

Quirky.com - the Threadless of product design - csmeder
http://www.quirky.com/

======
notahacker
A lot of people might consider it to be poor value to put up $99 for a ~1/50
chance (47 submissions being voted on) that someone might start the
development of their idea, which if it ever actually makes it to market will
offer them a 12% revenue share...

With that kind of expected ROI, you'd better have an idea you believe is worth
tens of thousands of dollars, in which case why would you leave the chances of
it actually being developed to a popularity contest...

~~~
hipsterelitist
We're actually looking at this very issue right now. At the moment most of our
submitters tend to be spare time tinkerers that actually really believe in
their products, so much so that they're willing to spend $99 dollars on the
chance to see it in production.

Outside of that, we actually give them back all of the data from the
'popularity contest' in the form of pretty detailed analytics package, so they
can refine their idea and take it elsewhere or give us a shot again at a
reduced price.

~~~
fragmede
Is the $100 really projected to be a revenue source?

Because it's terrible.

More specifically, it's poorly implemented and too high. It's "hidden" until
after you finish filling out the 'submit idea' page with a big button on the
home page, and it's poorly phrased... "Also, your payment information is
required to complete your submission." Oh yeah, like you almost forgot you
were gonna do that. Be more up front about the fee (change the layout so it
doesn't hide below 'the fold'), and make the fee smaller. You want to _avoid_
people filling out their idea submission, getting pissed that it costs $100,
and then refusing to come back.

You _should_ charge something (rudimentary spam-filter), but $100 is too high.
The tinkerer has already identified a problem, come up with a solution,
_drawn_ their idea on a napkin or even Google Sketchup, is also going to have
to weigh that $100 against material costs. As an example - cream cheese that
comes in bagel-shaped slices. I could gamble $100 on it at Quirky, or spend
$50 in cream cheese and some shop-time to build a prototype. If I'm _really_
convinced that my shelf-shaped cereal-bowls-so-your-cereal-doesn't-get-soggy
idea is going to take over the world, I would have a rough idea of the costs
involved to fully bring it to market (shapeways.com + etsy.com +
reddit/digg/etc, and if it really pans out - use proceeds to pay for injection
molding).

If I'm looking to spend $100 at once on an idea, well... it costs $100 for a
provisional patent, and tinkerers are well aware of that.

(And that half-baked idea that I'm too lazy to implement? Not worth $100.)

How about sliding scale - pay $20 to submit your idea, but you get less of the
revenue?

I hope you guys succeed, if only so I'll have somewhere to buy my dustpan-
with-fingers.

~~~
hipsterelitist
heh, please see my reply to the post below this.

------
dreaming
It doesn't feel as readily accessible or friendly as Threadless, despite the
school-paper design. I was thinking it might be the subject matter, being that
love of product design isn't quite as ubiquitous as people who like t-shirts,
but it also occurs to me that while both demand community participation, the
Threadless site has lots of cheerful looking people. I wonder if this impacts
on desire to participate.

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nhebb
Using NoScript, I see a lot of sites that don't gracefully handle disabled
javascript, but the click handling for the "Newest Accessories Toys ..." js
links has to be one of the worst.

Before you dismiss me as another NoScript crank, think about this:

If you ran an A/B test and eked out a 5-10% conversion improvement for that
test, would you be happy? Of course you would. It would be a small
improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. Not gracefully handling the 5-10%
of visitors with javascript disabled is just like that A/B test, but in
reverse.

~~~
msy
I've heard 5%, 10%, occasionally 15% many, many times, I've never heard a
verifiable source.

The most recent number I can find is 2008 and that's at 5% with a downward
trend: <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

Or ~2% in 2007 at [http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/08/eu-and-us-
javascript-d...](http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/08/eu-and-us-javascript-
disabled-index.html)

I don't think that number is going anywhere but down, no matter how many of
your hacker friends are running noScript.

Sure you can argue you're losing x% of your possible conversions due to
needing JS but you cannot quantify what percentage you gain by having a
distinctly more fluid/exciting website or the cost of the features/polish you
don't do because you're developing handling for no-js scenarios. Personally
I'm a fan of graceful degradation in all but the most appish sites but at this
point no-js is almost as edge-case as no-css.

~~~
nhebb
I wasn't trying to imply that that a site _had_ to accommodate disabled
javascript, Sites should handle it gracefully though. It doesn't take that
much effort to at least add something like <noscript>This site requires
javascript.</noscript>.

BTW, I just revisited it and they fixed the previous problem. Earlier, if you
clicked one of the js links you would get text page of raw html.

------
Tichy
It reminds me a little bit of Tchibo Ideas <https://www.tchibo-ideas.de/>
(German). Tchibo was originally a coffee trader (I think), but now they push
weekly special products at supermarkets (a trend that started in Germany some
years ago). So if one of your ideas is adopted, it could be sold in huge
quantities.

Unfortunately most of it is the antithesis of lean living (useless special
case household tools), but some things they make are nice.

------
DanielBMarkham
I like the _idea_ of this site, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

It reminds me of those catalogs in the seat-backs of airplanes that I end up
reading when I get bored. Lots of stuff -- but nothing really struck me as
being all that valuable or novel. Kitsch.

~~~
hipsterelitist
Oddly enough, the people that actually love those backseat catalogs are our
core audience at the moment. This current incarnation was more of a following
rather than leading our audience.

We're in the process of remedying this "kitsch" right now.

~~~
tomg
Small world... my girlfriend just applied to a position with Quirky and today
I see it on HN.

I once helped build a site for a client that sold all sorts of one-off stuff
from around the world. Last I heard her site really took off and she's been
contacting some of the orig devs about more work... it's definitely a niche
market but I guess there's plenty of folks with disposable income seeking
novelty.

------
antidaily
Hardly.

