A Kickstarter Story — Mobile Lifestyle
One year ago, we were getting ready to hit that publish button on Kickstarter, ready to launch our campaign for Trobla into the world. We expected some orders and hoped we would be able to reach our goal, and we had absolutely no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
Two days. That’s how long it took us to reach our goal, leaving us with another 37 to keep the campaign going strong. We are shipping out the last few items this week, items our backers have been waiting for since last summer.
Somewhere in the middle of crowdfunding success, people tend to assume that the money you are raising is going straight to your pockets. “You made so much!” followed by “Help me launch something too!” Ah, yes, if only it were that simple. But what if I told you that this money becomes a part of the learning process? That it goes directly to fund your mistakes. Would you still be so keen to jump on board?
We made our calculations, we planned our work, we expected to make 200 units. And then our campaign surpassed its goal 6 times, meaning we had to figure out how to build 1000 Troblas in a very short period of promised time.
What started as a team of three, grew to four and fell down to two, and eventually one. No matter the number, we have never had enough people on board to fulfill the promise we made on that bright spring day. Our communication plan worked, our product was ready, production was in line. Then, if something could go wrong (even the smallest something) it did go wrong. We hit roadblocks at all corners. It started with delays in getting our funds transferred. We had to open a company and deal with bureaucratic nonsense that meant we would have to wait to order the materials we needed to even begin production.
We learned how people react under stress, we had carpenters simply not give a fuck and delay our production by a few more weeks. We learned that we gave backers too many choices. We wanted to give them everything because they were supporting us and our vision. They were helping us build our company, so let them choose the wood, let us build them specific adapters to fit their phones, let us meet all of their wishes and desires. While they truly did appreciate this work on our behalf, it didn’t make our job any easier. We created a complex product that had 18 individual pieces. This didn’t even take into account the hand stamped product information tile, the locally sewn bags, the boxes, the stickers, the packaging… When we thought we were ready to ship, there was always a piece missing in the production chain. If a new box of adapters arrived, magnets had to be inserted, edges had to be sanded down, oil had to be ordered. Let us not even mention the number of times we managed to create the wrong adapter with the wrong dimensions.
Do not be mistaken, this isn’t some sob story. We have learned so much in the past year that it would be a shame not to spread this knowledge, to share with our strong community and others who may stumble upon this story and feel comforted by the fact that hey, you can fuck up big time and the world still continues to turn.
Delay after delay, we managed to get products out, but not at the rate we wanted and we successfully managed to kept our backers restless.
And then our team fell apart.
Andrej, who was supposed to be in charge of production, decided to pursue his art. Fair enough, as you can see here he is building some pretty cool stuff, but we needed him. Martin, our product designer, decided to focus on finishing his studies, meaning Matej and Melissa, the communications team, could not focus on their task and instead spent days on end from morning to night deep in the workshop sanding, oiling, gluing, packing, messaging, planning, strategizing, arguing, sleeping, freezing, listening to podcasts (and thank god for podcasts!), to make this project live. They used their own savings and put their sanity on the line and yet no matter how hard they tried, the pile of work grew as the pile of Troblas diminished. Just as things were starting to run somewhat smoothly, our CNC contractor took on more than he could handle, throwing us back into the production process to pick up the pieces. We learned that although the skills may be there, mentality and approach are an entirely different story. This also means that it takes a certain sensitivity to understand how to manage such different perspectives.
The one thing that kept up morale was that our efforts were recognized by our community. The response was always the same. They saw the quality in our product.
We were able to set up pre-orders during this time by refining what we learned through the Kickstarter process, but we still had these rewards to ship out. We became experts at figuring out the postal service. We would always show up 5 minutes before closing, only because we would work until we couldn’t anymore (not because of our own exhaustion, but because of closing hours, the cooler weather creeping in, the lack of parts to finish an order). We had friends help us in the workshop with the goal to just get as many pieces done in a day as we could. Instead of focusing on creating a good production line, we became highly reactive. Just build Troblas. Get them out. Make people happy.
There comes a point when you must change direction to stay relevant and honest to the brand. Realizing we needed to start valuing ourselves and our efforts, we took a step back. We paused. Let our backers be angry. We needed to reclaim our energy to give our project the push it needed to succeed. After a much needed Christmas rest (after we sent out all of the Troblas that we could before the holidays), the storm settled a bit. We could breathe a bit.
Now, we’re back with fresh approach. We actually find that we have a new appreciation for our product. We found ourselves actually starting to use our product. Sure, we knew we had a good thing going when we started this whole thing, but now we see its relevance in our day to day lives. We realized that the relationship we built with our CNC contractor took a lot of time and investment and after building and prototyping with him, he had all the means to create our pieces, he just needed structure and guidance. He’s still on board, only this time with a contract and deadlines to hold him accountable.
We’re in a new studio now with a new approach. We’re still kicking. We see how people are impressed when they experience Trobla for the first time and we know our product is still relevant. All items are with their rightful owners or on the way. Yes, we are aware that some are lost in the mail but we are dealing with these as they come up. That’s just how these things go.
Originally published at medium.com on April 4, 2016.
