Quirky Crowdsources Your Product Ideas into Reality

Name: Quirky

Quick
Pitch: Quirky is a social product development company founded
in June 2009 by 23-year-old entrepreneur Ben Kaufman.

Genius
Idea: At its core, Quirky builds consumer products. It sells cable
organizers, a modular spatula system, and double-sided USB sticks. It’s how they create and
develop their products that really makes them stand out, though.

Quirky
describes itself as a “social product development company.” It
essentially crowdsources product ideas and then places them at the mercy
of Quirky’s thousands of users. The community votes on which ones they
want to develop and then adds its input on things such as product
aesthetics, design, logo, and even its name. The best ideas are then
taken by Quirky’s team of engineers and designers and turned into 3D
renderings.

The next step is the most important one: the product
is then placed on pre-sale, where anyone can buy the product. However,
Quirky will only sell something if it hits a minimum number of sale
commitments (usually under a thousand). Once that number is reached,
the product is made and person who submitted the original idea gets a
piece of the revenue pie.

There are a few things to know before
you go off designing tons of products for Quirky. First, it costs $99
to submit an idea. Second, even if your product is selected by the
community, it doesn’t mean it will become a major hit. Finally, many
products on Quirky still have yet to hit their minimum purchase
requirement, and some of the products on sale on the site aren’t cheap.

Quirky
was founded by Ben Kaufman, who is the creator of Mophie,
the popular iPhone and iPod accessory company, so it has some serious
brainpower behind the company. You can learn more about the Quirky
process here.