Several weeks ago, Noissue, a leader in custom paper and ecommerce product branding sat down for a chat with some of the industry’s most innovative and customer-driven fulfillment centers. Fulfillrite‘s input is featured here, together with insights from our industry friends.

3PL’s and their ‘value-add’ to the ecommerce industry

When it comes to fulfillment and third party logistics, those not in the industry might find it difficult to navigate the waters. For all intents and purposes, we order online and our package shows up in a day or two – voilà. However, every ecommerce business owner knows what happens in between can be the stuff of nightmares! Luckily, third party logistics companies (3PLs) have mastered the art of fulfillment and most businesses of size are now using their services. So let’s dive into 3PLs and explore what they can offer you as a business!

Ecommerce is growing at an astoundingly quick rate. Cumulative data from Statista suggests that the online selling industry will top $4.8 trillion by 2021. This is up from $1.3 trillion in 2008, representing a 269% increase. If you own an online store, go ahead and take a moment to congratulate yourself! Online selling, which was once a manageable, minor aspect of business, has now become a crucial revenue driver for many brick and mortar retailers. And when it comes to business online, consumers have come to expect a certain level of service. At the forefront of these expectations is speed and accuracy, two areas that the fulfillment industry has well under control. With the rare exception, reliable 3PLs can get your parcel to the correct end destination as fast as you need it delivered.

Lately, however, customers are expecting a bit more from their online retailers – just search for ‘unboxing’ on Youtube if you don’t believe us. Not only are customers looking for memorable experiences with the packaging, tracking, free shipping, worldwide delivery and more have all entered the playing field of expectations. This has led to quite the shakeup for logistics companies. When it comes to innovation, however, you’ll find some of the best minds in the business being put to work. At Shipbob, “Our clients request value-added services on a regular basis and we work together to invent and create processes that will provide the client what they’re looking for and what Shipbob can deliver on.” If you can think of it, odds are good your 3PL will be willing to work with you to make it happen.

While outsourcing fulfillment has become a necessary part of doing business, losing control of branding, packaging and the customer experience wasn’t meant to be part of the deal. Early on in the shift to ecommerce retailing, there was a void where sellers were unable to offer their goods in anything but plain packaging–brown cardboard boxes with packing peanuts. This opened the door for companies like innovative 3PL NRI Distribution. They realized from the outset that maintaining brand integrity was a key part of any online business, and was one of the first logistics companies to offer customers the option of using their own packaging. In their words “[our] core values revolve around providing custom and flexible solutions. Value-added services are primary to that. Many of our clients request [custom packaging] which is often why they choose us in the first place as their 3PL.”

Mention ‘custom packaging’ to any operations manager and we’re fairly confident you won’t be met with excitement. After all, the core business of fulfillment is getting the package to the right door, fast and cost-efficiently. That’s what they do. SKU, LTL, kitting, RMA’s – this is the language of fulfillment and until recently, value-added services hadn’t entered the foray. But more and more innovative shipping companies are popping up. At ShipMonk, for example, they have seen a sizeable amount of their customer base turn to the subscription model. As a result, ShipMonk has adapted, now offering custom boxes and tissue. And they’ve seen the results as well; “our clients trust us in packing their product the same way they would. We have many measures in place to make sure we pack the product to deliver the unboxing experience our clients are hoping for.”

Now why, you may ask, doesn’t every fulfillment company offer custom packaging solutions? It’s a clear revenue driver, and indeed has come to be expected by many ecommerce retailers. The answer is relatively straightforward: they are worried about the complications that come with custom packaging. As stated earlier, a 3PL’s core business is speed, accuracy and efficiency. Custom packaging throws a wrench in the mix. So how can the fulfillment industry go about offering this to their customers without sacrificing their systems? The answer shouldn’t surprise you: keep it simple.

Utilizing packaging components like custom tissue, stickers or custom tape is an easy way to maintain your brand. There’s no need to create ridiculous displays or boxes with 17 different components that each have to be assembled individually by hand. While no doubt these look amazing, they fall well short of the ‘worth your time’ line. So with simple solutions, 3PLs don’t even have to break stride to include custom packaging. And with these options becoming more prevalent, logistics companies are embracing the change.

In the words of CEO and Co-Founder, Mathew Galt of Fulfilio, “customers love being able to work with providers who care about their customer’s delivery experience as much as them, and one that helps carry their brand message through the journey.” He goes on to say “we get a lot of customers requesting any number of these. From personal notes, custom wrapping paper and packaging, to the way in which each item is kitted. It’s how they’re able to set themselves apart, and our staff love being a part of that experience.”

“So how can the fulfillment industry go about offering customization to their customers without sacrificing their systems? The answer shouldn’t surprise you: keep it simple.”

What would a conversation on fulfillment be without bringing up the $784B elephant in the room. Amazon has completely changed the way that ecommerce and fulfillment works. Granted, they’ve changed a lot of other aspects of life as well, but when you break it down, Amazon is the largest fulfillment business in the world. Indeed, just a few weeks ago Amazon made the announcement that 100 million people are “Prime” members, making them the largest subscription outfit in the world as well. What has made Amazon so successful? Well, in large part it’s due to their branding.

Early on in their development, the marketing team at Amazon realized that the moment of receiving a package provided a huge opportunity for them as a business. Now on their online marketplace, it’s rare to be able to pinpoint the store that you’re buying from. More likely you simply know that you’re ordering from Amazon. With Amazon you are still able to customize what is inside of the Amazon box. However, the modern day 3PL can offer an enticing alternative here: complete custom packaging solutions. Not only do 3PLs like Shipbob not charge a thing for extra custom packaging, they’ve made it a distinct selling point of their offering; “At Shipbob, we believe each client’s brand should stay in the spotlight through the unboxing experience, not ours. We build a partnership with the seller to service their end customers while growing their brand and ensuring a stronger connection between our customers and their end customers.”  The modern-day 3PL makes their mark on delivery timelines and accurate fulfillment; you make your mark with what you’re selling and how it’s presented. It’s the perfect partnership.

Another aspect that independent 3PLs are taking the initiative on is reducing their environmental impact and making their industry more sustainable. The push for eco-friendly options is not unique to any one industry, but in an industry that is mostly operations behind the scenes, it’s uplifting to see a concerted effort being made. Michael at Fulfillrite makes it clear that 3PLs have embraced positive social and environmental trends that have swept other industries. Putting it simply, “sustainability is a huge concern, especially with the boom of ecommerce.”

Now, plenty of people claim to be making sustainability a priority without ever following through on their promises. So what are 3PLs like Fulfillrite doing? Quite a lot, as it turns out. “[We have] a number of initiatives to seriously reduce waste and make fulfillment as environmentally friendly as possible. Firstly, we have software that determines the most efficiently sized packaging for each item. Every single item we ship is measured by 3D imaging programs and fed to the computer. Aside from saving the customer money on packaging and dimensional weight charges, we don’t waste space. The environmental impact of over packaging is astounding, so this really helps.”

With the tidal wave that is ecommerce, fulfillment will continue to play a huge role. Those 3PLs that are offering value added services such as custom packaging and kitting will continue to be far more attractive for businesses that are trying to build their brand.

Noissue.co is a platform for designing and ordering branded, eco-friendly packaging. They are partnered with numerous 3PLs around the world and offer streamlined services for the fulfillment industry – contact here.

If you’ve been around the crowdfunding scene for a while or are just starting to dip your toes in the water, you’ve most likely at some point visited one of the industry’s most well-known sources of information, CrowdCrux.com. A comprehensive site filled with crowdfunding news, podcasts, interview, tips and more, it has become one of the go-to places on the web for creators of all levels looking for help.

Behind the scenes (well, not really behind) is the site’s creator and curator, Sal Briggman. We sat down with Sal for a chat about his passion for helping others, how CrowdCrux came to be and what his thoughts are on the future of the world of crowdfunding.

Hi Sal! Thank you for taking the time to talk.

How many websites are you up to now? Crowdcrux, CrowdfundingPR, SalvadorBriggman,com, Kickstarterforum, MusicMind.co, 2&2Labs, PitchFuse…

(Laughs) Like many entrepreneurs and bloggers, I’ve started several websites over the years at different points in time. Some have been more successful than others.

The main one I am focused on is CrowdCrux.com. CrowdCrux has ~10k email subscribers and we have thousands of users on KickstarterForum and CrowdfundingForum. I’m proud of helping so many people raise money on different crowdfunding platforms, even if it’s in a small way.

What is your goal with CrowdCrux?

My goal with CrowdCrux is to bring the best tips, tricks and advice to creative types and entrepreneurs looking to raise money for their passion project. I want to show crowdfunders exactly what they need to do to run a successful crowdfunding campaign and demystify this whole fundraising process.

