You need to crowdfund your idea — here’s why.
What is crowdfunding ?
We all have, at some point in our life done what is referred to as crowdfunding. Whether it was collecting money for a school fair, or it was friends collecting money for a birthday gift for one among the group. It’s simple and yet a beautiful idea.
Crowdfunding as defined today is the process of raising money for your product or service through the public. In exchange of raising this money, the campaign founders offer some form of ‘gift’. Often times this ‘gift’ is the product that is being crowdfunded.
The idea of crowdfunding can seem a bit daunting — it relies on the public to decide if your project will be funded . But at the same time, it offers a great opportunity for creators with interesting ideas/products who might not have the resources to manufacture in bulk to launch their product. Crowdfunding websites also offer some really interesting products that you won’t find in the retail market.
More than $ 4 billion has been pledged on Kickstarter with more than 160,000 successfully funded projects. The total number of backers till date has nearly touched the 16 million mark!
While Indiegogo has raised over $1 billion for all its projects and has 15 million active users.
Flow Hive 2 gives honey on tap directly. It has raised nearly 15 million dollars on Indiegogo.
Nebia Spa Shower offers a spa like experience every time you shower while saving water. It has raised nearly 2 million dollars on Kickstarter alone.
Successful crowdfunding campaigns could raise upwards of a few million dollars over the course of a few months.
The most successful crowdfunded product till date is an e-bike — Mate X e-bikes have raised north of 17 million USD on Indiegogo alone.
Mate X is a folding bike that has a motor mounted on the rear wheel for pedal assist.
Crowdfunding of Electric bikes
Over the past few years there have been many successful e-bike crowdfunding campaigns. Some more e-bike campaigns that were successful on crowdfunding websites (mostly Kickstarter and Indiegogo) are Sondors e-bikes — raised more than 6 million USD collectively on Kickstarter and Indiegogo, Vello — raised about 1 million USD, Elbike — 300 thousand USD, Strom City — 1.5 million USD, Moar — 1.3 million USD, Nireeka — 1.6 million USD and many more.
Crowdfunded e-bikes are offered at a very low price as compared to bikes available through the retail stores
Why? it is shipped directly to the end consumer without having to go through a distributor or retailer. Another important reason is the discount that the founders give as a benefit to the early project backers. But the disadvantage of getting an e-bike through crowdfunding is that you pay for a product that you would get months later, and in many cases you might even get your products after years or not!
Even after all this, the crowdfunding market has only seen a steep rise in the number of e-bikes sold.
Looking at the data, it can be concluded that the demand of e-bikes is only going to increase on crowdfunding websites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter in the coming time.
Which platform is best for you?
Looking at the research data above Indiegogo seems like the ideal choice but there’s a good reason why we have chosen to go ahead with Kickstarter.
- Kickstarter is and has always been a community driven platform, it is still the best place to go with a new idea/product/album/short film/game
- You can do a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo after Kickstarter but not the other way around
- The Kickstarter community itself is much larger and much more closely knit, something I absolutely love about it
- The community is very understanding and supportive(Not that creators should be taking advantage of this, unfortunately a lot of them do)
These sale numbers of e-bikes has been researched by the hard working team at Calamus.
If you have an idea and need help with crowdfunding, feel free to reach out to us through our website.
Good luck!
You can also follow us on our social media handles —
https://www.facebook.com/calamus/
