Kickstarter Is the Future of Ecommerce
If you’ve been monitoring the headlines recently you’ve probably noticed that the buzz around crowdfunding has died down in the press. This may lead you to believe that the industry has lost some of its pull among customers. If you’re currently sleeping on Kickstarter I’ve got two words for you. Get Excited.
Over the past year the platform has slowly transformed from the place where potato salad gets funded to the best online store for highly anticipated new products. From connected air conditioners to album releases from hip hop legends, it’s begun to outshine even Amazon. Now, I know what you’re thinking:
“That’s not possible Amazon is the #1 online consumer store in the world and growing! Kickstarter doesn’t even come close!”
You’re right Amazon is dominating worldwide in ecommerce, but Kickstarter isn’t beating it in ecommerce (yet). However, the pre-order segment is currently taking the ecommerce industry by storm. This is the same segment that saw Rockstar games pre-sell 7 million copies of GTA V (or ~$550 million in sales), Star Wars: The Force Awakens selling $100 million in advance tickets, and Tesla selling 325,000 pre-orders and counting (that’s ~$10 billion in projected sales) before their releases. If over $10.6 billion in estimated sales isn’t the sign of a new market then nothing is.
Now if only there was a platform where small teams and creators could take advantage of this exciting new business model. If only they could build prototypes, trailers, or sample versions of their ideas and then put them on a website for consumers to pre-order the product and fund the creation process and market entry process. Wouldn’t that be amazing?
All joking aside there’s a much deeper reason why Kickstarter (and I can’t forget Indiegogo as well) is in such a great position. They might be one of the first companies to successfully move upstream of Amazon. Before the new hotness of gadgets, movies, and books from yet to be discovered genius’ go up for sale on Big Orange, they get funded on Kickstarter.
Think of Amazon as the CIA that meets consumer demands in real time and Kickstarter as the Minority Report PreCrime police force that figures out what consumers actually want before they even buy it. How valuable is a company like that?
Now they also have a beautiful store design for successful projects that’s way better than the industry-standard wall of doodads and whatchamacallits. And their new section for supporting music, journalism, and other creative work through subscription is flawless. If design and UX really are a big draw for consumers then Kickstarter is definitely pulling ahead in that regard.
The mutli-billion dollar question is, what’s to stop Kickstarter from becoming the storefront of ecommerce and turning Amazon into just “The Delivery Service”? Amazon will obviously have something to say about that of course, but the potential for a showdown between the two could get very interesting.
Before then they’ll probably finish off what’s left of Best Buy and company. Then they’ll go toe to toe for the future of the most exciting segment of an already high growth industry.
Get your popcorn ready.
