Too scared to take on the might of the moneyed folk in the Dragons’ Den? For $99 you can put your product idea up for grabs on a website and if it’s popular enough it’ll be made into a real life item.
“Every few days we bring one brand new product from sketch to store,” says a spokesperson for quirky.
“quirky engages participants to collaborate in every aspect of product creation – from ideation [sic], design, naming, manufacturing, marketing, right on through to sales.”
Anyone can participate on quirky.com either by submitting their own product idea for $99, or by voting, rating, and influencing other people’s product ideas.
The community surveys the submissions during the seven-day evaluation period and selects one product to move forward to product development. quirky’s community then begins weighing in on everything from naming to logo selection to packaging through to prototype.
The final product then becomes available for pre-sale at the quirky online store.
Crucially, 30¢ of every dollar generated from the sale of a quirky product goes back to the community.
“Community” in this case covers both the idea’s originator, as well as all the people who voted, commented, and rated the project idea along the way.