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Kickstarting Your Business
Crowd-Funding Platform Paves the Way to Success for New Specialty Toy Companies
by Marissa DiBartolo
reaking into the toy business is not easy. While professional inventors
have experience pitching products to major manufacturers, those new
to the industry can have a hard time getting their new toy—even if
it’s amazing—to take off. Sometimes all that’s missing is the proper funding
to get a product off the ground. That’s where Kickstarter comes in.
Kickstarter is a website that offers a way to fund creative projects, includ-
ing films, games, music, art, design, technology, and toys. The crowd-funding
platform allows project creators to set a funding goal and a deadline and if con-
sumers like a project, they can pledge money toward setting it into motion.
Since its launch in 2009, more than 3.8 million people have pledged more than
$571 million, funding more than 39,000 creative projects.
A number of new toy companies are bringing their products into devel-
opment using Kickstarter. Bettina Chen and Alice Brooks, co-founders of
MayKah Inc., used Kickstarter to fund the first round of manufacturing for
Roominate, an engineering toy for girls. The two discovered the platform when
they were invited to back a project created by a friend. “We thought, ‘maybe
this is the way for us to get our toy out in front of a lot of people’,” says Chen.
She and Brooks set a goal of $25,000 based on how much it would cost them
Atoms Express building blocks in red, green, and blue, from Seamless Toy Co. Inc.
to produce 500 Roominate kits. After 30 days, Roominate’s Kickstarter cam-
paign raised $85,964.
Michael Rosenblatt, founder of Atoms Express, smart building blocks that
allow kids to rev up their construction creations on a technological level, used
Kickstarter to test the market for his product as well. “I thought that Kickstarter
was a really neat way to figure out if anyone else thought it was good before
we sunk a lot of time and money into it,” he says.
However, running a successful campaign takes round-the-clock work. It
is important to get the campaign in front of as many people as possible to ensure a project will be backed. Rosenblatt and his team made the decision to hire a public relations firm to boost awareness about Atoms Express’ Kickstarter campaign. “We had them talking to major media and then we had two people work-
ing full time talking to people on social media. That combination seemed to
work pretty well,” Rosenblatt says. Atoms Express reached its goal of $100,000
in 22 days, and by the end of the 45-day campaign, the company raised $183,232.
Rosenblatt stresses that one of the most important things to accomplish
Roominate, a buildable room with electrical components, from Maykah Inc.
SPECIALTY TOYS & GIFTS
when using Kickstarter is to build momentum for the project early on. Debra Sterling, founder of GoldieBlox Inc., launched her Kickstarter campaign for
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