Paula Patterson was back in her studio the other night, where she has spent nearly every weeknight and too many weekends to admit since January. From her day job as a graphic designer at an executive search firm in Midtown, she takes the subway and the fickle B61 bus to Brooklyn (“I don’t know why they print a schedule,” she said). That leaves her about two hours to build another V-Luxe, the iPad stand she designed as a birthday gift for her boyfriend last summer and soon after decided to market online.
Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
Paula Patterson with her iPad and iPhone stands.
“If there’s one thing I failed to estimate, it was the time this project would take,” said Ms. Patterson, 41, looking exhausted but also relieved, because the last of the V-Luxes were boxed up on her work table, ready to ship.
Photo: Tony Cenicola/The New York Times
For pledging at least $500 toward Ms. Patterson's $5,000 goal, backers are entitled to a finished V-Luxe, right, which stands about 18 inches high and is made of three species of wood.
The recipients were backers Ms. Patterson found last fall, through the Web site Kickstarter. For pledging at least $500 toward her $5,000 financing goal, they are entitled to a finished V-Luxe, which stands about 18 inches high, is made of three species of wood and looks a little like a classic Philco Predicta TV from the 1950s.
In turning to Kickstarter to finance the V-Luxe, Ms. Patterson is among a growing number of designers who are using the site to get their sketch pad ideas into production, through crowd-sourced financing. Scan Kickstarter’s design category, and there are dozens of projects in search of backing, from screen-printed glassware billed as “awesome glasses for awesome people” to a sustainable house intended for use in developing countries.
Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Yancey Strickler, one of the founders of Kickstarter, at the company's office on the Lower East Side. While design projects are popular on Kickstarter, the in-house committee that reviews submissions declines more ideas in the design category than in any other. “We stress that people have a prototype before they come to us,” he said. “If you have a sketch on the back of a napkin, we see that as too risky.”
Of the various projects the site features, including film, books, musical recordings, fine art and, recently, a piano duet performance inspired by the punctuation in a work by J. D. Salinger, film remains the top category in terms of the amount of money raised since the site was started two and a half years ago. But at least half the site’s “blockbuster” projects — those that have received $100,000 or more in financing — have been design-related, said Yancey Strickler, one of Kickstarter’s founders.
In the current economy, that’s the kind of opportunity that designers, particularly those starting out, may have a hard time finding elsewhere.
“It’s been so gratifying,” said Ms. Patterson, who received a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Washington in 2009, but has yet to find work as an architect. “Especially with this job market, when you’re a designer and your field barely has a pulse.” She used the roughly $5,900 she raised on Kickstarter, she said, to pay the rent on her studio in Red Hook, and to buy tools and materials.
More established designers are also finding the site helpful. Mr. Strickler said many of the designers who use Kickstarter are midlevel employees at design firms. “They have things they want to do,” he said, “but there’s no outlet in their job.”
Photo: Travis Dove for The New York Times
Tom Gerhardt, pictured, and Dan Provost started a design firm after a successful campaign for the Glif iPhone 4 tripod mount and stand.
Photo: Travis Dove for The New York Times
Mr. Gerhardt and Mr. Provost raised more than $137,000 on Kickstarter last fall, partnered with a factory in South Dakota and now sell the Glif for $20 on their Web site.
Take the example of Tom Gerhardt and Dan Provost. Both men had degrees in environmental design and were working at design firms in Manhattan when they came up with the idea for the Glif, a plastic tripod mount and stand for the iPhone 4. They raised more than $137,000 on Kickstarter last fall, partnered with a factory in South Dakota and now sell the Glif for $20 on their Web site.
By April, Mr. Gerhardt and Mr. Provost, who are both 27, were successful enough to quit their day jobs and start their own design firm, Studio Neat. That was around the time they introduced their second Kickstarter project — a stylus for the iPad they call the Cosmonaut — for which they raised about $134,000.
They could have used Quirky.com, a social product development site that accepts ideas from inventors, handles the manufacturing and then pays them a royalty. But “for us, Kickstarter was the only option,” Mr. Gerhardt said. “A big thing was having control over the project.”
