From Failed Kickstarter to the Shelves of Target — An Interview with the Creators of PlingPong

Mike & Amy St. Martin started PlingPong as a fun side gig to their already busy careers. Mike is a Principal Civil Engineer at the consulting firm Loucks, working with his land development clients. Amy is a Realtor at Edina Realty, serving the northwest metro area of Minneapolis. They enjoy spending their free time hanging with friends and their blended family of five kids and two grandkids, annual RV road trips, and occasional stints on the Karaoke mic.

We were lucky enough to interview Mike and Amy and get the chance to play PlingPong for ourselves. Can confirm, it is a ton of fun… whether your cups are empty or full. You can find it on the shelves or online at Target. Also, check out their website and social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

For Mike and Amy St. Martin, being entrepreneurs has never been about starting a business.

Instead, it’s about having an alter-ego to their full-time careers with something that fuels their passion for creativity and connecting. As Mike explains, “This doesn’t feel like work; it’s a passion project or a fun hobby that could have some financial dividends at the end.”

Although they had several product ideas and projects beforehand, PlingPong marks a special case, as it is their most successful project to date. Although it didn’t always look like that was going to be the case.

From ubiquitous to unique

“In February 2016, I just started brainstorming for the heck of it, looking at how to monetize bag toss or cornhole. It’s such a ubiquitous game, everybody has it. It’s cool, but it’s not really monetized because the cool ones are made by your uncle or your grandpa.”

After some experimenting, Mike landed on a four-sided pyramid version of the game played with hacky sacks, but it came with a complicated, multi-level scoring system. As Amy pointed out, that definitely wasn’t the way to go.

“That’s when Amy chimed in and said, ‘That’s way too much. People don’t want to sit there and do math while they are playing a game.’”

Mike knew Amy was right and turned to a game with removable cups that would make it easier to keep score. He then flipped the board on its head, switching from a pyramid to a funnel shape.

“I drew it up and built it in the garage. Built wood bases for the tiered base, then put flower pots on the bases to make the first prototype. After a couple hours of work in the garage, we had a working prototype.”

“Take the leap and go for it.”

After having many friends and family members play the game and really enjoy it, Mike and Amy were all in. “It was just a matter of, ‘Okay, let’s take the leap and go for it.’”

The couple went through months of iterations, trying to perfect the design of the tray and cup game pieces in CAD, then getting new versions 3D printed. Once they were satisfied with the performance of the test parts, they were ready to make the investment in 3D printing the entire prototype game set. They also worked with package designers and graphic artists to develop a retail ready game.

That’s when they decided a Kickstarter campaign was the way to go.

“We said let’s do the Kickstarter first. Our $95,000 Kickstarter goal was enough to get all the tooling made domestically and start production with no risk to ourselves. That’s how we started… We pulled the video together with the help of some family and friends, doing all the editing and everything.”

In mid-December 2016, they launched.

Ups and downs

While PlingPong had initial success, it couldn’t quite get over the hump.

“With Kickstarter, we had a pretty good run in the beginning. We had a radio station in town, the most popular morning show around. We got on there and got a huge boost from those guys and we thought it was going to be great. Then, it petered out… We watched the ups and downs…”

Ultimately, they raised just over $13,000 with the Kickstarter campaign, and the project was never funded as Kickstarter is an all-or-nothing platform.

Part of the problem? As Amy explains, much of their network simply didn’t know how Kickstarter worked.

“The biggest challenge we were running into is that not a lot of people understood what Kickstarter was. It was very hard to explain it to people, a lot of our network wasn’t familiar.”

Amy jokes that, to this day, they get questions from people about when they will receive their PlingPong set.

“There was a point recently when people were still calling and asking, ‘When do I get my game that I purchased on the Kickstarter campaign?’”

Redefining Success

Luckily for Mike and Amy, the end of their Kickstarter campaign did not mark a complete failure, but rather a clearer path to success.

When they had already started their Kickstarter campaign, they had 2 different toy companies approach them about purchasing the rights to PlingPong. With the Kickstarter campaign struggling, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place.

“We felt like we’d be letting people down… It was kind of a weird place because we felt like we were failing Kickstarter but we knew that we were going to succeed in the end. We felt disingenuous, begging people to support us on Kickstarter but we were pretty damn sure that we would be successful with a toy company taking it over.”

They decided to continue with the Kickstarter campaign, figuring any gained publicity during it would only benefit them in the future, and struck a royalty deal with Buffalo Games once the campaign was over. And with that deal came some of the most valuable shelf space you could ask for — Target.

“We didn’t really want to start a full business. We wanted to start it and see if it went somewhere. This was the dream scenario, that somebody takes over and it’s a royalty licensing deal for us.

We still own the brand, we license it. We own the IP, the trademark, and copyrights and we have a 3-year deal with Buffalo. As brand owners, we run the website, run all of our social media, and echo whatever they’re trying to do to get more awareness out there for us.”

Seeing your baby on the shelf

PlingPong went nationwide at Target on August 1, but strangely enough, it took Mike and Amy weeks to have that magic moment of seeing their baby on the shelf.

“Every time we went to Target, probably 6 times in various locations, it was sold out. Which was great, it was selling out. But we didn’t get to see our own game on the shelf. It was kind of bizarre.”

It took the couple driving down to Nebraska to bring their daughter to college for them to finally get to witness it on the shelf.

“We went to Target the next day in Lincoln for school supplies. Of course, we had to go check, and then we finally got to see it on the shelves, two weeks after it came out in the stores.”

“Figure out how to execute and do it.”

As a lifelong creator, Mike has plenty of advice on the subject. Among that advice is, when you have an idea, stop, sketch it out, and execute.

“When you have something pop into your head, put the phone down, turn the TV off, sit in silence and work through it. For myself, that’s a good way to really dig deep into it… When something comes into your head, draw a sketch and lay it out.

Don’t be afraid to let your mind flow. From there, take it to the next level depending on your aptitude and technical abilities.

Figure out how to execute and do it. There are so many ways to learn nowadays.”

Passing on a legacy

For Mike and Amy as entrepreneurs, it’s not just about living out their own dream but helping their children to live out theirs as well.

As Amy puts it, “I love that our kids see us doing this kind of stuff, too. They see us working super hard, actually trying to make something happen, in addition to our existing careers. They see us supporting and encouraging each other. I think that’s really good for them.”

That willingness to help inspire others goes beyond their own children as well.

As Mike says, “In general, if people like to build and create, they like to help other people find their vision, too. If somebody comes to me, I offer to share everything I’ve learned… It doesn’t cost them a dime to get all of that information; that’s free education for them that I have from going through the hard knocks to figure it out.”

Amy echoes, “Try to go out on a limb and try to do something different, something that not everyone is expecting you to do… and be supportive of other people’s dreams.”

We can’t thank Mike and Amy enough for giving us the opportunity to share their story.