Cyber Monday brings a new quirky shop, as well as some exciting changes to our pre-sale process.

We’re excited about the upgrades and look forward to your feedback!

A full redlined document of the changes can be found here (.doc).

1) removal of presale threshold concept - see previous post on new site changes.

2) introduction of direct-response marketing based sales as an additional basis for 10% royalty to users- Quirky plans to start testing direct response marketing (infomercials, etc)- Due to the expense associated with this, we think it is fair to consider sales associated with this among the 10% (retail royalty) vs the 30% (website royalty).

3) an IP auction is no longer mandatory if an idea submitter does not exercise the option to acquire the IP in an accepted product idea that is not chosen for manufacturing within 9 months.  instead, quirky continues to retain control over the IP. - Changed in conjunction with requests from users.. Very inventor friendly, you can take the idea back at any time after 9 months, but we will not eliminate it from our site (giving it a chance to be redesigned, licensed, etc)

4) inclusion of the following guidelines users must follow when promoting quirky and quirky products: - added by request of users, helps protect the quirky brand / products- while providing a framework for how you can positively promote your products.   We’ll have a more comprisehensive (and less legalese) guide to marketing quirky shortly.

• Post the following notice clearly and conspicuously on each and every page within an application:  ”This application is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or in any manner provided or controlled by Quirky, Inc.  Quirky, Inc. assumes no liability for the content of this application.”

• If using any Quirky branding (including, without limitation, Quirky or Quirky product brand names or logos), do not distort or alter the brand appearance.  For example, don’t change any spelling, don’t add or merge words, don’t alter color, font or dimensions.

• If using any Quirky created imagery (still photos or videos), include the following attribution:  ”© Quirky, Inc.  All rights reserved.” adjacent to each instance of imagery.

• Don’t claim any untrue association with Quirky.  Quirky Users are not employees, consultants, contractors or agents of Quirky.

• Don’t include the Quirky name or other Quirky brand name in a domain name (including, without limitation, Facebook page URL or Twitter page URL).

5) if a user acquires influence associated with a product, and purchases that product at quirky.com, the user cannot resell that product for less than the price offered at quirky.com at the time of resale. - this resale condition now depends upon acquisition of influence in any manner instead of purchase of the product during presale, further protecting quirky’s retail channel growth

6) clean up of some typos

We are pleased that the final retail price for Converge will be $40, and that it will be available at national retailers beginning next week.

To those who confirmed their order at the $60 price point, we will be issuing automatic refunds over the course of the next two weeks.

Good news, and bad news:

Good news: You can continue to enjoy quirky tonight and tomorrow morning with little to no interruption.

Bad news:  You’ll have to wait just a bit longer to see what we have up our sleeves.

We’ve hit some last minute snags in the testing of our new stuff tonight, and lost the majority of our tech team to holiday travel..  It seems everyone wants to see their families and stuff… go figure.

Nathan has assured us that when the changes to do go up, the site will only be down for 5-10 minutes-  That will happen sometime in the next day or so- but we’re unsure as to when.   As soon as we iron out the kinks (and overcome the inevitable turkey-coma) we’ll get this baby pushed & live.

Have a happy holiday.  We’re excited to show you the presents we have in store.

My apologies in the delay in communication here-  I wanted to address this myself, and have been traveling all week getting product in retailers’ hands.

First of all, we’ve heard you loud and clear.

Second, we reserve the right to change products for manufacturability / profitability during the production phase. We need to ensure the long term success of the business and our products, so we can keep doing what we do here for a very long time…

A ton is learned during production phases and we act with agility to respond, and bring a product to market in the best ways possible. Sometimes that means adding things, sometimes that means removing things.

Regardless, when the “SKU select” email is sent out, we make it very clear what the final product consists of. Everyone who confirmed their order saw on the checkout page what they were buying.

In conclusion, we’re reserving the right to change things as we have always done (in the best interests of our inventors, and long term sustainability). That said, for this item I’ve authorized a $10 dollar credit be added to all who completed their orders’ quirky accounts within 2 weeks.

