General Electric + Quirky – an unlikely partnership

Ben Kaufman is the 27-year-old entrepreneur and CEO of Quirky – a company that takes people’s invention ideas and, through a system of popular vote, prototype and manufacture, brings three products to market – per month.

“At Quirky, as a trend emerges, we’re able to quickly commercialize a product and capitalize on it and do it with a global community that can help,” says Kaufman. Their global community consists of more than 650,000 people from around the world who submit invention ideas and also vote on the best ideas for the month. The top ideas get made into prototypes, and find themselves on store shelves around the world.

“The design process is very collaborative. We work with the community through the entire process to make sure we’re making good decisions and doing right for the inventor’s idea,” says Kaufman.

Their speedy style and success in retail has caught the attention of technology giant, General Electric. In November, they invested $30 million dollars in Quirky, and together they plan on creating a line of home devices that will connect with a smart phone.

“We’ve partnered with GE on a number of different initiatives, but I think they do like the fact that we are fast,” says Quirk CEO Ben Kaufman. “GE’s actually a pretty quick company... they’re as quick as they can be with 300,000 thousand employees.”

General Electric’s Chief Marketing Officer, Beth Comstock, says the company was attracted to working with Quirky because they were impressed with how they bring products to market so quickly. “Our goal together is to continue to speed innovation and drive scale in what will be a $25 billion connected devices market in the next five years,” says Comstock.

In the last 6 months Quirky+GE have created four devices together. One is called the Egg Minder, which monitors your eggs and texts you when they’re going bad. Another is a souped-up version of their best-selling product, the Pivot Power strip, which bends to fit every plug. The newest version, called Pivot Power Genius, allows you to control the power outlets from your phone and can turn lamps on and off.

“It was awesome to partner with GE to do all this,” says Kaufman. “All of these products came from people around the world that we never met.“

Quirky’s innovation formula is working so far. Their revenue has almost tripled every year since their launch in 2009 – and they estimate they’ll bring in $50 million for 2013.

Quirky has launched a software app called “Wink” which allows people to connect home devices and appliances to their smart phone. GE Appliances has signed on to be a part of the system – as well as Home Depot.

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