If you’re wondering how our robot was named, thank a short lived British claymation show.
Watch Bertha’s first build live on UStream. It’s printing 2 quirky products. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out which two (one is easy).
Just a quick note explaining why we’ve increased the timelines on 46/47:
There are a bunch of things going on in the next few weeks and we’ve adjusted the development schedule accordingly:
- Compostapalooza kicks off next Monday.
- Half of the design team is being pulled off new projects at the end of next week to focus on production of Cloak and the other thresholded products in an effort to expedite shipping/assure quality.
- We are getting ready to start running changes relating to our discussion during Town Meeting. (you may be starting to see this already with project structure on products 44 and later)
- We’re getting ready to do a fun event on June 2nd (Quirky’s 1st birthday).
So, bear with us on the extended time frame this week. It’ll allow us all to catch our breath and push forward toward all the great stuff in the future.
Rock.
Petal Drops tooling is almost complete. Here’s a peek at what the progress looks like.
You may remember, Petal Drops is being made just down the block from Quirky’s HQ out of 100% sustainable bio-resin.
We should see first shots of the Petal Drops within 2 weeks or so. Looking on schedule according to the milestone feature on the Petal Drops Page.
Enjoy!
We’re all very excited about the Tape Stamp. With that excitement, however, comes a lot of, “holsh, this thing is a really big great idea – and we don’t wanna $^#@ this up.”
So, we get our fancy rapid awesome machine delivered to the Quirky model shop next week. We’re going to spend a few weeks modeling out different variations of the Tape Stamp, and experimenting with various mechanical solutions / options. We promise to keep you posted throughout the way.
Here’s what you need to know: We’re not going to launch the Tape Stamp into the Quirky shop until we have a reliable, working model that we believe will be able to be manufactured at mass scale. We’re working as fast as we can on this one to assure we do everything in our power to not miss the 2010 holiday rush.
We believe in Tape Stamp. Now we just have to turn that belief into fact. We’re excited about going through a proper process here and launching the TapeStamp with a demo video/commercial to stimulate pre-sales.
So bear with the silence on this project for a bit.
Oerrr/Out.
Hey Quirks!
My name is Joanna and I am joining the new salesforce at Quirky! It is my first official day on the job and I am bouncing off the walls with excitement. This place is filled with new product ideas every day and I can’t wait to tell retailers all over the US about them.
The first thing that attracted me to Quirky was YOU. I love that the website is acting as a hub for inventors all over the WORLD to get together and collaborate. What product design company can compete with that? Secondly, the Quirky team is second to none. I am amazed at the brilliance, energy, ambition and integrity of every member of the team. It’s an honor to have been chosen as a representative of the company.
What exactly will I be doing you ask?
My job will be to take all those fabulous ideas you have created and get them into stores all over the US. That means I love products that are functional and unique (nothing like it out there) with large market potential. If we get the combo right, I will have an endless list of stores to call and the buyers won’t have to think twice about putting in an order. And THAT means more $ in the bank for you.
With a community that is constantly generating new ideas and a killer design team, I am confident that this will be an easy sell. Keep up the great work and soon you may be seeing your very own invention in a store by you!!
Looking forward to working with you all!
Joanna
After 325 days, we’ve moved SlingBack into production.
As many of you know, this has sparked both an internal/external conversation about product aging and how it should affect the threshold process. We have a bunch of thoughts, and we’ll continue to monitor the respective threads on this topic on the blog/forum.
At the end of the day, we agreed with many of your sentiments about keeping our word, etc. That, and we think Slingback is a great product.
We hope to address the aging/threshold stuff in the next few weeks. But for now, congratulations to everyone on pushing product #14 to threshold.
First, I want to be very clear:
Wrapster is greenlit, and Quirky is committed to making the ultimate earbud cord management solution.
Next, I want to be equally as clear:
Wrapster, as originally designed by the Quirky community & team, has failed user testing miserably, and is going to be redesigned prior to mass production.
During Quick & Quirky, we asked 12 random visitors, most of whom had never heard of this product and were simply friends of staff members, to help us out with an experiment.
We handed them the Wrapster prototypes, along with a pair of earbuds, and told them to try wrapping the cord.
Our process at Quirky is fast for a reason. It gets us to this point in the process quicker then any other medium. We believe the concept behind the Wrapster is a good one, and that’s why we are taking the project so seriously and putting it through these exercises before pushing it out into the market.
In cases like this, where we get it wrong, we are going to work to make sure that we set up the product to succeed to its full potential.
As for Wrapster here are the next steps:
We believe firmly in the fact that we are not going to produce products that are not viable. It’s not in our best interests, it’s not in Matt’s best interests, and it’s not in the community’s best interests. We’d rather take the time to get it right, rather than put the product out, have it sell to a few enthused community members and then never sell another unit.
Over the course of the next few months you will see many changes at Quirky, most of which revolve around enhancing the design/development process to assure that products that are green-lit are going to succeed. This means launching products to pre-sale with prototype videos, user interaction videos, etc.
Wrapster will succeed. We just need to stick with it, and follow the research. We can/will make this the ultimate earbud solution.
Rock. FORUM POST HERE
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