Amazon announced three new Alexa-enabled products last week: a smart sticky note printer, a nutrition scale and a cuckoo clock.

But there’s a catch — the tech giant will only ship these items if enough people preorder them. Amazon’s new program, called Build It, aims to give customers a say in what it creates next. If a concept reaches Amazon’s preorder goal, it’ll arrive on doorsteps this summer. If interest is lacking, Amazon will stand down and shoppers won’t be charged.

If Amazon were to lean on this Kickstarter model more often, it would effectively gain additional user data that could help it launch countless products — some perhaps similar to others already on the market — while minimizing the chance and cost of any flops in the process, potentially making it that much more of a fearsome competitor.

The three new concepts come from inventors, designers and engineers within Amazon. The US$89.99 hands-free smart sticky note printer is as small as a receipt printer you’d see next to a cash register. It works with Alexa to print shopping lists, reminders and calendar events on small post-it notes. The US$34.99 smart scale lets you ask Alexa to weigh 200 calories of blueberries and provides nutritional information for thousands of ingredients and food based on weight. The cuckoo clock (US$79.99) features a mechanical pop-out cuckoo bird, built-in speakers for timers and alarms and can be mounted on the wall or sit on a shelf.

The company said it has produced some workable models for each item to make sure development was possible. The effort is an expansion of Amazon’s Day One Edition program which launched last year to give customers access to new products the company wanted early feedback on. For example, its Echo Frames — Alexa-enabled smart glasses — required people to sign up online for an invitation to make a purchase. Shoppers were then asked to provide direct feedback about the item. Amazon ultimately moved the glasses into production and they’re now available to everyone for US$249 on the site. At the same time, Amazon retired its Loop smart ring concept after lackluster feedback.(SD-Agencies)