Pivot Power Goes Off For Preliminary UL Review
How freaking cool is this?
Author Archive
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Tue 20 Jul 2010
Product Submission & Evaluation Changes
July already? Time is FLYING.
As we promised back at our first town meeting in April, big changes to the way products are submitted, rated, and evaluated are due to roll out this month.
I’d like to re-iterate the goals behind these changes:
1. Provide increased transparency to inventors/ideators as to how their idea did
2. Simplify/clarify our rating criteria to be more useful/self explanatory
3. Make the submission process more “Question/Answer” based vs. “Title/Description”
4. Allow us to better bubble up ideas, and get smarter about the way products are chosen.A good portion of our time over the past few months has been devoted to boiling down the product submission/evaluation process to its core, doing dry runs with different rating/voting procedures internally, and working to create a flow which will make the process delightful for all stakeholders.
So here’s the plan (and a sneak peek of what’s not too far away):
1. You may have notice Product 0053 has not yet been moved into evaluation. Reason being: we plan to push the first batch of these changes in the next day or two, and would like to wait until that’s done to have voting begin on 53.
2. Product 0054 will be the first product for which ideas are taken in the NEW FORMAT (details below).
3. While product 0053 will carry the newly designed voting/rating mechanisms, Product 0054 will be the first product for which a “0-100″ score will be provided.Product Submission:
Beginning with Product 54, product ideas will be submitted with a 140 character description of your product. You’ll have to categorize your submission into one of the following, and answer the corresponding questions:
Kitchen, Organization, Fitness, Home/Decor, Accessories, Lawn & Garden, Electronics:
Describe Your Problem, Describe Your Solution, Key Features (bullet points), Similar Products/Inspiration
Home Decor, Toys, Pets, Other:
Describe Your Customer, Describe Your Product, Key Features (bullet points), Similar Products/Inspiration
You’ll be given a preview of your idea in the format it will look when the world feasts its eyes on it, and then you’ll be asked to pony up your 99. Soon, you’ll also be able to save drafts, and edit a product at any time prior to the time evaluation on that idea begins.
Here’s a sneak peek:
Product Evaluation:
Rating & Voting:
For the time being, voting will remain as 3 votes per member per product evaluation round. However the rating criteria will be switched to:
- Uniqueness
- Usefulness
- Wow Factor
- Likeliness to Purchase
Voting & rating will no longer occur on the “product evaluation” page. Instead, every idea will carry its very own URL & page so that you can directly link friends & followers to your submission.
When you click on an evaluation project, you will see the countdown clock, along with a list of all of the 140 character descriptions of the idea, all which are clickable and will bring you to the “idea detail” page where you can vote, comment, and tab forward/next through that week’s submssions.
Comments:
One thing we have all observed since the launch of Quirky is how powerful/productive comment threads on the initial ideas can be.
For this reason, we will also be introducing categorized comments beginning with the evaluation of product 53. When you make a comment on a product, you will be asked to classify as:
General, Features, Inspiration & Competition, or Attachments & Assets
Just imagine seeing an idea and thinking “that exists already” you can sort the comments by competition and see what other members are saying about the competitive landscape, instead of reading through all 238 comments in the thread.
Scores & Decisions:
As I stated above, all ideas beginning with those submitted into Product 0054 will receive a 0-100 score:
Up to 50 Points: based upon community reaction (votes/comments/ratings):
The top 25% of the community reacted ideas will then move into the hopper for the staff to evaluate. Ideas that are not in the top 25% based upon community reaction will not be evaluated by our staff. The final score on these ideas will just be a reflection of the community reaction.
Up to 20 Points: based upon Quirky employee & retail partner reaction (votes/ratings that will occur internally):
A “deep dive” will then be done on the top 5 ideas (based upon score after community & employee input). Ideas that are not one of the top five will receive their final score, which will just be the addition of the community points, plus the internal points.
The “deep dive” on the top 5 will look at 3 major areas:
Up to 10 Points: based upon “Design Potential”:
How much potential does this product have to WOW?
Do we feel this idea provides us with the opportunity to design something distinctive so we can stand out from the market?
Up to 10 Points: based upon “Viability”:
Could we price at a competitive level while still maintaining the margin we need to pay the community, expenses, etc?
Intellectual Property / Uniqueness Concerns? (input from our legal team)
Up to 10 Points: based upon “Market Potential”:
What is the market potential for indirect sales? (input from our retail partners around the world)
What is the potential for direct sales? (input from our SEO/SEM team)
Once all the scoring is complete, the winner will be announced (the winner will now always be the top scored idea), and all ideas will carry a 0-100 score next to them. Depending upon how far each idea got in the evaluation process, you’ll be able to see how many points it recieved in each one of the above 5 areas.
As you’ll see, only the top 5 ideas are going to be eligible for the full 100 points.
Sneak peek of the product detail page with the final point allocation:
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Tue 20 Jul 2010
Making A Wrapster
How Cool Is This? Wrapster is coming along great, and is on track to ship in late August/early September We had to share this badass tool design, which kicks out 2 Wrapsters at a time (2 cavities).
Wrapsters are made in the USA!
Pictured Above: Hardened Steel Tool Design For The Wrapster
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Mon 19 Jul 2010
Many Shades Of Black (The Cloak Finally Begins To Ship)
Everybody seesand everyone agrees
That you and I were wrong
And it’s been that way too long
Take it as it comes
and be thankful when its done
There’s so many ways to act
And there’s many shades of black
There’s so many shades of black
There’s so many shades of black
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Tue 13 Jul 2010
Live Q&A
I’ll be on uStream doing a 30 minute live Q/A Tuesday (7/13) at 3pm (eastern)
As always, this will be a no rules, any-question-is-fair-game format. I’ll do my best to answer all your questions and get you thinking like we do.