Crowdfunding is changing the fabric of our economy. It’s giving everyday Americans the power to innovate in ways that our grandparents only dreamed of.

There’s nothing that gets me more riled up than when I hear about an entrepreneur or a creator who has the potential to succeed, but for whatever reason, doesn’t.

We all make the same excuses as to why we’re not successful.

“I don’t have the time.”

“I don’t have the money.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

The excuses as to why you’re not succeeding are becoming fewer and fewer. Nowadays, you just need the desire, commitment and persistence to get through the early days of starting a new venture.

How do you find the time to be so prolific?

When I first started the blog, it was very easy to “be prolific” because I had so many questions!

I wanted to figure out why some crowdfunding projects raise millions of dollars and others sputter out. I wanted to know what really makes the difference between success and failure.

Really, I almost felt like it was my duty to discover and report on what works on Kickstarter, Indiegogo and other crowdfunding platforms. So many people are counting on me to help make their dream a reality. I’m just privileged to be able to make such an impact!

Communicating it is another matter. I’ve done my best to write helpful articles, eBooks and conduct podcasts to get the best tips out there to the people that matter: the entrepreneurs and artists.

I wouldn’t be where I am without Krystine Therriault, a terrific writer and community manager for CrowdCrux. In the past year, she’s become a stronger voice on the blog and is as enthusiastic as I am about the crowdfunding industry.

But if you’re looking for an inside tip as to how to bang out 2,500 words in a single writing session, I’ll give you my secret…coffee! (Just kidding.)

You tweeted that you are also writing an eBook as well, what’s that about?

I am! The eBook, Crowdfunding Fast Track, is designed as the go-to tool for launching a successful crowdfunding campaign.

I want creators to come away feeling like they have a complete understanding of precisely what they need to do to exceed their fundraising goal and launch that project of their dreams.

Believe it or not, as a student in college at George Washington University, I hated attending classes – most of the class content was fluff and useless in the real world.

I’ve made this eBook actionable. I don’t dish out theories or vague suggestions. I don’t waste your time. I get straight down to business.

Tell me about how you first discovered crowdfunding. That moment you heard the term for the first time and said, “What is that?” How did you get into it?

Oh! Good question.

I think the first time I actually heard the term crowdfunding was in 2012, when I heard about the Jobs Act, which allows every day Americans to invest in startup companies.

I was fascinated! A new industry was emerging that would redefine innovation and really let people get on the fast track to achieving the American dream.

I had to do a mini-thesis to complete my economics degree and I decided to do it on crowdfunding. I quickly became enraptured in Kickstarter’s crowdfunding platform and all of the company’s transparent data. I compared the different categories on Kickstarter and how, if you launch in a category like Publishing, the size of your social network might matter more than if you had launched in the Gaming category.

I started sharing some of my findings on CrowdCrux and quickly learned that there was a real thirst out there for quality information on the crowdfunding process. It’s a huge mystery to most people.

At the time, I had been a part of several different tech startups, all of which had failed. It takes a lot of energy to commit to a new startup. It’s a lot of worrying, uncertainty, and trial and error. No one is really there to show you the right path or to tell you “this is the right course of action.”

I remember sitting at the kitchen table in my dorm room, debating whether or not to start this website. Was it going to be worth the work?

The thing that pushed me over the edge was that, like many of the crowdfunders out there, crowdfunding was a passion for me. So, I viewed CrowdCrux as a side project. I never expected it to go anywhere or help the hundreds of thousands of creators that it has. I just wanted to explore a topic that I was interested in and be helpful in the process.

Since you’ve been along for most of the ride, how has the crowdfunding industry changed? What platforms and funding types have you seen rise and fall?

Oh boy. It’s changed a lot.

For one, just recently, the regulations surrounding Title III of the Jobs Act have been formalized and equity crowdfunding is going to be a reality in 2016. In addition, more entrepreneurs are taking advantage of Regulation A+ equity crowdfunding raises.

Kickstarter and Indiegogo have seen massive growth in the past several years and crowdfunding has become much more mainstream as we’ve seen successes covered by the media.

Peer-to-peer lending, or debt-based crowdfunding, has exploded into a multi-billion dollar industry. I don’t think anyone could have predicted the way that it is challenging traditional forms of credit and financing.

Real estate crowdfunding has also grown aggressively and up until now, has been seen as the unexpected breakout child of equity crowdfunding.

I myself am very surprised at the tremendous success of personal crowdfunding campaigns. GoFundMe alone has helped individuals raise over 1 billion in funds for personal, medical, education, funeral expenses, etc. We’re also seeing lots of nonprofits use crowdfunding and peer-to-peer fundraising to raise money from their donors and attract new donors.

Overall, I think that both crowdfunders and the media are taking crowdfunding campaigns far more seriously than before. This isn’t a phenomena or some fad. Crowdfunding is here to stay.

Along with the rise of crowdfunding has come a flood of consulting agencies and campaign analytics platforms. Do you feel they are worth the investment or is research enough? Have you seen creators get a boost?

Very true! First of all, I think there are three types of firms out there.

1. Firms that help with tangible assets

This might include a company that will help you put together your video, reward tiers, or campaign copywriting. I think these firms are very valuable and their deliverables are tangible. They should be measured in whether or not they’re crafting assets that will convert browsers into backers.

1. Firms that help with promotion

Firms that help with PR, marketing or promotion are also valuable components of a successful crowdfunding campaign. I’ve interviewed many entrepreneurs who have hired a PR agency or firm just to do their Facebook marketing.

Obviously, this isn’t always realistic if you’re on a tight budget. As with all areas of business, you don’t need someone else to do it for you. You can take the time to learn marketing, sales, copywriting or PPC on your own. The skills that you learn will be transferable to running your e-commerce business.

The important thing is to determine when you should spend time learning something and when you should just outsource it.

1. Firms that promise the sky

These are the scammy marketing firms that promise your campaign will be funded for a ridiculously low price. There have been many unhappy reviews of such marketing firms on our forums. Some firms will actually scam you and just take your money. Do your research.

There are many more firms emerging that claim “backer communities.” Some of these are legit. Some aren’t. Always have a slight degree of skepticism, particularly if the offer seems too good.

What mistakes do you see most often?

Probably the biggest one is lack of thorough preparation for a crowdfunding campaign. Each category has a different preparation strategy. For example, I’d prepare for a publishing campaign much differently than a technology or design campaign. But, unless you invest some time in learning the differences and looking at campaigns that are similar to yours, you won’t know that.

Crowdfunding has become SO competitive that you really need to make the first 3 days of your campaign count, so that you rank well in the platform’s algorithm and begin to generate some momentum.

Don’t get me wrong, you can make a comeback halfway through the campaign and maintain momentum throughout it. It’s just more difficult. For many campaigns, the biggest influx of pledges is in the first week and last several days.

The second biggest mistake has nothing to do with crowdfunding. You need to validate your startup product or idea as thoroughly as possible before launching.

Does your target audience actually want these rewards you’re promising? Are you solving a problem or are you just trying to raise money for something that would benefit YOUR life and not the lives of your backers?

Finally, you need a compelling story. You need a great WHY. You need a way of connecting with your backers and developing relationships at scale.

It’s important to nail down how you’re going to cut through the noise and seduce backers into liking you AND your product.

Many of us are taught to treat customers differently than our friends. When we talk with customers, we’re supposed to use corporate language. We’re supposed to get them familiar with a logo, not our face.

But, that’s not how crowdfunding works. You need to treat your backers like your friends. A campaign with personality and a creator who genuinely connects with backers will win out when put up against that same campaign that reads like an infomercial.

It’s sad that we ARE seeing more campaigns with commercial-style videos and detached creators, but I genuinely believe that the campaigns that use crowdfunding as a way to develop a genuine relationship with a group of backers will have much more success.

With all that you know behind how campaigns work, do you think you’ll ever be inspired to run a campaign of your own?

If anyone has read my history, they’ll know that I started programming in middle school and am proud of some of my technical abilities. It’s taken me a while to learn this, but I’m not a hardcore programmer. I’m not a hardcore technical engineer. I’m not a designer.

I’m a marketer and sales guy. I’m not comparing myself to these people, but I’m far more Mark Cuban than Elon Musk (if you get that reference, we should be friends).

If I did my own campaign, I’d partner with a designer or technical cofounder to bring the product to market. Right now, I don’t have the time to focus on finding that person, but maybe some day. Some day, I might even do another tech startup. Who knows – with Title III in effect early next year, I might even fund a few!

(Laughing) It almost sounds like I don’t have the time to pursue a romantic relationship, but at the end of the day, a finding that perfect co-founder is very similar to finding a great marriage partner. You’re going to go through ups and downs and you need a shared vision.

