Split Stick, Double-Sided USB Drive, Hits quirky's Online Store collaboratively developed in one week by quirky's community

New York, NY, July 2009 (27 Threats) – July 23 marked the official release of the Split Stick - a community designed double-sided USB drive.

Everyone always tells you to keep your work and your personal life separate. Now you can maintain that divide with your files too.

With the Split Stick, you can enforce the digital divide between office and personal, home and away, yours and hers, g rated and x rated, or whatever else you choose to separate.

Split Stick is the sixth product designed and developed by the quirky community since quirky’s launch on June 2nd. quirky gives everyone the chance to get product ideas out of their heads and onto shelves. Each week quirky’s community collaborates to select and produce one new product idea. This week ends the development of the Split Stick and it is now available for sale at quirky’s online store for $19.99. Accompanying the Split Stick are 4 other quirky developed products: the Sling Back, a universal wire retractor; the Ouch Pouch, a funkier version of the traditional blue and white arm sling; the Pressto, a tofu press, and a kid's Sudoku set; the Sudokid.

Designed and developed by the quirky community, Split Stick is two, two-gigabyte retractable USB drives that are built into one slim (four gigabyte) stick. The Split Stick is made of an anodized aluminum body and encased in a protective rubber membrane. The Split Stick comes in a range of colors: orange, blue, pink, red, black, violet, grey, or green. This plastic button allows one to easily navigate between the two different sides of the drive.

Customers can select how they want to divide their Split Stick by selecting their own text or choosing icons from quirky's icon gallery. These will be laser etched during the ordering process.

quirky engages participants to collaborate in every aspect of product creation - from ideation, design, naming, manufacturing, marketing, right on through to sales. Anyone can participate on quirky.com either by submitting their own product idea for $99, or by voting, rating, and influencing other people’s product ideas. Cooler still, 30¢ of every dollar generated from the sale of a quirky product goes back to these influencers.

Every week users post ideas on quirky to be rated by the quirky community. The community surveys the submissions during the 7-day evaluation period and selects one product to move forward to product development. quirky’s community then begins weighing in on everything from naming to logo selection to packaging through to prototype.

The final product becomes available for pre-sale at the quirky online store. Once the product hits its pre-sale threshold, credit cards are charged, and the product goes into production and delivery. At this point, 30¢ of every dollar made from the sale of these products goes back to the community. “Community” in this case covers both the ideator as well as all people who voted, commented, and rated the project idea along the way.

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