Quirky.com is a community driven website for people who have ideas or concepts of products they would like to invent and are looking for help finalizing their product and getting it to market.
Many other traditional product development companies, like Davison, requires you to submit your idea to their team and pay them to develop a prototype for you. Once this prototype is developed, you can choose to take it and go through the rest of the marketing process yourself, or pay the company to do it for you.
Quirky takes a new and innovative approach to the product development process, a process which technically will cost you none of your own money.
How It Works
Become a member of the Quirky.com community for free and then submit your idea. The website says that the best ideas will be well researched, easy to understand, and able to build with available technology. It also must be a physical, consumer product.
For 30 days after you submit your idea, the community can vote on it and collaborate with you, adding to the idea. If you get 200 votes or your idea is picked by their staff, it will then go to Expert Reviews.
Every Thursday industry experts get together and debate the best ideas that have been taken from the website, and they will choose which products they then want to go on and develop.
The Catch
Once you submit your idea to the Quirky.com community, it no longer is your property. It now belongs to the whole community as much as it belongs to you and everyone from the community who provides important feedback that is used in the final product will earn a percentage of the profits from the product.
The amount that you influence the product is considered Influence Points and directly translates to the percentage of the profits that you will eventually earn.
While some people might have complaints about only receiving a small part of the profits from an idea they came up with, Quirky is the one who pays to develop the product and bring it to market, and they are the only ones who lose money if the product fails.
It may not be an arrangement that works for everyone, but for people who feel confident that they have a successful idea but may not have the financial resources to bring it to market, this may be a company they would consider working with.
I am so sorry you had such a bad experience. Thank you for posting your review, it has helped me to make the decision not to work with Quirky. I am in the same boat as you. I have a ton of great ideas, but I lack the capital and resources.
I feel like all of us idea makers should pull together and be our own community without quirky ! ;)
I have no affiliation with them but was wondering why you called them a scam when they refunded your money?