For now, I’m going to stick to demystifying the crowdfunding industry. Crowdfunding is still in its early childhood and moving into its teenage years. We have a lot to look forward to!

Follow Sal on twitter at @sbriggman and @crowdcrux

Hardware. Isn’t there just an app for that? Such is the life of the hardware entrepreneur. When most people ask me how a project is going they say, “How’s your app coming along?” There are so many software developers; app developers, web developers and anything-developers making digital products that people are forgetting the electronics that make it all possible! We constantly underestimate how much effort goes into that tiny piece of cell phone magic you’re probably reading this on.

Now, I’m not belittling software developers at all, their work is astounding and worthy of a mountain of praise. They are, however, just one piece of the puzzle that encompasses our digital lives. So why are so few people trying to create hardware products? I believe it’s entirely due to the high barriers of entry. Here are some of the challenges we faced when developing our product DrinkMate which we find especially unique to hardware development

1. Microcontrollers

Everyone has something with a screen on it – just bust out that laptop, phone, or tablet and start coding away. There are countless tutorials online to help you through any and all programming questions. Hardware products, however, and specifically the microcontrollers that control most of them, are a bit trickier. There are still plentiful resources online, but many of the tips and tricks for creating a manufacturable and mass-produceable product are kept as trade secrets.

Tip: Use a brand of microcontroller from a company/manufacturer that has invested in tutorials and example firmware for its products. These take most of the hard work out of the firmware coding so you can concentrate on, say, circuit design. Atmel is especially good at this.

What we learned: Forums are your best friend! Ask questions as you go along to see if anyone has already solved your problem before you invest too much time. This way you can focus on the truly difficult obstacles.

2. Product Quality and Consistency

When you attempt to create a new digital product like a website or app, the final product is exactly the same every time. Yes, there is always individual and platform customization, but the underlying code is guaranteed to remain unchanged. With hardware, quality control becomes a much more complicated issue. All of a sudden you have a large number of different real-world components that all are at risk of either failure or improper installation. If just one of these “cogs in the machine” fails, the entire product will be a hunk of useless junk, which is often more costly to repair than to replace.

Tip: Samples, samples, samples! PCB (printed circuit board) samples from manufactures are easy, but don’t get overconfident! There’s a difference between hand-made samples and machine-made production line final products, so you need to make sure you have a final testing procedure in place. Make sure to get enclosure samples as well. It is much easier to fix problems prior to a product launch than try to recover and repair post-launch. Take your sample and drop it, kick it, touch it, see what makes it fail or not fail. If there is a particularly weak design characteristic, talk to your manufacturer. Many times the manufacturer will offer to make the design change or potentially have ideas for how to fix the problem.

What we learned: Our samples had certain seemingly minor components switched with inferior brands. It wouldn’t make a difference for most products, but for ours it caused significant quality problems.

3. Costs

Digital products have bugs and glitches all the time, but they are always solved by software updates. The fix takes time and money, but the implementation is free. With hardware, any error with, say, a plastic injection mold not only requires time and money to redesign, but a massive fixed cost of mold reproduction. We’ve found a good rule of thumb is that every small plastic piece in your product will cost around $5,000 in mold production costs alone (excludes design costs).

Tip: Crowdfunding! Hardware products don’t have the luxury of a digital soft launch, it’s just too expensive to build anything in small quantities (less than 1,000). Put together a well-planned campaign and launch on a crowdfunding website such as Kickstarter or Indiegogo. This allows you to see if there’s a demand for the product you’re trying to produce. Additionally, there are now companies founded by hardware product experts who offer pre-crowdfunding manufacturing plan reviewing, advice and certifications such as Dragon Innovation.

What we learned: Make sure you have your product 100% designed before crowdfunding. Seriously – every single detail no matter how small. You will not have a spare second to do anything other than logistics once you launch!

4. Packaging

Create packaging for your product that’s based on your target market. If you want your product to be sold in convenience stores next to lottery tickets, package it in a plastic anti-theft blister pack. If you’re trying to get luxury points, package it in a gift box like you’d see in an Apple store.

Tip: Nobody saves blister pack plastic, but many people hold onto nice gift boxes out of sentimental value (i.e., “too nice to throw away”) or for reuse. You know you still have the box your cell phone came in lying around somewhere…

What we learned: Have your manufacturer prepare quotes for both “luxury” and “retail” packaging options. Your distributors and retailers will have different needs.

5. Shipping, Handling, and Storage

Ecommerce order fulfillment services do cost a pretty penny, but they can take all the pain out of actually delivering your product. Amazon is the leader in this, but they are very expensive. There are other options such as Fulfillrite. Make sure they handle product returns!

Tip: Collaborating with a smaller company like Fulfillrite was an invaluable experience. They helped us through every step of the fulfillment process that led to a fully successful product launch with no shipping problems at all. We use them to this day and they’ll be scaling with us as we grow our company.

What we learned: Direct API interfaces into your product’s website will save an incredible amount of time and make sure your product gets shipped ASAP.

6. Lead Times

Anything hardware-related has a lead-time, either to manufacture or ship. If it’s being custom-made, this time usually quadruples at a bare minimum.

Tip: Adopt the policy of under-promising and over-delivering. Most people attempt to meet a certain ship date, but never consider the option of shipping (or simply being ready) early. That means their options are either ship on time or ship late. Most of the time it ends up being late. It’s important to consider that delays happen and extra time needs to be factored in to any promised delivery dates.

What we learned: Paperwork delays add up. This can range from order processing to bank transfer holds. Always add a “buffer” to your anticipated lead times to account for the logistics of getting the order started in the first place.

Last Words of Advice

Always be ready to learn. There is no perfect way to deliver a hardware product. There is no “compile” or “upload” button. Keep an open mind and always seek advice from others who have gone through this process before. Prepare backup and contingency plans based on the experiences of you and others. This way, should the unexpected happen, you’ll at least feel like you already have a path towards a solution or have the resources to reach out and ask for help.

Good luck and have fun along the way!

Shaun Masavage is an engineer, entrepreneur and the inventor of DrinkMate, the world’s smallest portable breathalyzer which plugs directly into your Android phone.

Use a brand of microcontroller from a company/manufacturer that has invested in tutorials and example firmware for its products. These take most of the hard work out of the firmware coding so you can concentrate on, say, circuit design.

Intro: Don Moyer has completed six successful Kickstarter projects and gradually found ways to share his unusual products with people who appreciate things that are beautiful, useful, and funny. The first product was a porcelain plate that added the calamity of flying monkeys to a traditional blue, Willow-pattern dinner plate. Additional projects added more plates, mugs, bandanas, and more. All celebrate traditional designs, but add a twist.

Can you start by giving us a quick overview?

I retired last year. For 40 years, I worked as a designer solving problems for my clients. Now I get to define my own projects and explore things that I think are fun. I draw every day and some of my drawings become products that people will enjoy having in their homes. I use Kickstarter to find sponsors for these self-inflicted projects. I also have a Shopify site link where folks who missed the Kickstarter projects can catch up.

I don’t manufacture anything myself. I want to design things and rely on others to help with business tasks—production, customer service, accounting, etc. Fulfillrite is my partner to handle packing, shipping, and tracking of orders.

Where did the idea for Calamityware come from?

I love to draw. The drawings I like best make me laugh.

When I inherited a traditional Willow-pattern dinner plate, I felt an urge to redraw the scene and add a pterodactyl. Countless porcelain manufacturers have made versions of these traditional plates for nearly 300 years. All feature variations of a vaguely Asian scene with willow trees, pagodas, bridges, exotic plants, and more. I enjoyed drawing several versions of plates and added a different calamity each time. Think Sasquatch, volcanoes, and voracious sea monsters.

I post my daily drawings on Flickr. Several people who saw my plate drawings urged me to reproduce the drawings on real plates. When I retired, I had time to experiment with Kickstarter to fund production of a real porcelain plate.

Why did you use crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is perfect for projects like this. An artist has an idea for a project that is too ambitious to finance alone. If enough people are willing to support it, the funds for the project are available. If there are not enough supporters, you get to walk away from the idea having spent very little time and money.

The old method was to borrow money and fund a production run. Before crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo, too many people ended up with debt and a basement full of products they could never sell. Those days are gone.

My first project (flying monkeys) was fun and reached its funding goal, so I promised myself that if interest remained high, I’d do a series of at least 8 plates…maybe 12.

How do you create new products?

First, I goof around. I draw things and explore possibilities. No rush. No pressure. Basically, I’m trying to please myself. So I draw things that I like. When I find something that is both beautiful and funny, I’m satisfied.

