The Hoodsie has seen some awesome success on Kickstarter, having hit their $15,000 fundraising goal in the first 10 days of the crowdfunding campaign and gone on to raise twice that! They still are fundraising until January 12, 2013, or for six more days.
Based in Toronto, Canada, this team has gotten some great PR, a good product-market fit, and have managed to hustle their way to attracting 373 backers. Their prouduct, the Hoodsie, is a “unisex hooded onesie for adults. Hoodsies are made from super-soft 100% Pima cotton. We’ve designed a onesie that is perfect for lounging around at home but doesn’t look like pajamas. It’s the onesie you could actually leave the house in.”
They’ve been nice enough to do an interview with me and share some of their fundraising secrets. Learn how they managed to attract over 300 backers and raise more than $34,000 via Kickstarter below. Also, be sure to check out their campaign!
Did you expect to raise so much more than your fundraising goal and hit your goal within the first 10 days?
We were confident we would fund because we believe in the product and put together a great team of experienced crowdfunders and had a strategy for getting attention on social media and in the press. It was important to us to set a manageable goal because of Kickstarter’s ‘all or nothing’ format – we wanted to ensure that after working so hard to get it going that we would be able to finish the play and manufacture our first production run of Hoodsies.
We started with social media outreach and then transitioned to reaching out the the press. We were surprised by funding so quickly and how much we’ve raised so far. We credit our success to having a good product that people want to get behind, and having a strong, engaged fanbase on Facebook, made up mostly of our friends that helped jumpstart our project. We couldn’t have done it without our friends stepping us and helping us promote.
What percentage came from friends vs. strangers and where did the strangers come from?
It’s hard to say what percentage came from friends vs strangers, but friends mainly came from Facebook where we did a lot of outreach, and that was a significant source of traffic. We’ve also had the good fortune of being featured as ‘popular’ on Kickstarter pretty much since launch, which really helped us reach the Kickstarter community. We also notice spikes in sales when we get a really great feature or a popular blog covers us.
Saw on Kicktraq your campaign had a massive spike on the 18th. Where did that come from?
That came from a story on TheAwesomer.com which gave us a lot of exposure. We’ve had a ton of press, but not all press leads to sales. That particular story got us 14 new backers in a day.
Why did you choose Kickstarter over other platforms like Fundrazr.
We decided to go with Kickstarter because of it’s large and active community as well as the credibility their brand lends to start-ups who are just getting out there when it comes to getting media coverage.
What role do you think comments and updates play in the process of raising money on Kickstarter.
I think that comments and updates keep people excited and engaged throughout the course of the campaign, and can help to keep your project ‘Popular’. We could have done more in this regard.
How did you estimate costs for the campaign to make sure you would be able to fulfill your rewards even if you over-funded?
We estimated costs by getting production quotes for low quantities. We made sure that our production could scale up easily, so we would be able to fulfill even if there was much greater demand than anticipated. A strong supply chain that could handle as much demand as we could throw at it was very important to us from the beginning.
Any things you wish you knew when you started out?
Things really slowed down for us at Christmas, so we had about 5 dead days where not much was happening. Conventional wisdom says that 30 days is the ideal project length – we settled on 35 but would go for 40 if we had to do it over again.
We also spent a lot of time figuring out the optimal way to reach out to press and found that direct outreach was by far the best.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to raise money on Kickstarter or another crowdfunding platform for a fashion product, be sure to check out the Hoodsie campaign and study their presentation, video, and reward tiers. I would also recommend checking out the interview I did with Finn Apparel, who raised more than $33,000 on Kickstarter for a fashion product. If you have any questions or thoughts, be sure to leave a comment!
