Quirky

Author Archive

• Thu 15 Apr 2010

  Cha-Ching! (How We’re Growing Revenue)

  Hello Community!

  Now that we’ve completed the move to our new office, launched the new site, doubled the size of our team, made several process improvements, and raised six million dollars, we’re now turning our focus to two specific areas.  First, continuing to improve how we identify, select and develop the best possible products, and second, selling the products so we can reward you guys as much as possible (cha-ching)!

  Today I wanted to give you an update on what we’re doing on the sales front:
  (I’ve also created a forum topic to gather feedback and ideas.)

  •    Engaged a Big Box Rep Firm. We’ve hired the top rep firm – Compass Marketing in Minneapolis – to help us develop relationships and sell the quirky products into big box retailers and other key strategic accounts.  The accounts are Best Buy, Brookstone, Costco, HSN, QVC, Sam’s Club, ShopNBC, Target, Toys R Us and Wal-Mart.  Developing these relationships takes time and our hope is to begin with their online stores this year and grow into the physical stores in 2011.  If we get lucky, we may get into one or two of these in 2010.  Our kick-off meeting with Compass is this Friday in Minneapolis.

  •    Evaluating Other Rep Firms. We’re identifying and evaluating other rep firms that may have specific expertise in certain regions (cities, states, or regions) or categories (design shops, hardware stores, college book stores, etc).   If you have any ideas, let us know.

  •    Hire #1: We’ve hired Matt Beckemyer to lead our efforts of selling products directly on quirky.com.  Matt is responsible for making the site easier for shoppers and he’ll also be developing SEM, SEO and other marketing initiatives to drive buyers to our site.   Matt has a lot of experience in online commerce and in less than two weeks is already driving significant changes at quirky.  He’s a terrible coffee maker but is rumored to be a former beer pong gold medalist.  We’re excited to welcome him to the quirky team and you’ll be hearing from him soon.  If you have any ideas for him, please let us know.

  •    Hire #2: We’ve hired Joanna Roth to help develop relationships with US retailers not covered by Compass or another rep firm.  There are approximately 300 of these retailers across the US.  Joanna spent a few years in sales in a large bank and at Lulu Lemon.  She was also a bad-ass varsity tennis player at Princeton.  Joanna begins next week.  We’re excited to welcome her to the team and get her out evangelizing quirky to retailers nationwide.

  •    Hire #3: We’re currently interviewing for someone to develop and manage international distribution.  Our goal is to be selling products into more than a dozen countries by the end of this year.  This includes identifying and evaluating distributors, negotiating the terms of the relationships, educating on new products each week and working with operations, finance, design, and marketing to optimize sales.  We expect to have this person started no later than June 1st.

  •    Exploring how you guys can help. If any of you guys are interested we’re exploring ways the community can help us sell products.  This could be direct to consumers (think some cool new version of Avon) and/or wholesale (talking to retailers).  We haven’t figured out a great way to do this yet but are actively thinking about it.  Let us know any good ideas.

  There’s a lot we’ve already done and a lot more we’ll be doing to promote the quirky products and increase sales and rewards to the Community.  There’s no silver bullet here.  It’s a lot of hard work, evangelizing, educating, follow-up and baby steps each day.  We’ll continue to get stronger and stronger and over time we’ll build a killer distribution network.  As always, let us know if you have any ideas on how we can do this better, faster or cheaper!

  Mitch

  email: mitch(at)quirky(dot)com
  twitter: @mitchlowe

  • Tags:
  • cash money,
  • community,
  • e-commerce,
  • new hires,
  • rep firm,
  • sales,
  • staff

  • 2 Comments
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• Mon 29 Mar 2010

  Open Beats Closed

  That is the foundational belief at Quirky. Since the industrial revolution, business has been “closed” — meaning relatively few people have made the decisions about what products come to market and how a business should be run. At Quirky, we believe that’s an outdated way of doing business. In fact, we’re betting the company on it. We believe that we, together, are smarter and more capable of designing great products and building a great company. Together, we can reshape markets, design breakthrough products, and demonstrate to the world that, in fact, Open Beats Closed.

  I’m creating a forum topic about this: let us know your thoughts here.

  I wrote this in my last blog post, but it’s worth repeating. What we’re trying to accomplish here 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 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. And if you’re interested, we want you to be a part of it. We’ll always post our open positions on the web site and do a blog post about them. If you think you’re a great match, or know someone who is, let us know!

  But the Quirky team 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 our community.

  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. Keep telling us what we can do to get better. We’re listening.

  • Tags:
  • community,
  • forum,
  • jobs,
  • office,
  • open business

  • No Comments
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• Wed 24 Feb 2010

  I’m So Excited To Be A Quirk

  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

  • Tags:
  • ben,
  • community,
  • love,
  • mitch,
  • office culture,
  • quirky team,
  • start-up

  • 3 Comments
  • Permalink