Sometimes my supporters suggest product ideas. These unsolicited ideas are almost always wrong for me. But on rare occasions, they may offer an idea that fits my sense of humor.

I can’t stress enough the importance of simply messing around, doodling, and exploring for pure fun. For me, that’s where the best ideas come from.

Who is your audience?

One of the surprising things about Kickstarter has been how easy it is to get feedback from sponsors about why they are supporting my project. Kickstarter makes it easy to have digital conversations with sponsors. So, I’ve formed impressions of my sponsors.

In general, my sponsors are diverse in terms of gender and age. They live all over the world but most are in the US. They all have a good sense of humor and appreciate the notion that products can be beautiful, utilitarian, and funny at the same time.

I think that the people who sponsor Kickstarter projects are looking for something new. They are looking for things that are not yet in stores or weird products that are never going to be found in any store. Some of them are drawn to the idea of supporting an artist who’s trying to pursue a goofy quest.

What problems have you encountered?

Problems are part of bringing any new product to market. One expects that. In fact, watching how problems are dealt with is part of the fun of supporting Kickstarter projects. Updates about problematic suppliers, pokey supply chains, and problems with packaging are common.

Initially, I didn’t invest in any business systems. My first projects were pretty small, so it was possible to get by with rudimentary tools like a spreadsheet and a note pad.

My biggest problem was a lack of transparency. I couldn’t get fast, accurate, honest answers from key suppliers about what was really happening. This problem was compounded when supporters and customers asked questions about the status of the project. If I answered based on the latest information from the production team, I found myself, a few days later, issuing a correction and an apology. At times I had to craft apologies for my apologies.

Apologizing was NOT how I wished to spend my days. I wanted to be drawing or designing the next product. Within a few months, I became a foot shorter and displayed a permanent frown.

All this changed when I finally got my inventory installed at Fulfillrite. Suddenly, I had full visibility through their web portal, of inventory levels, order status, tracking numbers, and postage funds. My smile returned.

With Fulfillrite, I export the address file from Kickstarter, clean it up slightly, and upload it to Fulfillrite’s web portal. It immediately becomes visible on my Fulfillrite web portal. As the orders are packed and shipped, I can see the status on my screen. Most recipients get an email with a tracking number when their shipment rolls out the door.

Orders that come to my Shopify site flow on to Fulfullrite electronically and also become visible immediately. Everything seems to go out the same day the order is received.

Fulfillrite also gives me constant visibility of inventory levels so I can make decisions about production. All in all, a simple and beautiful system. I wish I had found Fulfillrite sooner.

How did you go beyond porcelain plates?

Working with Fulfillrite has also made it possible to add more products. In late November 2014, I launched a Kickstarter project for BADbandana 1—the world’s first bandanas with angry paisleys. This blue bandana celebrates traditional bandanas but adds  the excitement of monsters, pests, a plethora of bats, and other bad boys.

By consolidating all fulfillment with Fulfillrite, I can accommodate mixed orders—plates, bandanas, whatever. So now there’s nothing to prevent adding all kinds of new products. Move over Amazon.

What’s next?

I have a list of more than 100 potential projects. It’s my bucket list. I’d like to see how many of these projects I can complete before I kick the bucket.

For 2015, there will be a new series of four Calamityware plates (Pirates in the neighborhood, Rambunctious volcano, Tentacles!, and Vortex of doom). My sixth Kickstarter project is BADbandana 2—Pixels on a rampage is a mash-up of early video game characters and genteel embroidery with more than 260 monsters and minions.

I’m working on a letterpress print with sea monsters, robots on tea pots, ugly mugs, bowls, and some holiday cards. I also have requests for designs for pocket squares, tea pots, gravy boats, playing cards, socks, and neck ties. I’ve added them to the bucket list.

Any more advice before you go?

If you need an unusual gift for someone, I urge you to visit Calamityware.com.

Crowdfunding is perfect for projects like this. An artist has an idea for a project that is too ambitious to finance alone. If enough people are willing to support it, the funds for the project are available. If there are not enough supporters, you get to walk away from the idea having spent very little time and money.

Having raised over half a million dollars in 25 days on Kickstarter, Robot Turtles founder Dan Shapiro has been featured in major print and online publications, including the New York Times, NPR and Techcrunch. Not only did he soar past his $25,000 crowdfunding goal by more than 2500%, he also delivered the perks he promised to backers earlier than expected.

Where most Kickstarter creators struggle with shipping rewards out on time and dealing with unpredictable levels of demand, Shapiro was able to scale his original plan, execute on his vision, and successfully navigate the choppy waters of product fulfillment to both domestic and international backers.

In our interview with Shapiro, we’ve given you an inside view of a smash-hit six-figure Kickstarter project and how a small project turned into a thriving business.

How did you come up with the idea for Robot Turtles as a board game?

I was tired of kids’ board games that were thinly veiled luck or games of skill in which the kids were hopelessly outmatched. I wanted something that would afford real quality time with my then four-year-old twins. And I wanted some of that cool “A-ha!” discovery that is so fun to watch.

What was your kids’ initial reaction?

They got it immediately. Their first reaction was to tell me how I should improve it: “Daddy, I don’t like that wall. I want lasers!” or, “Daddy, I want to play more than just one card at a time!”

Why is it called “Robot Turtles?”

The game is very loosely based on a programming language called Logo that I learned in computer camp in the early 1980s. Logo features a turtle character that players, using the Logo programming language, send around the screen to draw pictures.

Why did you choose to crowdfund and who were you targeting? 

I could have self-funded a small print run, but then I’d be stuck with a thousand games in my garage. And if it turned out that nobody wanted the game, what then? Kickstarter was the best way to find out if people truly wanted the game to exist so I’d know if I was wasting my efforts before starting manufacturing.

What made your Kickstarter video a success?

I don’t really know, but I think it has to do with the concept more than the game. People never got to try the game before they pledged. It’s lots of fun, but they had no way of knowing that. I think the backers had an intuitive sense that this was something worthwhile.

Programming concepts like order of operations and decomposing complex actions are basic elements of thought—things that kids tend to be really good at. Why should they have to wait to learn to read to start exploring these skills? That resonated, and people got excited about seeing what a product like that could be.

I think crowdfunding campaigns work best when they describe something to the world that people want to exist. If it’s a good idea, people will get excited about it. It also helped to email, tweet, and post on Facebook to get the ball rolling.

Did anything happen during the crowdfunding phase that you didn’t anticipate? How did you respond?

I was bowled over by the enormous reception. It was fully funded in five hours and at four-times my goal in two days and then never stopped. From the moment it fully funded, I switched into overdrive reviewing all my production plans to see if they would hold up under the strain of a much larger order.

What challenges did the excessive funding present post-campaign?

Everyone’s expectations were high. I tried to be incredibly communicative, sharing pictures and updates, so everyone had 100% transparency. Ironically most overfunded crowdfunding campaigns are very late, but I shipped a smidge early. I think that bought me a lot of breathing room with my backers for the snags that did come up, such as lost packages.

How quickly did you shift to order fulfillment, and were you able to meet the holiday orders?

The manufacturing process started the day the Kickstarter campaign closed. I had a schedule with two weeks of buffer to get product to U.S. addresses in time for Christmas. I wound up getting it out about one week before Christmas. There were a few delays, but Delano Services, my manufacturer, stepped on the gas and made up the time by finishing early.

How did you get your first non-Kickstarter customers? 

I sold out the remaining inventory in a month or two through the product’s website: www.robotturtles.com.

Are you still printing copies of the game?

No, I’m done. But Thinkfun, an amazing manufacturer of kids’ board and educational games, has started. They’re producing a version of the game that’s very similar but with a few great improvements, such as shiny gold highlights on the pieces and a nicer box and manual. You can buy it now at Target and Amazon.

What happened post-Kickstarter with regard to operations, such as staffing, changes to tactics or strategy, struggles, and successes?

There’s not much to report. This is a one-man show with some amazing contractors helping out with design and support. I just worked like mad to get everything out for the holiday, breathed a big sigh of relief, and turned over manufacturing to Thinkfun who’s done a tremendous job with it.

When did you develop the e-book?

My friend, Brad O’Farrell, the creator of Story Wars, helped me write it during the campaign. Then the same designer who designed the game illustrated it after the campaign closed.

Did anything occur during the first year that you didn’t anticipate? How did you respond?

Just one huge hiccup: I was planning on using Amazon for fulfillment, but they miscommunicated about their ability to fulfill overseas orders. I was left with nearly 2,000 international game orders and no way to get them out for the holidays. Fulfillrite jumped in and saved my bacon—sitting on the phone with me until the late hours in order to get the process squared away and rushing the packages out the door. I would have been in deep trouble without their help.

What are your plans going forward?

