For my Princetern­ship, I worked at Quirky, a startup com­pany in social prod­uct devel­op­ment and indus­trial design. Each week, hun­dreds of peo­ple from the site’s online com­mu­nity, called “ideators,” sub­mit their ideas for inven­tions online. The ideas can be any­thing that isn’t already on the mar­ket, with the only require­ment being that the prod­uct ideas must retail for less than $150 and should not be software-based. The com­mu­nity then votes on sub­mis­sions, and final selec­tions are made by the Quirky team. From that point on, the com­mu­nity par­tic­i­pates in the devel­op­ment process, includ­ing design, nam­ing, col­ors, logo, and mar­ket research, along­side pro­fes­sional engi­neers on the Quirky team. Final prod­ucts are sold through two main avenues: 1) the online site and 2) Quirky’s retail­ers, includ­ing Tar­get, Office Max, etc.

On the first day, our host, Nikki Kauf­man ’07, who is Head of Peo­ple and Cul­ture (the Quirky ver­sion of Human Resources), and Suzan­nah Kerr, who works along­side her in the depart­ment, gave us the full tour of Quirky’s new home in west­ern Man­hat­tan. The office was an expe­ri­ence in itself, as it clearly reflects the unique cul­ture and per­son­al­ity of the com­pany, with beau­ti­ful glass fur­nish­ings and mod­ern dec­o­ra­tions con­trasted against the array of sinks, lock­ers, and other ran­dom objects taken from an ele­men­tary school in the Bronx.

We were then given an hour to sign up for and get to know our way around the site, quirky.com, and pre­pared to make a mys­tery call to the Com­mu­nity Team, which is respon­si­ble for inter­act­ing with the online com­mu­nity and answer­ing ques­tions from con­sumers, design­ers, and inven­tors. We then met with Quirky Com­mu­nity Ambas­sador, Baron, who gave us an overview of what his job entails and what he does on a daily basis. He explained the chal­lenges of work­ing with pub­lic rela­tions and cus­tomer ser­vice at a com­pany like Quirky that has such a unique busi­ness model and works with such a wide vari­ety of products.

We then met with Bret, Quirky’s Head of Mar­ket­ing, who intro­duced us to Quirky’s mar­ket­ing strat­egy, chal­lenges, and oppor­tu­ni­ties. He explained how Quirky’s brand revolves not around a spe­cific indus­try or lifestyle, but rather the sto­ries of its inven­tors. He then chal­lenged us to come up with our own mar­ket­ing strat­egy to help Quirky take advan­tage of the month of May, which is gen­er­ally cel­e­brated as Inven­tors’ Month. This gave me some insight into what a mar­ket­ing direc­tor does on a daily basis and the many con­sid­er­a­tions he must make to sell his product.

Janie, Nikki Laf­fel Kauf­man, Princeterns, and Quirky Staff

We then met with Gaz, Quirky’s Head of Prod­uct Design, who intro­duced us to some of the fac­tors to con­sider when eval­u­at­ing / select­ing idea sub­mis­sions for Quirky to pro­duce. He then took us through the pro­duc­tion process from selec­tion to brain­storm­ing, pre­lim­i­nary design, pro­to­typ­ing, launch­ing, tool­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and finally sales.

The next day, we delved deep into the details of the oper­a­tions of the com­pany, first meet­ing with Julie, who han­dles Quirky’s man­u­fac­tur­ing in China and sourc­ing sup­pli­ers, who gave us an overview of how she coor­di­nates the company’s over­seas oper­a­tions and makes sure that all the logis­tics and details of each prod­uct are com­mu­ni­cated to the right peo­ple. For exam­ple, she told us about one mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion between Quirky’s engi­neers and the Chi­nese engi­neers at the fac­to­ries; this led to a huge recall of prod­ucts and enor­mous losses. We then met with Nancy, Demand Plan­ner, who works to ensure that demand is always being met and that prod­ucts are always on the shelves when they need to be. She explained how this job is espe­cially dif­fi­cult at a com­pany like Quirky, that pro­duces so many dif­fer­ent prod­ucts that there is no past data from which to draw pre­dic­tions about demand. Lastly, we met with Justin, who han­dles Quirky’s logis­tics and dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels. This involves dis­trib­ut­ing the prod­ucts, once they’re sup­plied, to people’s homes and the stores of dif­fer­ent retail­ers. These meet­ings gave me invalu­able insight into the field, because until then, I hadn’t truly under­stood what the job of “Oper­a­tions” entailed and I def­i­nitely hadn’t real­ized the mul­ti­tude of tasks that Oper­a­tions depart­ments do on a daily basis.

The next day, we met indi­vid­u­ally with our depart­ments of inter­est. I met with Nathan, Quirky’s Head of Tech. This meet­ing was espe­cially valu­able to me since I was able to learn about the tech­nol­ogy and web devel­op­ment side of Quirky, and also gave me the oppor­tu­nity to talk to some­one who had sim­i­lar goals and inter­ests to me. Nathan shared his diverse and fas­ci­nat­ing life expe­ri­ences with me, from being an Eng­lish major in col­lege to work­ing at Google and briefly in entre­pre­neur­ship before com­ing to Quirky. He gave me incred­i­bly help­ful advice on hon­ing my tech­ni­cal skills, get­ting intern­ships, pick­ing a major, and career development.

We then met with Chad, Quirky’s Head of Sales & Busi­ness Devel­op­ment, who told us about sell­ing the Quirky prod­ucts to var­i­ous retail­ers and buy­ers. His open­ness and easy­go­ing nature also made me real­ize the impor­tance of net­work­ing and inter­per­sonal rela­tion­ships. Lastly, we par­tic­i­pated in Quirky’s weekly Eval­u­a­tion meet­ing, where the entire com­pany meets to dis­cuss the week’s prod­uct sub­mis­sions and chooses the best ones for the com­pany to produce.

This expe­ri­ence at Quirky was invalu­able for me. Espe­cially since it is such a small com­pany, I had the chance to observe all the aspects of the busi­ness, from engi­neer­ing and design to mar­ket­ing and oper­a­tions. In addi­tion to gain­ing insight into a wide range of career paths, I received career advice from sev­eral pro­fes­sion­als in fields rel­e­vant to my own inter­ests. I also thor­oughly enjoyed hear­ing about the diverse life expe­ri­ences of the Quirky team, many of which were infi­nitely dif­fer­ent from my own, and just being a part of the fun, open, and col­lab­o­ra­tive cul­ture at Quirky. I would def­i­nitely rec­om­mend this Princetern­ship for any­one who is inter­ested or even con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of work­ing in the prod­uct devel­op­ment indus­try or at a startup.