#5 Things We’ve Learned From 42 Days of Crowdfunding
How Origin Club is Growing Up Fast in Central Greece.
39 days down, 3 to go and Origin Club is trending towards an all-or-nothing target of £10,000. Now is your last chance to make history by joining our Club as a founding supporter — please make a pledge if you can and help tilt us over the line!
As the dust settles, here’s 5 key learnings we’ve gleaned over an invaluable and exhausting six weeks of crowdfunding. It’s been emotional, to say the least…
Without further ado…
#1 Crowdfunding is a really bad way to make money.
Our small core team has collectively put in thousands of hours of toil over many months. If we ran the numbers, we’re pretty sure we’d have been a whole lot better off flippin’ burgers than selling hampers. But, on the other hand…
#2 Crowdfunding is a really good way to build a crowd.
We’ve connected with many future collaborators and made hundreds of new friends with whom we intend to build lasting and committed relationships.
This takeaway really is invaluable, and we couldn’t be happier to have invested so much of our time and energy into this process over such a short period of time. Of course, the rapidity with which we’ve prototyped this start-up has made for a bumpy ride along the way…
#3 Origin Club is a work in progress.
This campaign wasn’t based on any market research. This campaign was our market research, and we definitely got some things wrong.
The branding (“where are all the farmers?!”) and product design (“I can’t afford the £50 hamper!”) are easy and obvious lessons to integrate. Far more challenging were realisations that monthly delivery subscriptions inherently privilege convenience over environmental impact, and that Community Supported Agriculture is a movement which has developed in a local context which has long sought to reduce food miles at all costs. Problem-solving in relation to these challenges is a longer term process, in which multiple stakeholders will need to be engaged collaboratively. We don’t have a quick fix, but we do better have a better grasp of the right questions to ask.
The magic of failing fast lies in how steep the learning curve becomes. In just six weeks we’ve accomplished co-learnings which could’ve taken months, even years without creative abrasion that is impossible to nurture in isolation. Thrown into the deep end, we’re now beginning to find our stroke.
#4 Origin Club has discovered it’s niche.
The good news is, we’ve identified a gap in the market. We have established local food systems all over Europe, but what about the regional trade which knits these local systems together? As far as we know this is brand new territory and — with thanks to our friend Lucy Gilliam of FairTransport— we’re calling it Community Supported Trade.
Here’s a sneak peak into what Origin Club might look like this time next year…
We plan to develop a stable of Origin Club branded products — working closely with established local networks Philos and the Farmer in the Heart of Greece — and to collaborate with partners in authentication and distribution like Fairmondo, FairTransport and Provenance in order to help establish a clear brand identity related to Community Supported Trade. What we’re proposing will therefore directly complement local food movements like Food Assembly, Slow Food and Community Supported Agriculture, which already have large and growing memberships.
Our value proposition relates most directly to strategy, communications and marketing, though we’re leaning into partnerships with leading edge innovators in related fields like agro-ecology and consumer education too. Working closely with the P2P Lab as research partner, our big picture strategy is to open source our co-learning — once tried and tested — with networks of peer producers across Europe.
We invite you to come play — let’s change the way we grow, buy and sell food by building lasting and committed relationships across Europe and around the world.
#5 There’s something really special bubbling up in Greece.
Capitalism is dying here — it has been since 2008. Unlike in many other, more privileged parts of Europe, the establishment has long since bottomed out. No more pretence, no more smoke and mirrors — the time has come to rise again.
There’s a sober optimism here which is being crowd-powered by super creative people who know — with unshakeable faith — that another way is possible. Ahead of the curve in metabolising their grief, here in Greece a convergence of crises has become a rich and fertile soil of limitless potential. So what happens next?
We don’t know — who could? — but we’re super excited to play our part in it. Origin Club is an exciting opportunity to help reshape the landscape of the primary sector here in Greece, where we hope to influence the emergence of complex networks of dynamic and resilient local food systems, as well as improving small-scale producers access to European markets.
But even this is only the beginning. Origin Club is the first startup venture to emerge as part of a wider and deeper entrepreneurial ecosystem, designed to help catalyse a bioregional-scale regeneration on the island of Evia. Check out the 5 minute trailer below which we filmed back in June and — if you like our big ideas and small steps — consider finding your way out here in summer 2017. We’d love to say hello face to face.
With just 3 days left of this campaign we’re over 70% funded. Now is the time to get in on the ground floor and help make this dream come to life.
Here’s 3 ways to join our club today:
- Make a pledge — Back us with £5 or £10 and enter a draw to win “The Athena” hamper, worth £100!
- Buy a solidarity hamper — Authentic, fairly priced and delicious products shipped direct to your door from the farmers themselves. Buy a hamper and enter a draw to win our £500 reward: #PowWow is a 5 day retreat on Evia in June 2017.
- Become a Founding Supporter — Nudge your organisation to pledge £200 and you’ll get “The Olympus” hamper to share with your team, plus your logo on all promotional materials and with every product we ship for a whole year.
And that’s it. Thanks for reading — it’s much appreciated. If you have any ideas, please feedback on everything included in this article in the comments below, or by getting in touch directly via marcus@originclub.org.
