Kickstarter Success(?) Story

Great article at Fast Company which tells what happened after a fledgeling company’s Kickstarter campaign succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Hoping to raise only $9,800 to get their Une Bobine iPhone charging cable design into production, Fuse Chicken reeled in a staggering $212,265 from Kickstarter. The tale that follows shows how raising money is not always the hardest part of getting things done. Though the tone of the article is somewhat in the vein of “this is what happens when you ask for money from strangers on the internet,” the story is (from my perspective at least) quite a success story. Fuse Chicken’s founders, having worked in product design for many years, already had some relationships with manufacturing in China, and the article tells of no problems with the manufacturing. The sticky bits come under the heading “logistics” : getting manufactured goods from China back to their offices in short order, sending out thousands of finished pieces to Kickstarter donors (grand total of $20k in postage), dealing with international taxes, and picking trustworthy sales representatives out of the thousands of requests that came in through the internet.

The article mentions that Kickstarter is subtly discouraging people from projects like this, and I think I can understand why. Kickstarter is awesome and revolutionary and somewhat mindblowing. But — Kickstarter is also an avenue for inexperienced people to get in way above their heads. If you have a good idea and can sell it then there’s no reason why you can’t bring in huge donations just like Fuse Chicken did. Fuse Chicken’s story is excellent because it show how difficult things are even for the best prepared. And, by the sound of it, they are succeeding – but only after a long and grueling learning process.

But of course who gets anything started without a long and grueling learning process?

(via notcot)