My Quirky Product

I recently came across Quirky.com in my search for ways to take something from idea to reality. Having recently moved on from my old company, I had some time on my hands – plus my partner had recently come up with a really cool software idea that had grown into something bigger, better and infinitely more complicated to create (i.e. hardware).

We began our search like many probably do, by reaching out to friends, local contacts and scouring the web for advisors on LinkedIn, etc. What you quickly discover is that turning an idea into a real, tangible and physical product is going to take quite a bit of two precious commodities: Time and Money. So, unless you’re already independently wealthy or have family ready to bankroll a year long development and speculative business – you’re going to get frustrated looking for alternative ways of getting it done.

Enter: The Social Product Development business, aka “Quirky”.

The quick intro.

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How does it work?

The basics.

• Sign up and start engaging the community with ratings, comments and voting on products you think have a chance to succeed.
• Submit your idea (the more you can diagram or describe via a YouTube video, the better) – this will cost you $99.
• Your idea is judged, graded and voted on by a jury of peers, lurkers and professionals
• The process of vetting the idea takes about a week
• If your idea is chosen, it goes through a series of design, marketing and development steps that finalize more about the product name, design, tagline, etc.
• Off it goes to production. Stand by for 8 weeks, give or take.

Making money.

• Based on the idea, the amount of “influence” that each individual has in the process – the revenue per sold item varies.
• Generally, the person with the idea is going to earn about 12 cents on every 1 dollar for items sold via Quirky’s store.
• For products that go “big time” and sell wholesale, the rule is about about 4 cents on the dollar. Not bad at all, considering the investment to submit the idea was only $99.

Protecting the idea.

• At the point of submission and review process, the idea is yours and only yours.
• Obviously, there’s some public exposure here – but that can work in your favor too.
• If your product makes the cut, you DO transfer the rights of that idea to Quirky. After all, they do have to front the costs to prototype, manufacture and build the sales channels.

To get the whole scoop, visit the quirky.com site and read the FAQs under the Learn section.

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My idea.

TBD Product 0032

My concept will be in the Idea Evaluation stage until around Valentine’s Day. I’d love to give away the idea here, but the goal is to get you to visit Quirky and check out my entry under Product 0032. I’ll give you a hint, it’s under my name and the title of the idea is: Dynamo Phone Case.

As this develops and I have more experience with Quirky, I will definitely follow-up with a story or two. Thanks for checking out my idea and I hope I get your vote too!!

-Kevin