Congrats Sarah, John, Ellen and Yolanda!

Sarah Salazar is an architecture student at the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture. She has an extremely busy schedule and likes to be really organized in order to maintain it. However, Sarah could not find a planner that fit her life style; existing planners held her back. Her idea is a 2-in-1 Planner. The design combines a 24 hour day-to-day planner with a small notebook within for to-do lists, notes and projects. This seemingly simple solution allows the user to transfer notes from the center book so that they can be executed any day of the week.

This idea was received well by the Quirky team and they are excited for the challenge. They felt that it could be a potential “game changer” for organizing information in an analogue style and the dual functionality is intriguing. Despite the fact that we live in a smartphone world, people still have a connection to physical planners and notebooks.

John Aitchison is running a start up business that connects teachers to students in third world countries. One day while he was cleaning his bathroom, he noticed that his toothbrush holder was disgusting even though he cleaned it not that long before. He realized that toothbrush holders do not give toothbrushes the airflow they need to dry properly, and as a result, disgusting slurry materializes. His horizontal design solves this problem and includes storage space for toothpaste and floss.

The Quirky team felt that even though toothbrush management on the sink has been solved in many different ways, there is definite room for improvement. Everyone has a sink and everyone should have a toothbrush, but a sanitary, space-saving, storage solution is missing from the market.

Ellen Lopiano is a dog groomer from Connecticut, who lost all of her power for weeks after Hurricane Irene hit. Her family’s only option was to cook all of their meals on the grill. It was then that she discovered a potential need for pots and pans that can be used safely on the grill. Her idea incorporated removable handles that can detach when you close the grill and can reattach when you want to take them off the grill.

The design team thought that this was a great idea for heating/reheating or boiling vegetables and other foods on the grill. They have never seen any products on the market where the detachable handle is towards the end of the handle, away from the pot/pan. The marketing team felt that this solves a problem that anyone with a grill might run into. They also liked the fact that it goes along well with out current category items and retail channels. The viability mentioned that patents and existing commercial products focus on an alternative method of detachable handles, so patent protection could be available for an innovative design concept.

Yolanda Jackson is a sanitary technician for a hospital in Illinois. Invention ideas come naturally to her and her original thought on this idea was that it was tremendously cool. We understood the intended WOW factor and we wanted to make the slimmed down toaster into a reality. We will look into creating new ways to toast bread and gather from market research if people want images on their toast.

The design team understood Yolanda’s invention idea to take the toaster and reinvent how it works. They thought it could have a potentially high wow factor.  The marketing team also thought that this was a great opportunity for Quirky to innovate on a product that is currently boring. They want the redesign to make a toaster look high-end and take up less counter space, so that we can differentiate this product from others out on the market.