Scott Wilson already owned his own design firm, and before that had spent six years as global creative director for Nike, when he used Kickstarter to finance the TikTok, a wristband that turns an iPod Nano into a watch.
The campaign, which raised nearly a million dollars last year, was the most successful Kickstarter project to date. And “the single most amazing free P.R. in the history of design firms,” said Mr. Wilson, 42, who runs a Chicago firm called Minimal.
When his project received $80,000 in financing the first day, he said, “the visibility gave everyone in the supply chain confidence” and enabled him to get preferential treatment from his manufacturer.
Photo: Kevin Scanlon for The New York Times
Dario Antonioni, who runs Orange22, a design consultancy in Los Angeles, turned to Kickstarter to finance the Botanist Minimal bench, a bent-wood seat he designed.
It also inspired other designers. Dario Antonioni, who runs Orange22, a design consultancy in Los Angeles, said he decided to try Kickstarter after seeing Mr. Wilson’s success, which sent “shock waves” through the design community, empowering designers.
Mr. Antonioni, 38, turned to Kickstarter in July to finance the Botanist Minimal bench, a bentwood seat he designed. In the past, he said, his firm would have risked its own money, hired a manufacturer and hoped for enough retailer and consumer interest to turn a profit, or at least break even.
“The beauty of Kickstarter is it does away with that whole model,” he said.
Mr. Antonioni's backers can get the Botanist bench by pledging $299. It will eventually retail for around $800, he said.
The appeal for backers, particularly those who finance design projects, is what they get in return: a gift like a T-shirt for smaller contributions, and for larger ones, a well-designed product at a substantial savings. Mr. Antonioni’s backers, for example, could get the Botanist bench by pledging $299; it will eventually retail for around $800, he said.
Mr. Antonioni has raised more than $36,000 on Kickstarter, exceeding his $20,000 goal and enabling him to place an order with an Asian manufacturer. And in the process, he said, he received valuable feedback from “a global audience” without doing costly market research or renting a booth at a trade show. “We don’t need a business plan,” he said. “We don’t even have to leave our studio.”
If the designers like Mr. Antonioni sound excessive in their praise, consider the challenges they face in an economy where research and development money has dried up, many design firms aren’t hiring and attracting investors is a time-consuming, low-yield endeavor. Mr. Wilson said that when businesspeople are approached with new product ideas, they can be overly cautious and “hedge their bets or demand crazy terms or retail margins” — if they are willing to lend money at all.
As Mr. Antonioni put it, “If I went to the bank today and said, ‘Can you give me $37,000 to make furniture?’ they’d laugh at me.”
Photo: Drew Kelly for The New York Times
Alex Andon, the creator of the Desktop Jellyfish Tank, raised almost $163,000 from 515 backers through Kickstarter and now plans to “go all in,” he said, on a factory run.
Photo: Drew Kelly for The New York Times
Mr. Andon's jellyfish tank
One wonders if the Desktop Jellyfish Tank would fare any better with a loan officer. But the aquarium’s creator, Alex Andon, 27, raised almost $163,000 from 515 backers through Kickstarter and now plans to “go all in,” he said, on a factory run.
“A lot of minimum orders at a factory are 50 grand,” Mr. Andon said. “If you took Kickstarter out of the equation, we’d be very low on cash, and I’d be very stressed out and worried the tank wouldn’t sell.”
WHILE design projects are popular with Kickstarter’s users, the in-house committee that reviews submissions also declines more ideas in the design category than in any other, Mr. Strickler said. “We stress that people have a prototype before they come to us,” he said. “If you have a sketch on the back of a napkin, we see that as too risky.”
Designers who are successful on Kickstarter seem to grasp certain things about the site’s culture: that tech or Apple-related products tend to do well because they appeal to Web-savvy users; that it helps to introduce projects around the holidays and promote them on Facebook and Twitter; and that the short video that accompanies every pitch is particularly important.
Photo: Anne McQuary for The New York Times
CheyAnna Peterson, a South Carolina-based artist, with her screen-printed glassware, billed as “awesome glasses for awesome people.”
