Great article with a stellar business model. This guy's scheme is literally "give the people what they want!" Need more of this kind of thinking in software. Unfortunately, lock-in techniques will likely prevent it from working in many places it's needed most.
Less than stellar reviews.<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ivation-Waterproof-Bluetooth-Handsfree-speakerphone/dp/B005Z3GINK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1451500588&sr=8-2&keywords=hipe+speaker" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/Ivation-Waterproof-Bluetooth-Handsfree...</a>
Anker (<a href="http://www.anker.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.anker.com/</a>) does something very similar to this company -- except, I think, it has a smaller selection of products. Judging from reviews on Amazon, Anker is also doing very well for itself.
"Private Label" manufacture of goods is a fairly large cottage industry. Unfortunately many of the mostly fly by night home based Alibaba arbitrage schemes fail pretty hard. I've certainly purchased these off amazon ebay etc and have found they rarely stand up to the hype. For instance, I recently purchased a WooPower dual 2.4 amp charger off Amazon. Total POS doesnt come anywhere near 2.4 amps per output. I have a suspicion the 300+ reviews are fake.<p>Not to throw shade on these guys but you get what you pay for.
> Before us are rows of cubicles, almost entirely inhabited by bearded, yarmulke-wearing men in crisp white shirts. These are Pikarski's buyers. (About half of C&A Marketing's 150-person staff is Orthodox, though the buyers division is more homogenous. "The buyer that does all the storage products, he's the only guy I let work out of home," Pikarski says. "He's Italian.")<p>Did that bother anyone else?
Its interesting to think about why this enterprise succeeds and yet Quirky, for example stumbled: this one starts with a known selling product and iterates on it based on market demand, rather than just coming up with cool ideas, perhaps. (I'm actually a fan of Quirky so this isn't really intended as a dis, but one of these two has "nine-figure" (really?) sales, and one doesn't)