Looking forward to seeing some of you there.
B
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Thu 1 Jul 2010
Cloak: Production Begins
Good news: We’ve gone ahead and given the green light for production to begin on Cloak.
As you can see here (in our July 4th weekend edition), the top cover now looks extremely gorgeous (just as we imagined it).
So where do we go from here?
1. You’ll receive an email from Quirky on Tuesday, requesting that you complete your order & choose your color. Remember: Your Cloak order is not complete until you return to the site & confirm your order.
2. We’ll be kicking out roughly a thousand units a day starting on July 3rd. We’ll have to prioritize color runs to be efficient. We’ll be producing Black first, then Pink, then Blue, then Green. Keep this in mind when you complete your orders (as this is the order in which the Cloaks will ship).
3. Exact shipment dates will be determined by the time you receive the confirmation email next Tuesday, but we still believe we will be able to ship most colors (perhaps not green) prior to July 15th. Blacks may be able to start shipping as early as next Friday.
Any questions? You know where to reach us. We’re excited about wrapping up this project and getting this awesome product in your hands.
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Fri 25 Jun 2010
Pre-Sale Deal Changes: Pivot Power & Onward
We’re gearing up to launch Pivot Power (which we all adore), but I’d like to bring to your attention a few minor changes we’ll be making to the pre-sale phase on Quirky, beginning with today’s launch.
1. There will no longer be free shipping in the U.S. associated with pre-sale. Instead we will provide as aggressive a discount as we’re able to.
2. People that buy in pre-sale will be shipped a laser-etched version of the product, with the # of the unit that they committed to. (also known as awesome)
Remember: committing in pre-sale actually makes you money on every unit that ships, anywhere in the world… in perpetuity.
Your purchase immediately makes you an influencer in the product. By way of example, someone who committed to Cloak in pre-sale earned 0.038% influence in the product. They are all set to make close to half their money back on their purchase ($15.37), just by getting in early. Pretty soon, they’ll have gotten the Cloak for free (due to reward payments equaling their purchase price), and then it won’t be long until they’re in the green.
Getting in on pre-sale is powerful. Numbers with as many decimals as 0.038 sound really small. But once the product goes into distribution, and we start talking in terms of hundreds of thousands of units, we’re talking real money. Selling just 100,000 units of Cloak would net a participant in pre-sale nearly 500 dollars. Insane!
We realize that the site needs to do a better job of telling this story to stimulate more pre-sales… and we’re working on it.
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Thu 24 Jun 2010
Cloak: Our Progress
We’ve continued to work at a good pace over the past few weeks on Cloak, and it’s all starting to come together.
1. All hard plastic parts have been production approved. This includes the typing stand, the portrait stand, the barrel, the barrel cover, and the hinge pieces.
2. Metal production is complete on the metal shaft.
3. The silicone iPad housing is now complete, and production approved (pending a minor adjustment due to be complete tonight).
As for the top cover (a main culprit in our extended process), a few things have needed to happened since we last wrote:
- We modified the tooling for the inner hard plastic part to accommodate a compression secondary process vs. an injection-based secondary process. This change took 10 or so days.
- Once we received the final hard plastic parts from the factory (this happened early last week), we shuttled samples out to two different vendors who will be working on shooting the silicone over the hard plastic.
Whoever finishes the part to our quality standards first will begin production immediately. Both of these vendors are due to show us final parts before Monday.
We are optimistic, given our prior work with these two vendors in the past, that we are just days away from being into formal production with the Cloak.
We will, of course, continue to answer your questions and provide updates on the product.
As for the launch plan…
Final purchase orders will be placed with our factories tomorrow, Friday, before noon EST. Assuming the top cover works as planned, formal production will begin in the middle or end of next week, which means first goods will arrive at the end of the following week.
You can expect our confirmation email the minute we receive word that formal production has begun.
We will be flying in Cloaks on a daily basis according to how many are completed by the factory on a given day. Orders will then ship on a first confirmed, first shipped basis — meaning you’ll want to get back to the site and pick your color/get your card charged as fast as possible once we send out the SKU select, because supply will be limited to a few hundred a day in the first week or so. Black and pink will ship first; blue and green will follow.
Another note, which will not affect most of you (except in a positively): we will most likely be raising the retail price once the product ships … the marketplace is showing that iPad cases are selling well at a higher price, prospective retailers have asked for a higher MSRP, and we decided to spare no expense when it came to material decisions related to this product.
Whatever price you pre-ordered the Cloak at will be honored.
The-Best-Damn-Case-On-The-Market
I know everyone is anxious to get the Cloak. Believe me, I am too.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been around the Apple Accessory Design world for close to six years now, and I’ve seen it all. Never before have I seen a case as fully featured, in as tight of a package, constructed using such an amazing combination of materials and manufacturing methods.
It’ll be worth the wait. As with any Quirky product, your card is not charged until you come back to the site to confirm your order (so be on the lookout for our confirmation email). Further, if you are not completely satisfied with the Cloak, we’ll replace or refund your product without any questions asked.
We’re sitting here anxious to get this baby into the marketplace, and even more anxious to reward the influencers of this product with close to $40,000 in the coming weeks.
Thanks for your patience.
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Sat 12 Jun 2010
Live Q&A Session #2
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Sat 12 Jun 2010
Answering Questions Live On Ustream A Bit This Afternoon
this one has ended.