This will not be a regular thing, though- so please check your SKU select pages diligently before confirming your orders in the future.

Thanks for inquiring, and understanding.

Ben

To start, however- we’ve addressed the heart of Quirky. The product evaluation process.

Today, the way we collect, curate, and choose ideas has completely changed. We’re confident that this is a giant leap forward. Is it perfect… probably not- that’s why it has “Beta” next to it.

Here’s what’s important:

1. Ideas now immediately go live after submission.
2. Ideas will each have 30 days to make it through evaluation.
3. At any point in that process, upon seeing positive traction within the community, the concept can be manually marked as “under consideration” by a member of the Quirky staff.
4. If your concept is “under consideration” the clock has officially stopped. You’ll be called by a Quirky Invention Ambassador who will work with you to understand everything there is to know about your idea.
5. We will pick several ideas each week from the bunch that are “under consideration”.
6. All ideas that are marked as “under consideration” will get a full report from a Quirky Invention Ambassador about why their idea was turned away (or selected).

Also Important

1. You can delete your idea from Quirky at any time throughout the process (with the exception of “under consideration”).
2. You can edit your idea at any time throughout the process.
3. Community members are now armed with several tools which will help you navigate the ideas that are up for evaluation: Sorting, Filters, Hide, etc.
4. If your idea is not selected, you can opt to have it included in a private Quirky archive. The archive is only viewed by Quirky staff and potential licensees under strict confidentiality agreements. The archive will allow us to remember your concept and contact you if we change our minds. It will also allow our newly formed Licensing department the opportunity to possibly procure a licensing deal for you.

We will be building collaborative tools into the early parts of product evaluation which will allow community members to help you draw, size up the competition, understand the market etc. We’ll be rolling these out slowly once we work out the kinks of the new system.

We are excited to test out what we believe to be a much more fair, easy to understand product evaluation process. We have also given our homepage a facelift- a nice simple greeting for new (non-logged in) Quirky users.

As always, we appreciate your feedback. Quirky is a constantly evolving organism.

You can download a redlined version of our terms and conditions here to see the changes first hand.

The following areas have been modified:

1. Idea submitters can now choose to either withdraw their idea (and delete it from our site) if the idea has not been marked as “under consideration” within 30 days following its submission, or place the idea in a private quirky archive, which can be shared with potential licensees, and/or be mineable if quirky is looking for a certain type of idea in a certain category of business.

2. Removal of pre-sale threshold concept. There will be major upcoming changes to the pre-sale system on our site.  For now, we’ll consider a product for production on a case by case basis.  Our goal here is to have many more ideas progress through to manufacture.

3. Addition of language in the privacy policy that would allow your information to be transferred in connection with a quirky M&A or restructuring/reorganization event (don’t worry, we have no intention of this happening any time soon)

Pretty straight forward changes, mostly centered around upcoming improvements to the quirky user experience.   If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!

Kidding, of course.

Because of the delicate nature of our business as it relates to intellectual property, etc… we at Quirky take changes to our T & C’s very seriously.  We try to revisit them as infrequently as possible, and when we do make changes, we try to make them as infrequently as possible.

I’m going to walk you through the changes that we will be making this week.  Please note your account will be logged out this weekend, and you’ll be asked to log back in / re-accept our new and improved terms & conditions (blame the suits).

You can see a redlined version of each and every change by clicking here, and I’ve provided explanations below

Ok, here we go-  Effective August 1st 2011:

1.   Users now have the right to withdraw idea submissions at anytime prior to selection (for any reason).

Inventors have requested this for a fair amount of time, and we see no reason why inventors shouldn’t retain this right.

2.   Fixing typo that illustrated that the inventor got exactly 40% on idea submissions.

While most of our math is very close (within a few fractions of a %), with briefs and co-branded opportunities on the horizon, we now wish to address this on a project by project basis.

We will be up front about the potential influence of the inventors at the start of each submission period.

