Pen Zen, Desktop Organizer, Hits Quirky’s Online Store

New York, NY, February 11, 2010 — Today marks the official release of Pen Zen — a community-designed storage unit for pens, pencils, highlighters, and other office supplies. Pen Zen’s sleek form and functional supply holders make it easy to master the art of organization.

Position your Pen Zen horizontally with the items sticking out of the top, or stand it upright with the items sticking out of the ends. It’s your call — choose the arrangement that suits you best! Pen Zen has a glossy white plastic exterior with rubber extrusions that act as magic fingers to hold your items in place. The product measures 7.5in x 2.5in x 3.0in. With Pen Zen, your desk clutter can finally find inner peace.

Pen Zen is the 27th product designed and developed by the Quirky community since Quirky’s launch on June 2, 2009. 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 phase of Pen Zen, and it is now available for pre-sale in Quirky’s online store for $26.00.

You might remember other successful Quirky products including the Split Stick, a double-sided USB drive; the DigiDude, a portable camera tripod and keychain; the Scratch-n-Scroll, a mousepad with a writing surface; and the PowerCurl , a cord wrap for Apple’s MagSafe power adapter.

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 a seven-day evaluation period and selects one product to move forward into 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 in the Quirky online store (quirky.com/products). 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.