I’m working on a book about startup CEOs for O’Reilly Media and enjoying the Seattle season.

To read more about what it’s like to launch and run a successful crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out the rest of interviews in this series LINK.

The game is very loosely based on a programming language called Logo that I learned in computer camp in the early 1980s. Logo features a turtle character that players, using the Logo programming language, send around the screen to draw pictures.

Six-figure crowdfunders Ricky Choi & Phil Moldavski raised almost 400% of their Kickstarter goal with the vision to redefine our relationships with our sock drawers. Their mission was to bring colorful and premium socks to the marketplace at an affordable price, which they’ve since accomplished by actively selling Nice Laundry socks on their website.

However, as with all overnight successes, this dream took immense planning and dedication from day one. Below, we’ve included our discussion with the team, where they detail how they were able to raise $119,321 from 2,000+ backers in the span of 40 days.

They also gave us a ‘look under the hood’ of the project, sharing why they decided to launch a crowdfunding campaign, how they validated their business assumptions, and how they’ve managed to scale the project after experiencing high order volumes.

How did you come up with idea to redo men’s sock drawers?

Ricky Choi: I met [co-founder Phil Moldavski] when we both worked at Living Social, and I noticed that he was very well dressed, but every day he would wear these white athletic socks with his dark dress shoes.

It just wasn’t giving him the look that I knew he was going for. I’ve always been a sock guy. As soon as I felt like I knew Phil well enough, I suggested that he buy a pair of socks—a colorful, dressy, more refined pair—which he did. He ordered a pair online, wore them to work, got a ton of compliments, and loved how they made him feel. But when he got home, he threw them in the wash and didn’t see them again for another two weeks until they came back through the wash.

He wanted every single pair in his sock drawer to be a go-to pair of socks. So he spent weeks and hundreds and hundreds of dollars refreshing his sock drawer with high-quality, colorful, fashionable socks. It was kind of at that point that he said, “Hey, this refreshing your sock drawer is such a great experience but there’s no current solution that allows you to do it for a reasonable price.” [Thus, Nice Laundry] was born from a personal pain point.

How did you turn that into a business and why did you decide to crowdfund it?

RC: Coming from the startup world, we’re all about testing and minimum viable products. Therefore, we weren’t going to go raise $500,000 to test this unproven concept.

Our first step was to call all of our friends and family and pitch them on the idea. We asked them what was their relationship with their sock drawer. Are there some socks that they always wear first? Are there some socks that are always left over [after doing laundry]? How many socks have missing pairs? How many have holes in them, etc.

After walking them through these questions, we realized almost everyone has a terrible experience with their sock drawer. Next, we went to Macys, Nordstrom and all the bargain basements. We would just hang out by the sock displays and wait for people to come up to buy socks and kind of walk them through that same set of questions to get a little bit of objective feedback. We quickly realized that this strained sock drawer relationship was a common experience.

Then, we took out a little bit of an ad spend with Google Adwords, using keywords such as “colorful socks,” “affordable socks,” and “dress socks” and drove people to a landing page with very simple value propositions: refresh your sock drawer in a few clicks, recycle all of your old socks, affordable pricing, high quality. We were capturing a very high percentage of emails, which told us this is an idea that we could definitely communicate online. The next step was a Kickstarter campaign to see if we could convince people on a larger scale since there was relatively low risk on our part and no upfront investment except for a little bit of a budget for a video.

Who were you targeting?

RC: Our target was fresh college graduates and people starting to get serious about their career or professional track. This sense of starting fresh is something that was definitely appealing to that demographic.

The other chunk of our demographic was an older crowd. I think it’s an easy way for the Baby Boomer generation to stay hip as workplace attire is becoming more casual. Whereas they used to wear a tie to showcase their character and personality, ties are not being worn anymore on a daily basis. What better way to replace a tie than with a stylish pair of socks?!

The bulk of our customers are men. About 20% of our customers are women and half of them are gifting to significant others or friends while the other half are actually buying them for themselves.

When did you realize this campaign was going to be bigger than the anticipated $30K?

RC: On launch day. At the time, we broke the record for the most backers on opening day for a fashion Kickstarter project, acquiring nearly 200 backers. We had a steady stream of backers throughout the course of the campaign. Given the fact that we had sold almost 30,000 pairs of socks through Kickstarter to over 2,000 customers, it was at that point that we thought this could potentially scale into a real business because there’s enough demand.

Fundamentally, you can have a great product and you can have a great market, but if you don’t have a product-market fit, you don’t really have anything. And that was the biggest question. We know we can make good socks. We know people like good socks out there. But, the way we’re merchandising these socks, the price-point, the look, feel and style – is that a fit for the audience that we can easily reach online? That was the biggest unknown and I think Kickstarter did a great job of helping us answer that question.

When did you start scaling?

RC: That’s always the question, right? Toward the end of our campaign as we were getting ready to place our order with our manufacturer, we were unprepared for the sheer volume. I mean 30,000 pairs of socks, that’s a 40 foot container! We had anticipated filling all of our own orders. That’s when we realized we’re going to need to bring in some outside help for sure. That’s when we contacted Fulfillrite to be our order fulfillment partner.

We fulfilled the Kickstarter orders at the end of July and delivered them on time to the day. About a week later, we launched our website to the public and again we were a little bit unprepared because, almost unbeknownst to us, we had landed in the Wall Street Journal’s Off-Duty section as their ‘Steal of the Week.’ We were unprepared for the volume. Our phones were ringing off the hook. It’s been a trial by fire as far as how to scale. I think that’s the nature of startups—you don’t scale until you have to because resources are tight. You don’t want to over-engineer solutions for a problem that you don’t have.

How did you manage that process?

RC: It wasn’t anything that impressive that we did in order to cope with the demand. We had a chat function on our website. We created a 1-800 number and had it funneled to my co-founder’s phone. He kept getting calls while he was on the phone with customers so we funneled it to my number. Eventually we had to bring in an extra friend. Our goal was to create as many channels as possible for our customers to reach us. There were times where I would be chatting with four customers online while responding to email while also talking on the phone with customers.

Did you do anything during that period that didn’t work?

RC: It’s not so much that it didn’t work. Our goal was to hand-sign cards for our first 10,000 orders, which we did, and that quickly became very tough to continue to do. We ended up signing 20,000 cards because we ordered too many cards and we said, we have them, we might as well sign them. I’d like to think that we added that personal touch for some of the early adopters of our business.

At the beginning, you just have to a lot of things manually. We initially had a promo code for a bonus pair of socks. We then had to manually go through the orders to see if they had applied the promo code and add it to their order. Over time we’ve leveraged software to help us automate.

Do you have any tips for vetting external partners?

RC: The only vendors that we really work with are Fulfillrite for order fulfillment, our vendors overseas and our expeditors—literally the people who will freight the stuff over from overseas. We do the design, marketing, and coding in-house. But as far as external vendors—especially at the beginning when you need to be flexible—it comes down to the person. Having access and a direct line of communication is the most important thing at the beginning—it’s more important than cost. After that, it’s who is going to best fit your needs.

Have you had to cut a vendor?

RC: Knock on wood, we haven’t had to do that so far.

Have you had any major surprises—good or bad—throughout this process?

RC: Obviously there are nice surprises. Today I was out in New York City and I counted four people wearing our socks. Seeing your stuff in public is always great validation. As far as anything unexpected, we were taking things day by day, so there weren’t any huge surprises. But you think about how many socks we’re bringing in at a given time and how much inventory costs and shipping costs and it all seems like a fairly simple equation, but there’s hidden costs all over the place. Things definitely start to add up.

In a world where you’re selling a lot and you’re getting sales notifications every minute, it’s really easy to lose track of the baseline fact that you’re trying to build a business. The goal isn’t to sell a lot of socks. It’s to build a sustainable business—one that is profitable and one where, after paying everyone, you’re still profitable. And we’ve done a good job of that. It’s just been surprising that as you scale and you grow, these marginal and incremental costs keep adding up. So it’s important to stay on top of it.

How do you keep your team on the same page in understanding that?

RC: We have all sorts of dashboards and do tons of reporting. We track in real-time our revenue, visitors, shipping cost, and product cost. We have a monitor up on the wall that tracks all that kind of stuff. Every week, we do a one-hour metrics session where we go over our website traffic, conversion rate, CPAs and customer lifetime values. We also track different cohorts of customers. For example, comparing customers over time that we acquired with a certain promotion versus customers that we acquired during the same time but not through the promotion. It’s just consistently staying on top of metrics over time.

What’s next for Nice Laundry?

