Crowdsourced hardware maker Quirky, which filed for bankruptcy in 2015, relaunches with a similar focus, but plans to license products for manufacture
Dan Primack / Axios :
Context & Ripple Effects
Quirky's relaunch closes a loop that started with the crowdsourcing model promising faster hardware development, then broke down as the company shipped money-losing inventions and cut a third of its staff. By mid-2015 it had already tried ditching device manufacturing to raise new funding, and months later filed Chapter 11.
The bankruptcy ended with the Wink smart home platform selling off, likely to Flextronics for $15M per the related coverage — so today's return is a second attempt at the same idea with the manufacturing burden stripped out.
First-order effects
- Inventors submitting through Quirky now get their ideas licensed out for manufacture rather than products made in-house, shifting production cost and inventory risk off Quirky's books — the exact weight that drove the 2015 collapse.
- The original crowdsourcing pitch survives intact; only the balance-sheet model changes, meaning Quirky competes again for submissions without carrying factories.
Second-order effects
- Licensees take on the manufacturing economics that sank Quirky, so product selection will likely favor ideas cheap enough for partners to accept the risk — a filter the old vertically integrated model never applied.
- GE Appliances' later spinout of Giddy, its Quirky-like platform for businesses under Haier, shows corporate buyers still want crowdsourced development — giving a relaunched Quirky a potential enterprise lane even as consumer hardware stays risky.
Third-order effects
- If licensing holds, crowdsourced hardware settles into an IP-and-brand business where the platform monetizes invention pipelines while partners absorb production — separating idea validation from capital-intensive manufacturing for good.
- The pattern suggests hardware crowdfunding platforms survive only by shedding the manufacturer role, leaving actual production to Flextronics-class contract manufacturers who already bought the pieces at distressed prices.
The trend: Crowdsourced hardware is splitting into asset-light IP platforms and contract manufacturers, with Quirky's post-bankruptcy relaunch as the template case.