As of today, we have officially wrapped up our inaugural Kickstarter project. This morning we shipped out the last Nectar seat clamps to our wonderful supporters. The project was quite a ride, and a ton of work, but in the end it was everything we had hoped for, and more.
The Nectar project was a great way to take one of our speculative in-house designs, and turn it into a real product for people to enjoy. The end result is a series of beautiful clamps living on bikes from Portland to Poland, and from Australia to Austin. We took what normally would be just a conceptual design, and brought it to life using the Kickstarer platform. It was a completely new process to us, and worked remarkably well.
Over the course of the Kickstarter project, we learned many lessons that will help in other aspects of our business. We learned about generating publicity through our social networks, and about getting bloggers excited enough to write about our project. We learned about the value of well connected bloggers, and building relationships with them. We learned about the value of communicating honestly and constantly with our backers, and ultimately we gained significant experience in getting our message out to a broad audience.
Of course this project also played to several of our strengths- industrial design, engineering, sourcing, production management, logistics, marketing materials, and packaging design. Every project like this that we take on helps us learn new lessons, and sharpen our skills so we can provide better, faster, and more accurate service to our design clients.
In the end, the Nectar Kickstarter project was a ton of work. It cost us significant time, and resources, but it helped us get our name out to the outdoor community. We are glad that we dove into this project, and we plan to share the lessons that we learned with our clients. And who knows- maybe a Kickstarter launch will be just the thing to help launch their design to the world!
