I recently wrapped up a small resin casting Kickstarter, and I thought it might be of interest to peeps in here, as many of you may have creations that others want to buy. You can learn from my mistakes...
The original Kickstarter can be viewed here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1716406738/starscapes
It all started back at the start of 2014. I'd made some asteroids for X-wing, and a couple of folks asked if I would make them a set. Then a resident Dakkaite (Panic) suggested that I should do a kickstarter with them. Having studied sculpture back in the mists of time, I was reasonably up to speed with casting techniques, so it seemed like a good idea. I set about creating a mould of a set of 6, to see if it was within my abilities to mass produce them. The mould turned out great, and after discussion with some of my gaming buddies about what they'd like to see, I set about creating masters for four different sets - Regular, Regular reversed, XL and XL reversed. This covered all the token options, and a couple of different sizes for variation.
Running parallel to this, I'd had deepcut studios make me some logo-less mats. (I have a thing about folk stamping their logos on otherwise pretty gaming surfaces, and I enquired with deepcut if they'd be able to do me a bulk deal. Deepcut came back with some pretty reasonable prices, so I figured I'd offer these too.
Fast forward to August 2014, when I finally got my gak together, and launched the
KS. I'd worked out that I'd need to raise about 2k for it to be worth my time - at this point, the economies of scale start meaning that bulk buying resin, silicone and the like gets significantly cheaper, so I set a target of 2k. At this point, I was pretty cynical that I'd hit my funding goal.
The month the Kickstarter was running was quite surreal. Every so often, my phone would ping, as another backer signed up. I expected it to be pretty busy the first couple of days, then suffer that all too common
ks slump until the last few days. Most Kickstarters I've followed have a kind of plateau in the middle 2-3 weeks. I was pleasantly surprised to find that mine just climed and climbed, until it topped out just short of 4k. During these times, I had to hurriedly knock up some stretch goals, in the form of more 6x3 images, as well as 6x4 images.
One of my main
KS lessons were learned here - there had been a fair few requests for 6x4 mats, so I dutifully went and created some. In hindsight, it wasn't really worth the effort - I only sold about five of them, and due to the size increase, P&P costs were enormous. In future, I'll stick to my guns and sell what I've researched and designed. That said, I was glad I could accommodate those that wanted them, and I have a pretty kick ass 6x4 mat for the gaming table I'll be building in the near future.
Once the project funded, the hard work began. I cleared a space in my music studio, only to be hit by some of the coldest weather in recent memory. Coupled to that, was the fact that my house's boiler packed up, so all the electric heaters I usually have out there, were put into the house. It became too cold to mould and cast out there, so pretty soon, I'd taken over the kitchen table, and then the dining room table also. The missus wasn't best pleased, but needs must. I got stuck into the casting, and arranged a month off work to make sure I was going to hit my target. During this time, My wife and I were going through the adoption process, and we had been advised we would probably be offered a child towards the beginning of 2015. Imagine my surprise when we were offered a kiddo right at the start of my month off! Again, this caused a hiccup with the
KS, as my attention was obviously drawn away completely until we got mini-me settled. I hammered on from that point though, and got everything cast. Then I got stuck into the pre-painted orders. This was where I learned another valuable lesson. I seriously under-estimated how many pre-painted orders I'd get. I figured I was selling to the wargaming crowd, who'd want to paint them themseves, but in hindsight, X-wing is a pre-painted game, and I suppose that's part of the attraction. It took me a while to get all the painting done, and it's probably just as well that I wasn't paying myself for my time in calculations, or the project would have ended in the red. As it was, I just got on with it.
Packing and posting was oddly fun. It was a satisfying feeling printing labels for everywhere. Japan, China, Singapore, Brazil, USA, Australia, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Canada are just a selection of countries that now have my mats and asteroids being played with. That makes me smile. Another lesson here - I'd priced sending packages to the US and Austrailia, figuring they are as far away as it gets, and based my shipping costs on these, but of course, there are a lot of exports from the
UK to these places, so others were a good bit more expensive. I took a hit here, but offset it a little by getting cheaper prices for domestic shipping than I had anticipated. While that was only a couple of quid per order, half my orders were domestic, so it added up.
I finished packing the last orders a couple of days ago, and while I ran 7 weeks late, I got there, and I got there still in the black. I'm fairly happy with how I delivered the project. I think I've learned enough to go forward, and the next few months are all about developing KS2. I'm away to build a custom designed casting workshop into the bottom half of my criminally under-used music studio, (complete with heating). My sights are set on developing a cityscape for Infinity, and another for fantasy settings (Malifaux et al).
To sum up - Delivering a Kickstarter is a bloody lot of hard work, and long nights, but it is also a satisfying and educational experience. I can't thank my backers enough, for their vision, their patience and of course, their hard earned cash. I'd recommend it to anyone, but I'd also add a note of caution; you are dealing with other people's money, and you have an obligation to them. Make sure you keep them updated, and also make sure you deliver - I found that as long as you communicate openly and transparently, people are cool. I've backed other projects where you are left in the dark, and then negative comments start appearing. I'm proud that I never read a single negative comment on my project (yet!), and I put this down to treating my backers with a bit of respect.
I also found the obligation to deliver a useful tool for keeping me chipping away at the project. I'd be disgusted with myself if I let the backers down, so any time I felt the motivation flagging, I'd have a read through the backer report, at people's names, and what they'd ordered. This gave me a useful boot up the backside to get stuck back in. So, to wrap up...
Things I have learned I must do better next time:
Air bubbles. Air bubbles are a pain in the butt. I think I got away with it this time, purely because they don't look out of place on an asteroid, but for future, the first purchase on my list is a degassing chamber, to rid my casts of these. Realistically, if I want to launch other product lines, I need one.
Painting: truth be told, I didn't think I'd get nearly so much orders for painted asteroids, and I seriously undercut myself here. At around 2 hours per set of six for cleanup, priming, painting, varnishing and dullcote, £10 per set doesn't even hit minimum wage, before you include the cost of materials. I'm undecided if I will offer painted products in the future, but if I do, it'll be contracted out!
International postage: Oof! Some places sure are pricy to post to. Initially I priced postage to the USA and Australia, thinking they would be the most expensive places to ship to. Fool that I am... I took a bit of a hit on some of the more exotic destinations, such as Brazil, Singapore and Japan. However, I managed to offset this a little by getting domestic shipping cheaper than I had planned for. In future, I will get prices for more individual countries before committing to a flat rate.
Due dates: in future, I'll be adding a significant contingency in terms of time. The arrival of a new addition to the family, combined with running over the festive season really hit my schedule. I don't think 7 weeks is too far off the mark, but I'm disappointed I never brought the project in on time.
Things I think I did right. (You may disagree!)
Communication, communication communication: I have backed a few kickstarters, and in each and every one, communication has been terrible, whether it is a lack of proofreading, or a lack of updates, it's frustrating to get no info on a project. The current matchstick tv one is a perfect example - a last minute changing of the goalposts in the month the product is supposed to ship, followed by no comms whatsoever. I managed to get my money back from that one, but still, I hope my updates have hit the mark with backers. I enjoyed writing them.
Price: I was never in this to make a fortune. Really, I just wanted to get enough so that I could benefit as much from the economies of scale as I could. Because of the backers, I now have a little bit of stock ready to sell when I open my wee webstore.
Packaging: going by the amount of comments, a lot folks liked the Eggbox idea. In future, I'll be having some kind of branding on the packaging though.
And that's it. If you've been thinking about running one, I'd say what are you waiting for?