RC: We’re building a neat model here. As we grow and scale, whether there is a real business here is always the question. We’re focused on socks right now and figuring out that as a category. Once we feel like we’re doing a good job with socks, we may look at another category and apply the same model. But as to what that next category is, I have no idea today. In the next year we’ll probably start slowly figuring that out.

Just over a year after their Kickstarter campaign, Nice Laundry has continued to grow and has been featured in Fast Company, Mashable, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Uncrate and Thrillist.

To read more about what it’s like to launch and run a successful crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out the rest of interviews in this series LINK.

To bring color and premium socks to the marketplace, at an affordable price. They have been working to redefine our relationships with our sock drawers!

Eric Heins is the founder of Corter Leather and Cloth. After raising over $58,000 on Kickstarter for his Bottlehook Bottle Opener, he has built a successful leather goods company that has been featured in the pages of Real Simple, GQ, and Esquire Magazine amongst other print and online publications.
Having started the company in college and still in his 20s, entrepreneur and leather smith Eric Heins is a great example of how the American dream lives on and how it can be accessed through a new method – crowdfunding.
We had the chance to sit down with Heins, a Fulfillrite customer, who shed some light on what it takes to launch a successful Kickstarter campaign.

How did you come up with the idea for Corter Leather?

Eric Heins: I’m a leather smith and in college I started making wallets in my dorm room because I couldn’t afford to buy one. I put pictures of the wallet online and a bunch of other kids wanted one, too. Corter Leather was slowly born. I continued the business after graduating in 2009 with a degree in graphic design and at that time switched to doing one-off custom work.

Why did you decide to crowd-fund the launch of your bottle opener?

[In 2012], I injured my hand and was in an air cast for six weeks. I couldn’t work and I had the idea for a hook with a bottle opener. That’s pretty much it—I made a left-handed sketch, and thought ‘I have six weeks to kill.’ I only put it on Kickstarter for 17 days because I wanted to get it to market really quickly.

You raised more money on Kickstarter than anticipated. What was your reaction?

EH: I was excited. I was also kind of scared out of my mind because that was a lot [of volume] at that point. I had one other product, a leather guitar pick, that had done similarly in sales to the bottle opener –an overnight success type thing – and I could make the guitar pick, but we were hand-shipping 400 or 500 pieces at a time. To ship that product, I had to hire friends to address and package envelopes.
[With the bottle opener], I was more prepared. We raised a lot of money through the Kickstarter campaign, but it was only about 1,200 orders and I had shipped about 3,000 orders the year before with the guitar pick, just from my own business, so I knew I could do it. It was going to be a couple of months of really hard work but I was happy to do it because I was proud that the product was received the way it was. Plus, it’s a really simple product. [Besides the hook], there were only two other parts we needed: the leather tab which we made in-house and the O ring, which I worked with a metal smith in Montana. He got everything made super-fast. We delivered on time and there were no real hang-ups.

Following the Kickstarter campaign, how long did it take to scale Corter Leather to meet needs of another high demand product?

EH: It didn’t take that long actually. We had a 100,000-piece mold made so our fabricator could make as many bottlehooks as we needed. That was in July of 2012. Fulfillrite had contacted me to use its fulfillment services. Once I had Fulfillrite established as my order fulfillment partner, I knew I could produce as much product as I could sell.
Fulfillment was about 80 percent of my job before. [With Fulfillrite], I had 80 percent of my time free to make more products. It was liberating because now I had time to do what I wanted to do and I didn’t have to do as much housekeeping. We shut down the website after Christmas in 2012 and I redesigned it. In March 2013 we launched the new website with new products. I hired my first full-time employee in April of this year, so I was still doing it myself for another 18 months after the re-launch.
The challenging part came after that, when I had to scale the entire company, because I just didn’t have the experience. I was 25 years old, a couple of years out of college and with no business degree. I did a lot of my own research on how ecommerce can be optimized. We’re in a unique position because we’re not selling a digital product. We manufacture our products as we’re selling them, which is kind of rare these days. A lot of the challenges were with balancing workload.

Can you give an example?

EH: I realized after the fact that I did a lot of stuff right. I was lucky to have already set up my brand. What you don’t realize with Kickstarter is that if you make it to a top position [on the home page], it’s not the press you get that takes over your sales but rather it’s the organic traffic from Kickstarter. I had my website set up, so I had a place for that traffic to go. But if I had a brand new product—no website, no brand, no anything—I could have easily become that one thing that someone found on Kickstarter and now can’t find.
It’s very important to have a place to send traffic, even if it’s just a Facebook page or an Instagram account. The most valuable aspect of Kickstarter wasn’t necessarily the funding—it was the exposure. It brought us out of our niche.

How did your use of social media factor in?

EH: That’s how the campaign gained traction. We were mentioned in blogs and I showed our design and fabrication process on our social media accounts. I posted pictures of the sketches and pictures of the prototypes so people knew that a new product was coming. In some instances, a company with no presence can put up a product and people will find it. But if you’re trying to fund a designed line and you don’t have a presence, you have to tell people about it. They’re not just going to go to Kickstarter and find it.

So it’s about building up a brand.

EH: Don’t look at what you’re doing as launching one product. You’re launching [your brand] to the world. It’s like meeting someone and not having a business card on you—you can say that you’ll give the card to them the next time you see them, because it’s going to be a lot harder to find each other. You have to have the bare-bones structure of whatever you’re launching and make it available for people to at least bookmark.

How did you get your post-Kickstarter customers?

EH: After the Kickstarter, we immediately put the bottle opener up for sale and put the link to the website on the Kickstarter page. But as far as the company was concerned, we kept going where we left off. My hand healed, and I started making my wallets again.
A lot of people from Kickstarter actually had no idea that I was a leather smith until they went to Corter Leather’s website. I put the money from Kickstarter back into the business to make new metal pieces to expand the line. The funding allowed me to take more steps [with the business] and to make cooler stuff.
I design all my products and I use their popularity as a barometer of sorts. If a product doesn’t sell, that means it’s not good enough. So, I take it off the market, re-design it, and put it back in my line.
I don’t want to be white noise. I want to make things that people need and that aren’t readily available. I don’t email bloggers, I don’t do any of that stuff. Over the years, I’ve gotten enough press that people follow me, which is the way I want my business to be run.

What’s next?

We’re moving into some bigger pieces now, including full-sized and snap wallets. I’m also launching another company called The Albatross Brand, which is machine-sewn leather. It’s going to be a truly direct-to-consumer wholesale leather goods company.
We’re not saying, ‘Our competitors offer them for $100 and we make ours for $60.’ We’re saying, ‘We make this wallet for $19 and sell it to you for $38.

Is there a meaning behind your new brand name, The Albatross Brand?

Yes. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the albatross was an ode of good fortune to anyone that embraced it and fed it and let it sit on its ship, and it was an omen of bad luck for those who tried to kill it. So that’s pretty much what we’re trying to do: To bring really good, high-quality products to kids that might not be able to afford the handmade stuff and, for anyone that tries to kill us, we’re going to try to bring them down. That’s the whole mantra behind it.

You’re launching The Albatross Brand on Kickstarter. Why are you returning to crowdfunding?

Because it’s a totally different entity. Corter is growing so fast that it has capital and I don’t want to take capital away from the business to put into another one. That’s the number one reason. The number two, and most important reason, is one of the things that I like the most about Kickstarter. I don’t want to spend time on something that people don’t want. When you put a product on Kickstarter and you tell people about it, they have the ability to say yes, I think this should exist, or no, I don’t think this should exist.
Corter Leather started in a dorm room and is now expanding into new product lines after having raised over $58K on their initial Kickstarter campaign. Every item they sell is handmade, down to the last stitch, and the company is completely solar powered.

To read more about what it’s like to launch and run a successful crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out the rest of interviews in this series LINK.

Yes. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the albatross was an ode of good fortune to anyone that embraced it and fed it and let it sit on its ship, and it was an omen of bad luck for those who tried to kill it. So that’s pretty much what we’re trying to do: To bring really good, high-quality products to kids that might not be able to afford the handmade stuff and, for anyone that tries to kill us, we’re going to try to bring them down. That’s the whole mantra behind it.

The Nifty MiniDrive is a rare example of a Kickstarter campaign that raised over 3000% of their original $11,000 crowdfunding goal. In a span of just 28 days, the project attracted pledges from 9,805 backers, totaling $384,319 funds raised. The Nifty MiniDrive is an easy to use MicroSD card adapter that sits flush inside the MacBook and uses a microSD card to upgrade the amount of storage on your computer by up to 128GB.

How did you come up with the idea for the Nifty MiniDrive?

