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Why Quirky Failed

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Re: Why Quirky Failed

#21

Post by ics »

dangrossman wrote: post #6
georgemcbay wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same situation here. Quirky is "right up my alley" and somehow I never heard of it until it was shutting down. Don't know if this is a regional issue (I'm in San Diego) or what.

There was a Quirky mid-aisle display at Wal-Marts for a while. I also see their organization stuff at Marshalls/HomeGoods on an irregular basis. Quirky made Wink, the home automation product line, which has a permanent endcap in most Home Depot and Target stores. As the article mentions, the lack of strong branding was one of their problems; it's easy to see their various products throughout a store and not realize t…

I also didn't know anything about them until hearing about the shutdown but now that you mention it I have seen the "Wink" stuff in Home Depot and probably elsewhere. However that was negative signaling for me, since Home Depot is not a name that I trust for tech but just a place I go if there isn't time to order something. With Nest products however it was because I had heard of them long before seeing them in Home Depot that my reaction was neutral-positive for retail stores carrying them. I don't expect my jaded 20-something outlook to represents most shoppers but it would've been cool to know about.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#22

Post by davemel37 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #19

I agree very much with this article. Kaufman is a very cool, stand-up guy; everyone I met at Quirky was smart and nimble and on board with the vision. The products ranged from naïf (hence "Quirky") to straight up brilliant. It makes sense to me that they simply took on too much, and should have focused and iterated on their better products.

Better products wouldnt have helped. Customers dont know something is better until after they buy. They certainly had a branding issue by focusing on their products instead of on their users.

If they asked themselves before making every decision, "how will this help our users invent better products and bring them to market, they may have survived. Instead they asked themselves, " what can we do to make more money."

Their core product was their community, they never seemed to get that!

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#23

Post by sjs382 »

I posted this in another thread about them (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10217582), but it bears repeating:

If the customer service experience was anything like what it was pre-pivot, I'm not surprised they failed. When they were going out of business/pivoting, I ordered a bunch of their inventory at a large discount. One week after the "expected arrival date" (and 14 days after my order), surprised that my order hadn't arrived, I emailed them asking for a tracking number. They told me that it was waiting for the carrier to pick up the order and that I would get a tracking number that day. Every two days, repeat the same thing. Promises, no tracking number. Finally, 5 weeks after the order was completed, I received a tracking number. Terrible experience, for what amounted to a bunch of (fun) junk.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#24

Post by toomuchtodo »

dangrossman wrote: post #17
Killah911 wrote: post #15

This may sound like a very shallow comment, but what happens to the Wink stuff? I just bought one of the GE Wink light kits & the Wink hub is a "Quirky" product. It's already been a little buggy, but I figured it'd improve over time. Does GE pick up development/support work going forward?

Wink Inc is up for sale separately from the rest of the Quirky business. There are already offers on the table, and their press releases thus far have said they don't anticipate any interruption to that part of the business -- the team's still in place, maintaining the services and working on improvements. There are so many "Works with Wink" products on the shelves -- not just GE, but Cree, Leviton, Lutron, Chamberla…

I'd be surprised if Google, Apple, or Microsoft didn't pick Wink up.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#25

Post by markbnj »

I don't understand how you can say this...

>> Quirky nailed nearly everything

and then say this...

>> It may sound harsh but at nearly every step of the way, the loftiness of Quirky’s ambitions far outpaced the laws of physics.

So they nailed nearly everything, but the fundamental goals they set were impractical and unattainable?

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#26

Post by hiou »

mbesto wrote: post #16

> Visionary founder with the perfect background... > Disrupting the incredibly horrible experience of inventing a physical product... > Top-tier investors... > Board of directors stacked... > Crazy high community engagement... > ...an exceptional team of engineers, designers, marketers... > So if everything was so good, how did the company spend $180M of investors’ money, sell very little product, replace the founder…

There is an exceptional irony in investing in an exceptionally talented team as they are typically the ones with the smallest downside in failure.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#27

Post by larkinrichards »

This is one of those stories where I initially go "wait, quirky failed?" and then I think of the Quirky Eggminder that I purchased and realize, "yea, that product really did make me a sad and angry customer."

For those who don't know, the eggminder was a wifi enabled egg carton paired with a smartphone app that tells you how many eggs you currently have, how old each egg is, and notifies you when you need more eggs. For a guy who eats eggs two-to-three days a week and isn't quite sure how many are left in the carton when he's at the grocery store, it was pretty nice.

Unfortunately, if you've ever put batteries in the refrigerator (think of that NYTimes review of the Model S), you would know they don't function very well at low temperatures. The egg minder runs out of batteries within a week, at which point it becomes a glorified and overpriced egg carton.

One glaring flaw made the product useless. Today I've learned that was true of most of their products.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#28

Post by firebones »

markbnj wrote: post #25

I don't understand how you can say this... >> Quirky nailed nearly everything and then say this... >> It may sound harsh but at nearly every step of the way, the loftiness of Quirky’s ambitions far outpaced the laws of physics. So they nailed nearly everything, but the fundamental goals they set were impractical and unattainable?

Yet all the people their lofty ambitions convinced to invest, be on the board and advise also missed this problem with the fundamental goals.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#29

Post by username223 »

larkinrichards wrote: post #27

This is one of those stories where I initially go "wait, quirky failed?" and then I think of the Quirky Eggminder that I purchased and realize, "yea, that product really did make me a sad and angry customer." For those who don't know, the eggminder was a wifi enabled egg carton paired with a smartphone app that tells you how many eggs you currently have, how old each egg is, and notifies you when you need more eggs.…

How can this have been a thing? First, eggs don't need to be refrigerated; they keep at least a week at room temperature. Second, they can be bought in lots of 6, 12, 18, and 36 in most supermarkets; choose based on your rate of consumption. Third, they're dirt cheap, typically less than 25 cents apiece. We're talking Vessyl levels of pointlessness here.

Re: Why Quirky Failed

#30

Post by dasil003 »

mbesto wrote: post #16

> Visionary founder with the perfect background... > Disrupting the incredibly horrible experience of inventing a physical product... > Top-tier investors... > Board of directors stacked... > Crazy high community engagement... > ...an exceptional team of engineers, designers, marketers... > So if everything was so good, how did the company spend $180M of investors’ money, sell very little product, replace the founder…

Nothing prescribes a successful outcome, in a sense anything that looks too perfect on paper tends to implode because of the unrealistic expectations by all the stakeholders, see: Color.
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