'The Work Speaks for Itself'

Overhead is low. CrowdSPRING has nine full-time employees. The headquarters screams startup. Kimbarovsky pauses several times during an interview as a Chicago elevated train roars past the window of the warehouse space.

And the designers? A grandma in Tennessee, the janitor from Canada, and thousands of pros who are either out of jobs, can't find work, or just want to be in business for themselves.

Anna Nadler of Staten Island, New York, gets two to three jobs a month. Some of those have developed into additional contract work. A designer with experience illustrating children's books, Nadler branched out to design logos and websites, jobs in which she previously had no experience.

"Your stuff can be better than someone who's done it for years," she says. "The work speaks for itself."

Bigelow agrees. He never met his logo designer and only knows the person is from Wales and goes by "I am just creative."

"It puts (the designers) on equal footing with some guy who's working out of his mom's basement," Bigelow says.

Last year, crowdSPRING expanded into industrial design. Its Barilla and LG designs are being kept under wraps, part of an agreement it strikes with companies concerned about competitive issues. While crowdSPRING's chiefs were surprised to draw attention from such large companies, they were even more surprised by another group of customers: sex-toy makers.

One company, Fornix LLC, was looking for a redesign of a sex machine (similar to but sleeker than the one George Clooney kept in his basement in the 2008 movie Burn After Reading). The job posting called for "a redesign of our existing sex machine to appeal to both genders. Our current design is too sterile and too masculine." That job paid $1,500.

Another satisfied customer? Yes, Kimbarovsky says.