Cameron: It would be wonderful to meet someone from the company and see how they really work. We’re just theorizing.
Lew: Whenever I talk to consultants, they are always telling me about people that have been shopping ideas around the city for the last decade without ever actually moving their projects forward. A dud is a dud, but the an inventor is like a proud daddy, incapable of admitting their child is just not that bright. Kind of going back to Cameron’s ideas: outside of design, it’s rare to meet people who are able to develop many ideas and simply abandon the less interesting. Most people cling to them for dear life.
I’ve had two kinds of ideas that I have never advanced. One is an aesthetic type product (low price, easy to make per unit). I could probably get something to production within 6-9 months. I don’t because I have a day job and I don’t want to become a salesman (which would be required once I have the product in my hot little hands). The other is a patentable invention. That takes a longer gestation time, probably up to 2 years to get everything sorted + apply for the patent, attorney fees, then finding manufacturing that I trust and sort that. I really don’t have time for that, plus I get back to my desire to avoid sales.
In both of these cases, this site really does nothing for me. The rewards are too slim to let an idea go that, if forced to, I could develop myself.
I wrote about these guys back in October… google “how quirky could fail”.
My problem then (and I haven’t checked in for a while) is that they give a token amount of involvement to the user. I think people will ultimately want to be more involved in the product they make, rather than just giving it a name, downselecting a couple of concepts, etc.
You see it in the different types of clients consultancies get. You have the larger companies where the program manager has seen the ‘magic’ of product development so many times that it isn’t as special, and is more focused on hitting dates. On the other hand you have first timers who just have an idea and some cash. They embrace the process and get a lot more out of it.
Ultimately, I think a business model that will let consumers act as the latter will succeed. It will bring them joy.
All Quirky has done has streamlined a sales funnel. They get paid for ideas, pick which one they want to do (they only take the community vote as an ‘input’; allowing them to build the cheapest, most low-risk product), then keep a little too large of the portion of the proceeds.
I think they are a sign of something special, and if they shift gears now they could be that something special.
I really don’t see the scam, I think it’s great, for everyone.
I wasn’t implying “scam” Cameron. More like sour grapes… . .
Working for years as a “consultant” prior to the Internet, finding a way to serve (read: cash in) on the small-timer eluded me; I never charged for an initial consultation. As in any sales endeavor it’s numbers that count; 15:1 is a reasonable expectation for “sale” per “client”. These guys just figured out how to increase the number of clients they see in a given period of time AND they’re collecting a few bucks for each of them to offset their “consultation”.
Lew: Whenever I talk to consultants, they are always telling me about people that have been shopping ideas around the city for the last decade without ever actually moving their projects forward. A dud is a dud, but the an inventor is like a proud daddy, incapable of admitting their child is just not that bright. Kind of going back to Cameron’s ideas: outside of design, it’s rare to meet people who are able to develop many ideas and simply abandon the less interesting. Most people cling to them for dear life.
Loughnane: You did a better job describing it than anyone else in this thread.
Something that hit me in your description is the matter of who is deciding this is a good idea. In my experience, my best ideas were always passed over by others. I think it takes someone with a deep knowledge of the problem to judge whether the solution is needed.
It’s like the iPad. I thought it was a horrible idea that solved a non-existant problem. I’m sure I wasn’t alone. I’m sure there were nerds all over the place gripping their laptops tightly. However, we were all wrong.
Because of that, I have yet another knee-jerk bad reaction to this idea. I don’t want an ignorant group deciding if my idea is good. In fact, I’m sure if the idea is good, they’ll hate it (maybe there is a value in this afterall…).
So if I get this right, Quirky takes the idea and then runs with it. So I don’t have to keep working on the development at all?
Please correct me if I am wrong…
I get from time to time approached by companies to develop old school projects that are in my portfolio and that have popped up here and there on design blogs and on my website.
The main thing why I do not take it further is that they all have been manufacturers and sales, not designers. So in other words, the work of actually turning my funky school project into an actual, produceable product would fall to me. All they want are files ready for tooling.
I would do consultancy work. In most cases really badly paid consultancy work. But without the time, the means and the skills to actually pull this through.
As a young designer with tons of ideas but not the channels and expertise to take it to say Belkin, I believe that Quirky is a fantastic alternative and I would especially recommend this to students who really believe in their idea and to seriously test it.
So out of a student/recent grad perspective I think it is a great opportunity if you have something in your portfolio that fits the Quirky bill. Send it in, make a buck.
Like others here I’m sure, I can’t believe I’d never heard of Quirky until this thread.
Everyone is making some really interesting and thought provoking points with a mixture of positive and negative vibes and props to Chris Loughnane for his blog and article on Quirky, awesome stuff.
Personally I don’t have a problem with the Quirky approach or their business model, in fact I think it’s pretty damn clever.
It’s giving ordinary people with no experience, knowledge or financial backing the chance to see their ideas become a reality and make a few bucks.
Sure the bucks aren’t that big but if you want to earn more money from your idea then create your own company, develop your idea, market it, protect it and sell and distribute it yourself… all at a considerable cost and impact on your responsibilities and life… and all with no guarantees. I speak from experience having set up my own limited company when I graduated aged 22 to develop, manufacture and distribute a product I invented, fortunately we’re still in business 4 years later.
Ideas are worthless without execution and that’s what Quirky provide, execution. They’re developing your idea, protecting it, marketing it and selling it. They’re doing all the leg work and all you have to provide in some cases is a sentence of your idea or a bogus doodle of an idea.
Kicking back with no work to do and receiving a paycheck each month in exchange for a sentence and a $10 punt seems like a fair deal to me, if Quirky were around 4 years ago perhaps I’d have made a different choice.
On a slow Sunday night a couple of weeks ago I decided to enter one of my old school projects to Quirky.
More for fun than anything else. Also since it has been blogged about and has been in my website for quite some time, I don’t feel very precious about it. Also I realized when I worked on the concept about a quadrillion problems with the design that would need a lot of work by more qualified people than me.
So, I thought what the heck, I’ll give it a shot and actually, I got some good feedback out of it.
What I like is that people take it at face value. they don’t know if you are a student or an old seasoned inventor. I have noticed that when student portfolios are being judged, (maybe rightfully) the ideas play second fiddle to the ability to convey process.
Here it seems that especially students get the chance to present an idea, free from the need to show the whole process. Nice for a change.
I like Quirky better than Kickstarter. What I would like to see is Quirky integrate a funding scheme into it. Investment in execution is far more compelling to me than investment in ideas. Kickstarter, your investment in the idea still relies on someone to execute that idea.
