Can you give an example or two of what you got? I'm just curious to see some examples of what Quirky made, especially the more trivial items, like you described.
Re:Quirky has filed for bankruptcy
by ClintEhrlich on Tuesday September 22, 2015 @10:46PM
(#10263068)
I'm actually struggling to remember the specific examples, precisely because I used the items so infrequently.
One product was a spray cap mounted on a spike, which you were supposed to insert into citrus fruits so that you could spritz things with them.
Another was a silicone cap for placing over citrus after you slice it in half so that the remaining fruit would stay fresher.
There was a square block that you could insert the top of a wine bottle into, so the bottle would not roll when stored on its side.
The only product I actually use is an octopus-like hybrid between an extension chord and a power strip, which works well for providing quick access to electrical outlets all along the couch in my den.
One example is the "egg minder", a battery-powered, zigbee-enabled egg carton.
http://www.amazon.com/Quirky-Egg-Minder-Enabled-Smart/dp/B00...
> I have never found any of them remotely useful
The only Quirky product I own is the Pivot Power [1][2] and that has been useful.
Perhaps that speaks to my mom's taste in gifts. But I suspect that the real problem is that Quirky offered expensive products for solving trivial problems. None of the items I received solved any pressing needs in my life.
For something like Quirky to succeed, it probably needs to use crowd-sourcing to identify a few A+ ideas for products and then manufacture them at a scale sufficient to make prices competitive. Instead, it seemed to offer a ton of different cute, kinda useful items.
That doesn't seem like a business model destined to take over the world.