My co-founder, Piers Ridyard, had just bought a MacBook Air, and after quickly running out of space on it was looking for way to increase the storage on it. Without wanting to go down the route of bulky, external harddrives, he went to the Apple store and asked if they could upgrade the storage on it. He was told this was something they could not do, and that if he tried to do it himself it would void the warranty.. Most people would have given up at that point; but being the kind of guy that Piers is, he decided to actually invent a solution to his problem which ultimately became the Nifty MiniDrive.

Why do you think you were successful on Kickstarter?

Before launching on Kickstarter we actually ran an unsuccessful Indiegogo campaign. It was unsuccessful in that we got absolutely nowhere near our funding goal, but perversely this failure was one of the biggest factors in our Kickstarter success. Not only did it allow us to hone some of the flaws in the original idea, but most importantly it exposed us to a core group of early adopters who were already experiencing the problem we were trying to solve.

When we launched on Kickstarter our Indiegogo supporters were the first people to spread the word about the campaign. The product was later picked up by the Verge and then appeared on the front-page of Kickstarter, which obviously had a huge impact on the overall numbers, but it was the initial support from our early adopters that created this momentum.

How did you manage the unexpected number of backers on Kickstarter?

We were completely unprepared for the numbers we achieved on Kickstarter. In fact the very first MiniDrives were actually baked in an oven by me and Piers in his flat in Manchester. After our less than overwhelming campaign on Indiegogo we were expecting to bake a few more in the oven, and if things got totally out of control we had a UK manufacturer lined up. In fact things got, much more than totally out of control and we found ourselves in a situation where we needed to manufacture and ship over 12,000 MiniDrives.

It soon became evident that we had reached the threshold where we could not viably do this in England, and therefore had to look to manufacturers in China so that we would be able to scale up production.

In fact, the number of backers had huge implications for all aspects of the operation and was not something we had really thought about when we first launched the product. This meant that as soon as the campaign ended we needed to work out how to put systems into place that would allow us to scale all parts of the business. Outsourcing logistics and using cloud-based services such as Zendesk for customer support really helped make this manageable.

Quick Tip: You need to plan for out-of-the-park success in the same way you need to plan for failure. How will larger orders affect your manufacturing and shipping plan?

How quickly did you fulfill orders after the campaign?

The campaign ended in early August 2012 and we started sending out the product in early February 2013.

What challenges did you face during the transition period?

It was a further 6 months between shipping to our Kickstarter backers and when we started shipping to the general public. Through a combination of our own inexperience and not necessarily working with the best manufacturing partner for us, about 10% of what we shipped to our Kickstarter backers turned out to be faulty. That was a really big kick in the teeth for us and we felt like we had really let our backers down. It could have been quite easy to give-up there, but we had a really clear vision of what we wanted to achieve and did not want to let down the people who had supported us at the very beginning.

We spent the next 6 months working harder than we had ever worked to redress the quality issues seen in the first production run and building something that could be turned into a viable business rather than a one-off Kickstarter project.

What are some of the changes you made?

The first and most important change we made was changing our manufacturer. Following a series of serendipitous meetings we ended up working with Foxconn who do a lot of manufacturing for Apple, which was a huge win for us. The product also underwent a fundamental redesign and we hired an external design consultancy to conduct a thorough Design for Manufacturer analysis to assess the product’s suitability for mass production. We also learned to delegate more and took on two people to help with customer support. With a rock-solid product and systems in place that would allow us to scale, we finally started selling to the general public just over a year after our Kickstarter campaign.

Were you worried at all about being down for an extended period and not selling?

Once your product is out there, it’s relatively easy to be copied, so we were very vulnerable during that period. A competitor did come along and took advantage of us during that period, which was incredibly frustrating because you pour a lot of your energies into building a product and then to see someone come along and copy your idea is quite hard to take. However, we knew that we had a great team behind us and we had this great product and that as soon as we started selling again that it would be OK.

How have operations changed in the past year?

Immensely! At the end of Kickstarter it was just me Piers and Bea (our amazing CFO, who makes sure we don’t spend our all money!). Now we are a team of 8 retailing in 40 countries with 25 distributors, and can count Apple’s online store in Europe as one of the places where we sell our MiniDrives.

What’s next?

Although we are normally based in Manchester, England we are currently spending 3 months in Tel-Aviv working on our next project. This first product was a very simple idea, but it has allowed us to create the foundations of a business with a steady cashflow. We’ve got some pretty exciting ideas in the pipeline, and the idea now is to keep innovating and bring something new to the table.

To read more about what it’s like to launch and run a successful crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out the rest of interviews in this series LINK.

You need to plan for out-of-the-park success in the same way you need to plan for failure. Consider how will larger orders affect your manufacturing and shipping plan.

Panda’s Kickstarter campaign exploded onto the Kickstarter scene in late 2011, raising six times their original goal. Described as “The First Eco-Friendly Brand of Luxury Sunglasses,” this project managed to attract 275 backers over the span of 60 days.

Since launching a successful Kickstarter, Panda has grown into one of the top high-end sunglasses brands that produces handcrafted products made from sustainable bamboo. We had the chance to sit down with one of the project’s creators, Vincent Ko, who was nice enough to share some of the secrets to running a successful Kickstarter campaign.

How did you come up with the idea for Panda?

Vincent Ko: A few years ago, the other founders and I were at our college homecoming reunion and were in a retail store where we saw Toms shoes. We were all big fans, because Toms paved the way was one of the first entrepreneurial-social consumer products. That was the catalyst behind Panda’s social mission. We figured we could make a fraction of the impact that Toms made with a different product—in our case, that was eco-friendly sunglasses.

How did you turn that idea into a business, and why did you choose to launch via crowdfunding?

We wanted to make a discussion piece and we figured sunglasses would be the best way. We had to link up suppliers and manufacturers with a source of bamboo and see if they’d be willing to make sunglasses out of wood. We chose crowdfunding because we had an idea for the bamboo sunglasses, but although we wanted the product, we weren’t sure if others wanted the product as well. Kickstarter is huge now, but when we launched the campaign in 2011, it was more a platform for trading ideas. Kickstarter would be a way for us to see if other people also wanted bamboo sunglasses.

“Kickstarter would be a way for us to see if other people also wanted bamboo sunglasses.”

You raised nearly six times more than anticipated. How did that affect your strategy?

It proved to us that other people wanted the sunglasses and allowed us to have confidence to say “OK, let’s really grow this and make it into a business.”

Who did the campaign target?

When we first started, there wasn’t much of a target. We thought it would be a younger, eco-friendly audience. But over the last three years, we’ve found that our customer base is so scattered—there’s no particular age group and people are buying them for various reasons, whether it’s because they’re eco-friendly or just that a wooden sunglass has a very cool aesthetic. It’s a win and it’s a struggle. It’s a win because we’re not limited to one customer segment, but it’s a struggle because it’s not a niche where we can pinpoint exactly who the customer is.

Quick Tip: Business plans are certainly necessary, but you won’t figure out who your ideal customer is or why they will buy your products until you actually get out there and gather real consumer behavior data.

Kickstarter gave the Panda team a platform to test out whether or not others actually wanted high-end bamboo sunglasses and to figure out the customer demographic that would be most likely to buy the product (along with their reasons for supporting).

How do you reach such a broad group post-Kickstarter?

Press coverage drove a lot of traffic to our site. We were in business, fashion, and eco-friendly lifestyle publications. A fashion brand that started from a crowdfunding movement is a sign of the times.

How quickly did you shift from the crowdfunding phase to order fulfillment?

The product was finished about 45 days after the campaign finished and we began shipping them out 45 days after that. The Kickstarter backers were given a discount promo code to pick out the sunglasses they wanted and place their order via our online store.

At the same time, we also allowed customers that were not Kickstarter backers to purchase at full retail price, and we began filling orders right away. Initially, we had to individually re-package the first 500 orders in our garage because we were getting the casing, labels, and sunglasses from various suppliers. We dropped the orders off with Fulfillrite, which fulfilled them.

Quick Tip: Don’t wait to set up your website until after your campaign is over. If you meet your fundraising goal, then you have the perfect opportunity to convert individuals who find your successful campaign from news websites, social media, and forums into new customers!

At the very least, set up a landing page to collect email addresses of individuals interested in pre-ordering your product. There are a lot of tools out there that will help you set up a website if you don’t have any kind of coding ability. I recommend Wix, SquareSpace, or Shopify.

How did you approach your first year?

Our first-year strategy was to have an online presence. We built our online store in the first three months and did industry tradeshows, including ENK in New York and Magic. We were a little bit out of our league but it was good. From there, we ramped up our wholesale business.

Why did you choose to attend tradeshows?

We had a couple of advisors that were either former or current executives at well-known retail brands. They said that though the tradeshow business can be expensive, we should try it out and see what happens.