For his video on the jellyfish tank, Mr. Andon rented studio space and hired a professional cameraman, while CheyAnna Peterson, 26, the South Carolina-based artist behind the awesome glasses, said she “probably watched every video of every project that was currently live before I went live with mine.”
Most designers find the site’s easy-to-use, low-risk platform appealing, especially since it doesn’t require up-front capital. But Kickstarter does require the creators to meet a set financing goal in a specified amount of time or they will not receive any of the money their backers have pledged. And that can be stressful.
Photo: Reena Bammi for The New York Times
Sam Davol, a member of the band the Magnetic Fields, used the site to raise money for the Uni, a portable open-air reading room he created with his wife, Leslie.
Sam Davol, who used Kickstarter last month to finance the Uni, a portable open-air reading room he created with his wife, Leslie, said the site quickly became the first one he checked every day. “It was striking to wake up every morning and see the funding number,” he said, which didn’t always go up as quickly as he had hoped.
As a member of the band the Magnetic Fields, Mr. Davol, 41, is used to having an audience. But the Uni was an outgrowth of Street Lab, a nonprofit organization he runs with his wife, and Kickstarter’s sell-yourself approach, he said, was unlike anything he had experienced in the nonprofit world: “Once I clicked ‘Submit,’ it became clear this was a public test on the whole endeavor.”
Photo: Reena Bammi for The New York Times
The Uni eventually reached its $20,000 goal, and on Sept. 11, it made its debut in Lower Manhattan.
The Uni eventually reached its $20,000 goal, and two weeks ago it made its debut in Lower Manhattan. In retrospect, Mr. Davol said, Kickstarter’s all-or-nothing model helped, because it “gave people the idea that if they give, we’re not going to build half a building and run out of money.”
ONCE the record-breaking TikTok campaign was over, Mr. Wilson, like all of those who succeed on Kickstarter, found himself immersed in the less-glamorous part of the project: sending out the product to his backers — in his case, all 13,512. The shipping and handling of products to investors, a service the site doesn’t provide, took two months, he said, and cost around $70,000.
“I’d never been involved in a product that went so smoothly but ran into problems in the fulfillment side,” he said.
But since Kickstarter’s everyday financers aren’t profit-driven venture capitalists, in all likelihood they “are going to be understanding if you’re a month late” sending the product, said Mr. Andon, the jellyfish tank creator, who keeps his backers updated through his Kickstarter page. Still, turning a Kickstarter idea into a reality, even after it has been financed, can involve a steep learning curve.
Kickstarter doesn’t provide manufacturing, legal vetting or other resources someone might need to bring a product to market. How to negotiate favorable terms with a factory in Beijing or set retail prices that allow for a comfortable profit margin are matters the designers must figure out for themselves.
Mr. Gerhardt said he and Mr. Provost made “seven or eight” prototypes of the Glif before ever approaching Kickstarter. But they still ran into warehouse and delivery problems on the back end.
As for Ms. Patterson, she set a modest goal to make sure the V-Luxe was financed, and decided on a $500 sale price because it was roughly equivalent to the price of the least expensive iPad. But she neglected to calculate the per-unit production costs, and since building one V-Luxe requires a time-crunching 200 steps (Ms. Patterson and her boyfriend counted), “the labor has been donated,” she said.
“If I was being realistic, we probably needed $10,000 to $15,000 to get started, and these things should cost at least $750,” she added. “Below $750 is a losing enterprise.”
Kickstarter, she joked, “allows you to dig just enough of a hole.”
In that regard, many who have used the site say it is best suited to projects that are a labor of love. As Ms. Peterson, the glassware designer, said, “You have to be prepared and committed to every project you put on there.”
For Ms. Patterson, the V-Luxe has been a learning experience. She is now close to an arrangement with a factory to produce the stand, which should reduce her workload and production costs. The Kickstarter campaign, she estimated, has covered only about 20 percent of the money she has spent so far.
“I’m more in debt, and so exhausted,” she said.
Still, she was quick to add, Kickstarter enabled her to produce one of her own designs, a longtime goal. “We wouldn’t even have got the traction to get going without that money.”
© 2011nytimes.com
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