Have watches had their time on Kickstarter?
When a century old brand uses mainstream media to plug its crowdfunding campaign, what should Kickstarter do?
Kickstarter is increasingly broad, but one thing it’s not is a free-for-all.
Unlike some of its competitors, Kickstarter’s staff exercises a level of editorial control over the crowdfunding projects it gives the green light to. Sometimes having rules causes it problems, but overall I think it helps the platform stay focused.
The fact that there is a very early barrier to entry is something that plenty of creators don’t think about when they’re planning a Kickstarter campaign. In fact, when we first submitted our pitch for MATTER, it got rejected. What we realized was that our end product wasn’t specific enough: we said we wanted to start publishing longform digital journalism about stories that weren’t being told. That was far too open-ended. So we tightened it up, got more specific and that was enough to get us the go-ahead.
Even though Kickstarter has been adding more editorial standards — requiring product makers to show prototypes, for example — one area it doesn’t do much is block certain types of project. I wonder whether that will change.
And that brings us, sort of, to A Manzoni & Fils.
Over the weekend, my friend Johannes spotted this advert in Monocle.
Monocle’s a fairly prestigious magazine, published by Tyler Brûlé and aimed at a certain kind of international jetset design snob that he exemplifies (I don’t quite mean that perjoratively). These high-end users pride themselves on handmade, authentic goods and love to find things that live just outside mainstream experience. That is to say: they are precisely the most valuable kind of Kickstarter user.
Manzoni is a 125-year-old watchmaking brand that is being resurrected by a team of entrepreneurs. They’re asking for $850,000 on Kickstarter to produce a range of watches. This seems to be the latest step in their evolution: according to the company itself, the project has been underway for at least three years.
As I write, Manzoni’s Kickstarter campaign — with a pitch delivered in English and Japanese, of course — has already raised around 10 percent of its target, mainly through high-level rewards costing $5,000 or more (there isn’t much for lower level backers: $25 supporters are effectively paying to get put on a mailing list. I have backed it at that level to keep an eye on what they’re doing).
Watches have become one of those things on Kickstarter. It started when Pebble, a smart watch that uses e-ink, got more than $10 million in funding. I am a watch-wearer, but I’ve never been a huge fan of the idea of smart watches (remember Bill Gates and his SPOT watches?).
But Pebble’s success has driven a ton of watchmakers — both smart and not-smart — to the platform.
Here’s Chris Mims of Quartz:
The same constraints that are forcing smart watch designers to get creative with their displays are also forcing them to come up with something better for these things to do than save you the three seconds it takes to get your phone out and read a text message.
For example, the wrist is a logical place to put the kind of RFID chips that allow “digital wallets”—just touch your watch to the payment pad, and you’re done. Or maybe your watch helps you not to forget your keys, wallet and anything else that’s critical, as you run out the door. Or even, maybe your smart watch makes it less likely you’ll be shot with your own gun.
The possibilities are endless, and that’s probably what keeps backers coming back to smart watch projects on Kickstarter.
And now here we have A Manzoni & Fils, a 125-year-old brand targeted at squillionaires, effectively using the Kickstarter userbase’s unceasing appetite for watches — supported by a full-on big media campaign.
This feels like a tipping point for me.
Kickstarter may have become very important to the watch-making community, but does that skew the product? Maybe not, but I’d be interested to see whether or not Kickstarter will draw a line in the sand.