As always influence allocations are at Quirky’s full discretion, but in most cases inventors wind up with 35-40% depending on many factors.

3.  Clarification of payment issuance process and treatment of payments to users who have passed away.  We are treating your work on Quirky as a perpetual thing.  As long as a family member claims your account in a reasonable amount of time, your work (and earning potential) will survive your account.

Very user friendly change which will protect the property you worked so hard to earn.

4.  Implementation of the IP revert process announced during the last town meeting.  This will affect all pre-sale products that have not hit threshold within 9 months.

Again, very inventor friendly.  You’ll see more information & an implementation of this in the coming weeks.

5.   Clarification that each user’s right to use another user’s submissions is limited to use in connection with the process that exists within the Quirky platform.

While we like it when people download other users’ submissions and tweak/refine/repost for the betterment of our products- we do not want you to represent other ideas as your own outside of the Quirky platform.

6.  Restriction on reselling pre-sale purchases for less then the price offered at quirky.com at the time of the re-sale (otherwise you risk losing your influence).  Also, there is further clarification that bulk pre-sale orders will be subjected to additional terms & conditions.

Shorting the pricing that we advertise on Quirky has HUGE detriment on Quirky’s ability to make the most of your product within the retail channel.  Retailers are very price conscious and MUST see that Quirky has full control over pricing.  This will protect the inventor and community’s chance for success.

7.  Additional / Expanded instructions for submitting copyright infringement notices with accordance to the DMCA.

Lawyer crap.

8.   Explanation of Quirky’s 90 day return policy.

Self explanatory.  Very customer friendly: we stand by our products.

9.   Change of governing law from Delaware to NY.

Who likes Delaware anyway?  Kidding of course, we love Delaware.  We just aren’t as familiar with Delaware law, and it’s not our primary place of business.

10. Excluding from mandatory arbitration, actions seeking injunctive relief against IP infringement and violations of the user conduct rules.

Mega lawyer crap, that hopefully no one will ever have to worry about.

11. Clarifying allocation of costs and fees arising from arbitration, and the restriction on class actions.

Super Mega Plus lawyer crap, that again, hopefully no one will ever have to worry about.

12. Miscellaneous additional clarifying edits and correction of typos

Because we’re hooked on phonics.

As you know, Quirky works VERY hard to secure formidable retail partners.   We have a high bar for partners, and  in turn, they set a high bar for Quirky & our community.

One of our newest partners, Radio Shack was due to debut the Pivot Power this week in their circular.

We found out yesterday that they were planning on undercutting the entire retail marketplace by 25%, while ignoring the entire story of Jake and what quirky represents as a business.

In the consumer products industry there are all sorts of mechanisms meant to avoid situations like this.    Things like ‘MAP’ (minimum advertised price)- and well, good old fashioned communication usually does the trick.

Unfortunately, our friends at RadioShack have already printed the ad, and you’ll find it in your Sunday newspapers.

While a lower price on Pivot Power sounds fantastic, the enormous impact of one retailer undercutting the entire retail marketplace is huge.    All of our other partners have plans for each product that goes out several months, and those plans are valued at multiple millions of dollars.

As such, we have sent a strong message to Radio Shack.   We will not be selling them product in the foreseeable future, and we will not continue to fulfill their current orders.

Their blatant dismissal of the uniqueness of Quirky, and the importance of our story (and our policies) does not give us the confidence we need to let them continue as one of our partners.

While this represents a large financial loss to Quirky, and the community- I can assure you that this was the right decision for the long term health of our brand, and our inventors.  It’s important that we build stable, healthy relationships with a foundation deeply rooted in the creativity of the people of the world.   Our retail partners should be working with us to make the people of the world successful, not against us.

The fall out of RadioShack’s actions will continue in the coming weeks as we need to work with our other partners to match prices, feel comfortable, etc.   I will keep you posted along the way.

The consumer product industry is a fun one to navigate.  Luckily, we have your best interests at heart.  This team will continue to do what we need to do to make invention accessible- and to set our inventors up for the maximum amount of success.