Fri, Feb 26 2010
Newsletter number two should be in your inboxes. If not, check it out here.
Congrats again to Judi, our User of the Week!
Newsletter number two should be in your inboxes. If not, check it out here.
Congrats again to Judi, our User of the Week!
To regroup after the craziness of the move, we held our first Community Pulse meeting in our new model shop (pictured above) to discuss all things related to YOU, our wacky, quirky, infinitely loyal community. This weekly meeting is just one of many ways we’re working to improve the Quirky experience.
Here are just a few of the many, many things we discussed:
- Creating a central dashboard so that when you log onto our system, you can immediately view new activity on the site, receive notifications, track the projects you’re influencing, be alerted to follow-up comments on forum threads you’ve posted, etc.
- Demystifying our influence engine by creating a number of graphics that clearly illustrate various influence earning scenarios.
- Improving our idea submission process in such a way that makes it easier to peruse and compare submissions. This will be important as the number of submissions per week continues to grow.
- Recognizing active Quirks with a badge/reward system, and rewarding those who have been particularly successful with social sales. We now have a “User of the Week,” who receives a free product idea submission and recognition in the weekly newsletter, but we want to do more!
- SWAG! By popular demand, we are working with our branding folks to come up with a super slick line of Quirky products, which will hopefully go up for sale in the Quirky store soon.
These changes, and the others we discussed, will take some time to implement, but we’re working hard to get the ball rolling now. Please continue to let us know what you think about these and other ideas and improvements. If you couldn’t tell by now, we value your opinions!
By popular demand, we’ve made a few changes to the layout of our Community Forum:
- There is now a small link to access the forum directly on the top bar of the site. No more digging around in the Learn section! You can also bookmark the following link for easier access: http://www.quirky.com/forums/.
- On the bottom of each thread post, you can find the following new links:
* Link: click here and a link to that particular post will appear in your browser.
* Edit: finally!
* Delete: duh.
We’re doing our best to make the Community Forum a comfy place to hang out between project phases. These are just a few of many user-suggested changes to come. Keep hitting us back with feedback, and we’ll keep implementing your ideas!
Hi all,
We wanted to remind you that Monday is March 1, which means our new terms and conditions will take effect. You might remember that Ben blogged about this here, but we figured we’d give you a recap below.
For all product ideas that are submitted on or after March 1st, 2010, the 30/10 product rewards will take effect. In other words, for Product 36 and onward, we will reward 30% to all influencers for direct sales on quirky.com, and 10% to all influencers for indirect sales (wholesale/distribution).
Remember, we are doing this to allow us to invest heavily and confidently in the expansion of all of quirky’s products into channel(s) which should allow for a LARGE increase in overall sales and overall reward distribution.
As we explained previously, changing the product reward % is something we don’t want to have to do, but it has become apparent that if we want these products to reach their full potential, we need to invest heavily in opening up a full scale sales department, retail/wholesale distribution partnerships around the world, etc. All of this will be done at the company’s expense.
That said, once we’ve built the machine, we need to make sure it’s sustainable. Specifically, we need to make sure that the actual sale of each individual unit is profitable– otherwise we won’t be around very long.
Let’s walk through the mechanics of a hypothetical Retail/Wholesale Deal:
:: Assume an accessory type Widget with a retail price of $20.
:: With the way we are pricing items, it’s safe to assume a product with this retail price will cost us roughly $5.50 to source, manufacture, QA , package & ship.
:: An average retailer looks for at LEAST a 50% margin on accessory type items. (this means we would have to sell to them at around 10 dollars)
:: We would likely have to pay a Sales Rep anywhere from 5-10% to complete/manage the sales relationship (lets just say 7%, so $0.70 on this transaction)
:: Once the retailer pays us, (and that could take a while) quirky will take in roughly $9.30.
:: Off of that $9.30, as it stands we would pay 30% out to the community ($2.79)
:: The “profit” received by quirky for the sale of this $10 item would be: $9.30(net receipts) – $7.29 (Community Expense + Cost of goods) = $1.01
:: That leaves us with about a dollar on each unit to pay the quirky staff, run the website, warehouse all of the goods, carry / purchase inventory, market the product, etc.
While we would love to be able to do this, it’s just not possible. We need to build a model that will allow us to provide this service to you for decades to come AND make every product successful/profitable for both the business & our influencers.
We feel strongly that this change will work out for everyone’s benefit, and we are confident that we won’t have to make a change like this again for quite some time. As always, hit up our Community Ambassadors at questions@quirky.com if you have any questions or concerns. We’re always listening!
Yep, you heard us. We’re continuing our search for great, quirky people to add to our team. Check out the job description below, and pass it along to anyone who you think might fit the bill!
