Sometimes a deal crosses my desk that really tests my creativity to make it work - but when I can, it pays off big for our customers. This is one of those.

Remember Quirky? It was kind of like Kickstarter meets American Idol with a twist of Shark Tank. Any inventor could pitch a product to the Quirky community. If it got enough votes, Quirky would manufacture it. Ordinary people invented a whole line of “smart” household gadgets: a coffee maker you could turn on from your phone, a kettle you could start boiling before you got out of bed.

No app? No sweat

Here’s the honest part: Quirky was ahead of its time. It went bankrupt. But the best of the products, like these, stayed alive through licensed manufacturers. Then last year, the final blow landed when the Quirky app was pulled from the App Store. Overnight, the “smart” features these products were built around had no app to connect to.

For most companies, that’s the end of the story. For us, it was the beginning of a conversation.

Before I committed to anything, I had to try these out in person. Would they even work without the app? What I found is that these are genuinely good products that happen to have lost one non-essential feature.

For the hands-on cook (literally)

Every single one still does its actual job the old-fashioned way, with the controls right on the device. The Cafe and Roast coffee makers brew a perfect pot using the buttons on the machine itself. The Boil Kettle boils. The Cool fan oscillates. The Aqua Sous Vide cooks.

You never needed a phone to use them. The app was just a bonus that’s no longer there. But because that capability was gone, I was able to negotiate a deal for this inventory that we’d never be able to touch under normal circumstances for products of this quality.

Just to be straight with you, some of the smart functions can actually be recovered through the Tuya app - but not every one, so we’re treating that as a “nice if it works for you” promise. And the USB-C charging port on the Trek 2-in-1 Backpack & Duffle won’t work for most products, but the USB-A port does, and there’s a port for you to connect to the power bank you have to supply anyway. The bag itself — a seriously clever backpack-and-duffle design — is exactly as good as the day it was made.

But honestly? I know a lot of you would rather just do things with your hands than a phone anyway. This is your lucky day. Quirky may not have survived, but the best ideas did - and here they are at prices we’ll probably never see again.