Wink and Quirky File Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection

Wink owners may be frowning instead of Winking as news of parent company Quirky filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.  They reported earlier this year that they were running out of cash and have been looking for a buyer for the Wink division without success.  It looks like Flextronics, the company manufacturing the Wink Hub and the largest unsecured creditor on record, has made a $15 Million bid to buy the troubled Wink division.  Up until recently they had been asking $30 Million.

Wink has stated that this does not impact the Wink service or it’s customers, and they will continue to provide the same level of customer service, as well as developing new ways for Wink owners to automate.  Earlier this year, Wink owners dealt with a service outage caused by a security certificate issue.  During the interruption no triggers, events or alerts were working and owners could not access their Wink service or hub.

Only time will tell what the future holds, but this failure may prove that practically giving away a product hoping to sell add-ons, is a flawed business model.