Our first tradeshow was great. Though we were the youngest in the group and had a unique product, we stood out in a good way. This was within four months of opening, and we were there shaking hands with some of the largest retailers in the country. Within our first year, we were placed in the Trend Accessories section of Nordstrom stores nationwide. We’ve since gone away from tradeshows and are focusing more on our online presence and empowering our retailers by driving foot traffic to their stores. One way we do that is through a store locator on our website.

Quick Tip: When most people are brainstorming projects to launch on crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter, they start with ideas that they are passionate about and products that they want to see exist in the world.

After raising over six times their Kickstarter goal, Panda has gone on to become a leader in their niche and have attracted the attention of big name brands like Nordstrom.

To read more about what it’s like to launch and run a successful crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out the rest of interviews in this series LINK.

Don’t wait to set up your website until after your campaign is over. If you meet your fundraising goal, then you have the perfect opportunity to convert individuals who find your successful campaign from news websites, social media, and forums into new customers.

In February 2013, Brian Park, R.N. and founder of Nabee Socks wrapped up a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, having raised $12,741 in 30 days.

Named after the Korean world for butterfly, his compression socks use a process called graduated compression therapy to reduce leg and foot pain, prevent swelling, and improve post-exercise recovery.

But, there’s a twist. Rather than the staid and neutral color offerings of traditional varieties, Park’s socks are available in designs spanning argyle to stripes and to polka dots.

The project’s mission to add an element of fashion to footwear that’s popular among medical patients and staff took Kickstarter by storm, and the team ended up attracting over 250 backers.

Now, over a year later, the successful, yet modest Nabee Socks Kickstarter campaign has transformed into a thriving business. Park now works with Fulfillrite to help manage the demand for his nearly 300 orders each month.

We had the privilege of talking with Park about what he learned from the crowdfunding campaign and his first year in business. Check out our interview below for tips and advice for navigating the online fundraising arena.

Coming up with the idea.

How did you come up with the idea for Nabee Socks?

Brian Park: I was a nurse at the MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C., and a lot of the doctors, nurses, and patients wore compression socks. The socks tend to be sold in neutral colors, causing the doctors and nurses to wear colorful socks over them to express their individuality. Some of the younger patients, especially the girls, didn’t want to wear the conventional socks with shorts or a skirt.

Also, my roommate teaches cross-fit and the people in her class wear colorful high socks to protect their shins while lifting weights. Because compression socks help with recovery and endurance, this seemed like another area that could be tapped.

The variety of markets that this product touches is interesting. Why did you choose to launch a crowdfunding campaign?

BP: I read The Lean Startup by Eric Reis, which is about testing an idea with minimal investment. Kickstarter was a great means by which to test my idea. If the campaign didn’t succeed, I could assume my idea was not marketable and I could walk away or take a different direction without having invested a ton of money.

I came up with the idea in October of 2012 and launched the Kickstarter campaign in December of that year. I have a graphics background and figured I could make a decent video myself. I put the campaign together in about three days.

Preparing for the campaign.

Who did you work with to fabricate the socks?

BP: Compression socks require a special machine and a city in Taiwan has a number of manufacturers that have them. I went to Taiwan and checked out a couple of the factories. I was concerned about quality since poorly made socks could hurt the people wearing them or just not help them at all.

I found a manufacturer that had basic ISO certification as well as ISO certification for medical devices and I made sure that the company’s socks were FDA registered. I made some modifications to their socks, which was difficult because the company is limited in what they can do with the compression sock weaving process. That all required an investment of about $2,000.

Who were you targeting and how did you market to them?

BP: When I started, I tried to throw a wide net. I was focusing on 22 year olds to 35 year olds who were making at least $45,000 per year. I initially thought that my No. 1 buyers would be athletes—but instead they were mostly nurses, doctors, and people with poor circulation in their legs.

I think I overestimated the number of people in the cross-fit community and the number of marathoners who were seeking funky socks. A lot of the initial marketing was done through word of mouth.

 “A lot of the initial marketing was done through word of mouth.”

Did anything happen during the crowdfunding phase that you didn’t anticipate?

Despite Kickstarter providing a lot of visibility, you really do have to rely on your friends and family to get the word out about your product. Very few blogs covered me during the campaign. The larger blogs told me to get back to them when I was fully funded. The smaller blogs covered me and were eventually picked up by bigger blogs and websites, which gave me a lot of traction. I thought I would be able to get in right away, but it’s actually quite a bit more difficult.

“The smaller blogs covered me and were eventually picked up by bigger blogs and websites, which gave me a lot of traction”

How quickly did you shift to order fulfillment following the campaign?

Everything was very quick. My campaign ended in mid-January 2013 and I was fulfilling by the end of February. As I was approaching my fundraising goal, I put in my first order. I air freighted the product to Fulfillrite and was able to fulfill all orders in about a month and a half. I received many emails from my backers—both in surprise as to how quickly the product came and also how happy they were that they didn’t have to wait a year or more to receive their socks. I made up all my costs in that first month.

You came in less than $3,000 over your funding goal—do you think having such a close margin helped you turn over the orders rapidly?

I remember watching an episode of Oprah a long time ago about Spanx and how once the company was featured on Oprah, it had a near-impossible time keeping up with demand. I didn’t want that to happen but it was always in the back of my mind. It was nice to be a little bit over the goal since everything was already planned out for that quantity.

Life After Kickstarter

So, how did you get your first non-Kickstarter customers?

I carried around a big duffel bag filled with the socks—at work, to the gym, and in the back of my car. I was selling tons of socks. D.C. is a very transient city so people, especially the other nurses at the hospital, would leave town and spread the word. One nurse moved to a new hospital in Oregon shortly after the campaign and I started getting hundreds of orders from that city because she had spread the word to her new hospital.

That was repeated at different hospitals. Word just spread organically. Smaller blogs started reaching out. I was approached by the Los Angeles Times and from that point on, which was around September 2013, the word spread fast. I was featured in some hiking magazines, the Chicago Tribune, and a number of other blogs and newspapers. I was getting consistent orders that went far beyond my expectations.

How, if at all, has your business changed in the first year?

I’m still doing most of the work, but I hired a contract graphic designer and someone to take care of customer-service emails. It helps keep my workload down. I am a big proponent of automation, which Fulfillrite is a part of. I don’t have to go to the mailbox every morning and send out 30 or 40 orders.

My accounting is automated through Xero.com; I set it up so that everything is scripted and I check it once a week. During the last four months I have been traveling all around the world. I was able to visit 10 countries and still run my business.

How about refunds? Did you get requests for them?

Yes. That was something that I didn’t anticipate and it’s a good lesson for anyone doing anything related to clothing—and that is sizing. If you’re buying a product in bulk, you have to meet a minimum order quantity of a certain design in a certain size. Industry reports on clothing sizes are costly.

I went to the Library of Congress and was able to find [free] information from 1992 on shoe sizes in the U.S. I based my order off of that sizing, but there were two problems: the types of people who need compression socks for medical reasons tend be heavier set, which means they have bigger calves and therefore need larger sizes; additionally, since 1992 America’s obesity rate has increased, which again means larger calves and larger socks. I ended up needing more extra-large sizes and almost no small sizes. That left me with a lot of extra inventory.

What was one of the biggest challenges faced during your first year?

Marketing. I tried to do search engine optimization (SEO) and Google Ad-words myself and probably sunk close to $1,500 in one month. I hired an SEO company, which was another $2,500 for one month and that didn’t work, either. I was extremely frustrated. I just couldn’t get traction.

I ended up using a grassroots approach—emailing hundreds of blogs. One thing that helped was to keep my emails to three sentences and attach a PDF with the details.I would also offer them free product and other value-ads for bloggers. That all helped me break through, but until I reached that point the marketing was unbelievably frustrating.

“One thing that helped was to keep my emails to three sentences and attach a PDF with the details.I would also offer them free product and other value-ads for bloggers.”

What are you working on now?

I’m working full-time on the socks. The business is doing a lot better than I had ever anticipated. I use my spare time to travel while still maintaining and growing the business. I think people will be surprised to find that once you put in the initial extreme effort and all of those hours, you can get freedom. I never thought I would be making six figures selling socks.

“I never thought I would be making six figures selling socks.”

Nabee Socks fulfills about 200-300 orders and reports around $10,000 in profits per month.

To read more about what it’s like to launch and run a successful crowdfunding campaign, be sure to check out the rest of interviews in this series LINK.

To get Fulfillrite’s custom pricing request a quote.

Compression socks that use a process called graduated compression therapy to reduce leg and foot pain, prevent swelling, and improve post-exercise recovery. What makes Nabee Socks unique is their wide range of colors and patterns! The project’s mission to add an element of fashion to footwear. That’s popular among medical patients and staff.