I am a community member of both sites and I see a potential for cooperation. If you don’t know of quirky.com, check it out and post your ideas here.
To start off,
Quirky should take some of the simple plastic product idea submissions and give them to the 3Dhubs community to develop into 3D printable items for a 3Dhubs marketplace. “Quirky Make” could operate within the quirky environment and the influence system could easily be applied to the object development and sales through hubs.
This would mean:
More quirky community members could get to see their idea come to life and get some money out of it.
3D Hubs could have a vetted library of useful consumer products for their community members to offer customers.
Both brands could be strengthened through buzz and community growth.
Quirky idea submissions could be further filtered and catagorized for ease of evaluation.
More consumer products could be manufactured locally.
Quirky community member and 3D Hubs user/member crossover could occur, resulting in more innovation.
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Hey @AtomJaay, this is actually a really cool idea! We’ve been discussing about it with Quirky and hopefuly soon enough will be able to announce something official. You made a very strong case by the way 
and it’s good to see that we are on the same page!
Thanks for the feedback. I was fortunate enough to attend that meetup prior to NY maker faire.
This would be a good time to throw my “Lite/Pro for Objects” theory into the mix. We all know the model of software distribution (now more so in mobile apps) where you can acquire a LITE version for little to no money… and for some that software is sufficient. Or you could purchase the next tier product, the PRO version, which is more engineered, has more features and is all in all better… but costs significantly more than LITE.
We now have a unique opportunity to apply this classic model to consumer goods in the form of Quirky manufactured items and Quirky Make locally produced counterparts.
It gives you twice the bang for your engineering buck
It provides more Quirky community influence opportunities
It benefits 3D hubs and Quirky in the OP aforementioned crossover and “brand strengthening” ways
It acknowledges the existence of and caters to, both types of customers with the same product:
-those who want a locally sourced and economically slimmed down design
- those who want a deluxe, full featured and readily available design
Everybody wins
The only major difference between the software model and object model is that you can’t upgrade from LITE to PRO… or could you?
