The Crowdfunding Technique That Raised Us £100k in 30 Days

QLVR started as a lockdown thought. We needed to mix the comfort of a slip-on with the efficiency expertise of a working shoe. It quickly grew to become what we referred to as The World’s First Working Slipper.

The concept was easy. However turning that imaginative and prescient right into a funded enterprise took persistence, technique, and a willingness to study rapidly.

With 30 years of expertise within the footwear trade, we knew that to disrupt the extremely aggressive sports activities shoe market, a profitable new product would must be distinctive, radically completely different, and meet un-met buyer wants.

No person talks about IP

After designing and testing our prototype, we first turned our consideration to defending it. My recommendation to different entrepreneurs: don’t minimize corners on defending mental property in your innovation.

We invested in worldwide patents, emblems, and design registrations for our WingFit lace-replacement expertise. The patent journey took 4 years. Whereas we waited, we refined our expertise.

We made a deliberate option to construct our expertise solely for girls, a possibility traditionally uncared for by the sports activities footwear trade. Whereas most manufacturers merely shrink males’s fashions, QLVR can be engineered round feminine biomechanics: greater arches, wider toe packing containers and narrower heels.

Each time somebody tried the prototype, they stated the identical factor: “That’s intelligent”, and so the model acquired its title ‘QLVR’.

From prototype to manufacturing

Up thus far, we had bootstrapped the enterprise, however the subsequent step of opening manufacturing facility tooling and scaling to manufacturing required vital capital.

Crowdfunding wasn’t on our radar at first, however Kickstarter provided three key alternatives:

1. Funding our first manufacturing run
2. Market testing with actual client insights
3. First-to-market positioning for our innovation

Our marketing campaign raised £100,071 from 707 backers throughout 38 nations in simply 30 days. It could have appeared seamless from the skin, however the actuality was a steep studying curve.

Kickstarter is crowded with innovators competing for consideration. Whereas the platform has an energetic backer group, getting observed isn’t simple. You want a elegant proposition, successfully a mini-website and relentless advertising and marketing to develop consciousness.

The Kickstarter algorithm performs a giant position. To realize traction, you want sturdy early momentum, which suggests constructing your personal pre-launch viewers. We invested closely in promoting on Fb and Instagram.

By movies, graphics, and testing completely different messages, we created a group of girls excited to be first in line for our Working Slippers.

That groundwork paid off. On launch day, our database drove a direct spike in pledges, pushing us to development on Kickstarter and drawing a whole lot of recent backers. We realized that crowdfunding success relies upon much less on what occurs in the course of the 30 days, and extra on the preparation that comes beforehand.

Navigating platform challenges

Kickstarter comes with quirks that many first-time campaigners overlook. For one, backers should wait months for improvements to enter manufacturing earlier than they ship, which might create scepticism.

Cost is credit-card solely, main some to suspect scams and pre-sales lists inevitably drop when launch day arrives.

Then there’s the funding goal dilemma. Kickstarter’s algorithm helps campaigns that hit their goal on day one, however sensible manufacturing objectives are sometimes too excessive to attain in someday. Our answer was to set an achievable public goal which we may smash on launch day whereas setting a separate inside goal for full funding.

Most backer exercise occurs on the primary and final days, leaving a tense center stretch the place momentum can stall. We handled our backers as companions, partaking day by day, answering questions, and sharing updates to take care of belief and momentum.

Our backers grew to become the inspiration of QLVR’s group. Many stay loyal prospects, repeat purchasers, and even model ambassadors serving to us unfold the phrase. By responding personally, offering frequent updates, and treating backers as long-term prospects, we turned their help into lasting relationships.

It’s not the best alternative for each founder. However for us, it gave us validation that our thought had international demand, and group constructing with early adopters – each of which gave us the momentum to construct on our subsequent development part.