users. This has never been the case. Usually it’s more in the range of 10 a week.
I guess you will get more response if you ask for the payment if the idea is choosen – I understand with a payment you are forcing people to really scan through the ideas before they submit that way you can remove the clutter.
I am hesitant with $99 as its still a high amount for me to submit just the ideas.
Anyone dumb enough to pay this Tom Sawyer $99 to paint his fence deserves to never see his money again.
Apparently, it’s Idiot Idea week on TC!
Congrats Ben. You’re Winning!
The thing I don’t understand & is not really clear is,
1.) Who is the actual owner of the product?
If I submit an idea to get the product produced, manufactured & distributed, as it is my submitted idea, am I an owner in my own product?
2.) If the product is made, who is doing the marketing of it? Are you providing the Sham-Wow commercials, or you just hoping that it will sell on its own just because it was in the community? Or does the Owner of the idea expected to do the marketing?
I totally see a pattern in all these ventures. Using low cost group thinking to supply commercial ventures with high value IP.
I totally get the intent but ethically it could be better managed. The reason places like india and china are thriving is because the western society is driving down the value of product and service. These ventures are not helping.
Let the divide between rich and poor grow even larger. If this is what social technology is doing to improve our world please shut off the power…..
Great, another medium for armchair “inventors” to try to profit form ideas they aren’t ambitious enough to follow through on.
As if the patent system wasn’t enough…
Kaufman wants you to submit ideas to him and his creatively (and now morally) bankrupt team of developers for him to comment on?
And he wants you to pay him for the service?
Kinda like asking my doctor to fly a commerical plane I’m on because the doctor has a successful group practice?
Got better idea, Benny the Bull: Come up with your own ideas and present them to the readers at TC.
We’ll tell you whether they’ll fly or not.
Posted a lengthy opine regarding SPDS at my blog. http://www.bjspeak.com. Feedback always welcome.
Go to their site and look at the team they’ve assembled. If you can’t bring $99 to the table-go home.
And manufacturing is in the US. (not overseas).
product sold for $9.99 produced in US – that’s new
Don’t listen to the naysayers, Ben. I think the mean IQ of the TechCrunch crowd here is a little less than 80.
The fact is that kluster and namethis both earn profit from the exchange and development of ideas. This is *much* more than most of the companies in crunchbase can say.
I’m pretty sure quirky is going to succeed. Perhaps negative commenters are just jealous because you’re not from the Valley. . .