Loup Kids

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Now that my Kickstarter is over, I've put together a post to share my advice. I might have not reached my goal but I did get a ton of PR. I've also realized that my goal was super high. Sure I could have asked for 10K or 5K but that would not have been enough to execute my vision. It's better to have nothing than to settle.

1: Don’t do a kickstarter that falls during the first two weeks of September.  Too many holidays. Everyone is having offline family fun. You’re competing with Back to School, Labor Day, Rosh Hashaha, Yom Kippur and September 11.  

2: When doing a kickstarter, promote one product.  Don't try to launch a brand or a platform. People want to be a part of 1 thing and 1 thing only. Plus people really don't care about anything aside from themselves. Let alone your kickstarter. Make it easier to care.  

3: Kickstarter supporters are not big on fashion.  Unless it's a magical pair of shorts or a bear coat. Kids stuff is a hard sell for some unknown reason. Games and tech do well. It's seems hard to raise more than 10k. In regards to kid clothes, it's easier prob to go to Walmart and buy a tshirt for $5 (that's been made by another child in a third world country).  

4: Don't do anything but promote the Kickstarter.  Morning, day and night. Cancel the cousins Quinceañera invite, don't do the theatre reading, don't meet friends for a drink, don't help your friend move. Just focus all your energy on the project. Be selfish.  

5: Get help. You can't do it alone. Get an assistant or five. Five people is a great number to reach a high goal. You can't do it alone. Get an assistant on http://zirtual.com/. It will change your life. I also had a Kickstarter consultant. DJ from http://exhalecreative.com/ helped me run my campaign. I couldn't have done it with out him. He was truly a part of the team. I worked during the kickstarter and I couldn't have followed up with editors and have created the PR with out his help. Have a team.  

6: Try to reach out to befriend editors. Do it at least two months in advance to secure them running your story. Try to befriend the editors through friends. Don't be creepy. 

Side note on mommy bloggers:

The established, large mommy bloggers were great. They were excited to run the story and were lovely to work with.  

A few smaller mommy bloggers basically used extortion. They wanted free clothes for running a tiny article. I soon realized that the only reason they ran the blog (since their followers on fb and twitter were low) was to get free clothes for their kids. Fine if you are dealing with a large corporate brand. Not too cool if you are dealing with a tiny start up business. The small ones can barely afford making the items in the first place.  

7: Don't send attachments.  Something obvious that might be easily overlooked. Don't send attachments, that will go straight to spam. Links to dropbox work best.  

8: Avoid sending out emails via mailchimp or other services.  Unless you are an established brand with a huge email list. Only 10% of mass emails will get opened (or some low number like that). The main reason I think my campaign was slow was due to an email blast. I had about 1,000 friends and relatives and I only reached about 200 through email. Massive loss. I had people emailing me a month later going saying they didn't know the campaign started and ended. Womp, womp.  

9: Write personalized emails: After realizing that my mailchimp blast failed, I resorted to personal emails. My friend Jordan just raised a ton of funds for an indie film and recommended the tactic. The email asked people to pledge just $5 bucks.  

I watched Amanda Palmer's "The Art of Asking" TED talk and felt slightly inspired yet mostly mortified. It felt weird being personal & asking people to support my project. I only sent out a few emails at first. I was surprised when positive emails came back as returns. My friends wrote me lovely personal messages back and I was surprised when a lot of them donated waaay more than $5. I wished I did it right on day 1 of the campaign.  

10: Know your target market: As a kids fashion line, I thought that moms/parents are my target demographic. I was wrong. Most moms are too busy to shop online for kids. They are so busy working, parenting and trying to keep themselves put together that kickstarters fall on the back burner.

My main target market turned out to be friends of the family and relatives and not the moms or dads (dads hardly shop for kids). As I grow it will be interesting to see if my target market will change. If your kickstarter doesn't reach it's goal... Go back and improve your product. It wasn't good enough.