The Quirky e-Commerce & Online Marketing Guru will be responsible for selling Quirky’s products directly on quirky.com <http://quirky.com>. This person will have experience with online marketing strategies such as SEM, SEO, affiliate networks, CPA display advertising, social sales tactics, and partnerships with other sites to drive sales. This person will also have experience with data-driven direct marketing techniques and work closely with a technology team to develop conversion tracking, A/B testing of UI, landing pages, etc. He/she will create an unparalleled customer experience that drives conversion rates and grows revenue and profitability. The ideal candidate will have strong e-commerce experience and a passion for design and consumer products, as well as a healthy obsession for the Quirky brand.
What We’re Looking For:
– Two or more years of experience in e-Commerce marketing, preferably with consumer-facing e-commerce site(s).
– Experience bringing ideas from concept to prototype and the ability to document functional requirements and work well with the Quirky technology team.
– Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Equally effective communicating in formal and informal settings with senior executives, peers, and potential business partners.
E-mail your resume and cover letter to ecommercejobs@quirky.com with the subject “E-COMMERCE GURU.”
My French Press coffee maker is one of my favorite items I keep in my apartment. The version I currently own is composed of many different materials like glass, metal, and some plastic. Each having a specific purpose, contrasting visual quality and feel, all working together to help to achieve its general function of brewing coffee.
There are a few stages to making coffee with a French Press. First you need to coarsely grind the beans, boil some water, stir, wait, cover…then press and pour. This simple method of brewing coffee tends to produce more flavor than a standard drip machine. But beyond taste alone, the french press style of brewing is a process that instills patience and proportion, skills that are much further reaching than your coffee cup.
There are many ways to make a cup of coffee, each one having its own unique aspect of preparation. If you like to drink coffee from time to time, check it out!
One of my passions is building companies. I’ve been involved in three start-ups over the past 15 years. One was successful and two were not. My definition of success doesn’t mean the company sold for a lot of money. Rather, I define success as building an incredible culture of smart, hungry, and humble employees all trying to build something extraordinary, and having customers who love us. If you can do those two things, really great things happen. That’s the kind of success I want to help recreate at Quirky.
I met Ben through a mutual friend in September. Over the next couple of months I got to know Ben and Quirky much better. Ben is an incredibly gifted person: bright, creative, and driven to see his dream of social product development become reality. I also got to take a hard look at the team and the business model. It’s innovative and disruptive. I fell for it completely. Ben also got to know me and my philosophies for building a company. In November, Ben asked me to get involved with Quirky in a big way. So I did. I made a significant investment and agreed to make Quirky my top business priority. My role is as a co-pilot to Ben, to help advise and coach him and the team.
It won’t be easy. No start-up is. But Quirky especially will take incredibly hard work, imagination, a willingness to take risks, and an incredible team of employees and community members. We’re trying to do something absolutely profound here. We’re trying to bring the dreams of inventors from all over the world to life. We’re trying to build a consumer brand from scratch. We’re competing in many different consumer product categories against many entrenched companies. We’re sharing rewards with thousands of contributors from around the world. We’re building an entirely new kind of consumer products company. We need to build robust capacities in design, manufacturing, and distribution. We need to build a great team. And we need to manage cash flow. Like I said, this won’t be easy.
This works if we do it together. We’re committed to building an extraordinary team at Quirky: a team of employees who are smart, energetic, driven, great teammates, and passionate about building something great. But that won’t be enough. We need your participation. We’re going to let you inside the Quirky business in a way that I don’t think has ever been done by another company. You’ve begun to see it: the forum and our blog posts. That’s just the beginning. We promise to be honest and fully transparent with the community. And in return we’ll ask for your participation and your bright ideas to help us navigate the difficult choices we’ll face as we grow. I’ll be writing regularly with progress, the difficult issues we’re facing, and thoughts on areas I find fundamental to our success. Tell me exactly what you think. Be direct. We need everyone’s best thinking.
Together, we can do something really extraordinary here. I’m honored and humbled to be a part of it.
– Mitch
Today is moving day… I’m super excited about the new space, but 34 Ave A certainly treated us well. We had a great year here, and we’re ready for even bigger and more exciting things to come!
I figured it was a good day to share a few of my favorite memories from our first year at Quirky, on Ave A. Here are some things that stick out in my mind:
1. When our first product, Split Stick, hit threshold.
2. When we did our first Quick & Quirky event and decided to take on two products in just 24 hours. That call to Jeff Scholen at 1 am asking if he was cool with us moving forward with his concept, even though it wasn’t at the top of the community vote originally, will always stick out in my mind!
3. When we shipped thousands of Powercurl boxes from the office itself. This was in our pre-warehouse days, and it was quite exciting to be part of the action from start to finish. The FedEx team thought we were insane (I think they are still recovering).
4. When we had one week full of TV press hits that we watched live in the office — we’re talking ABC coverage of the DigiDudes and Ben’s appearance on Fox Business News.
5. And, of course, the laughs that ensue every time someone asked, “Where is Avenue Wesome?”
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