Has anyone done a KickStarter for their Leather work?

[ToddW]

It is a valid question.. more than half don't get funded.  My view is that you get out what you put in.  Looking at the ones I referenced, the photography and video work was professional.  Kickstarter brings the audience and exposure, your product still has to be good and the prep work to highlight it has to be professional.  Crappy pictures often indicates crappy products.  Stock and Barrel and Thursday Boots took it serious and the results showed through.  At the end of the day, Parker at Stock and Barrel sold wallets which are plentiful and 400 units moved.  I would question whether Etsy could move 400 wallets in a short period.  With that said, there are a ton of huge failures.  Elio Motors tried Indigigo (think) which is another company doing kickstarter funding.  They had a 3 wheeled car that claimed to get over 80mph selling at $6,800 and never did anything.. I think they had $17M in orders..  

Anyway, my aspirations are not that big.. I would like a 400 unit order when I am ready..  I would hate failing but doesn't seem to be a cost penalty for failing.  I would be more afraid of the 4000 unit type of success..

[Handstitched]

As mentioned before , its not for everyone after reading all the info,  but I'll stick to my own ( perhaps old fashioned way)  way of doing things .Never intended to ' mass produce'.   A bit off topic,  sorry about that, , but  the only Godsend for me  is EFTPOS . ' Square ' .

They have a multitude of tools that can be utilised to boost business.    Never wanted it before as I was a  ' cash only'   operator ( bit of a technophobe) , but a friend got me into it, and now I rely on it. It was around 20 - 30% of my sales when I  first started, but lately, its been 70-90%     WOW !!

I can thank covid for that,  thats one positive I guess, (pardon the pun)   .     

HS

 

[chrisash]

The thing is that even when successful in getting the money, you still have to build a team that is capable of taking the company to self supporting in quite a short time, quite a big difference between managing one or two workers and building a bigger company, and although you get the initial marketing to a small number of readers/ investors, you now have to have first class marketing and Brand making on your own

[ToddW]

All good points..  I didn't get into this wanting to do high volume stuff.  I got into this for the love of leather and to be able to make what I wanted.  When the idea came to me that "Hey, I want to do this instead of my day job.", I started to put pen to paper.  I started buying better tools.. Now looking to buy bigger tools.  I am not looking to get rich but i am looking to live at or around the level I am today and that math says I need to do high volume.  When you talk about hiring an employee or two (outside my wife that works for free), you need to do even higher volume.  Really didn't mean for this thread to turn into hand sew vs machine sew or low volume vs high volume...  This equipment gets pretty expensive and the size of the equipment quickly pushes you out of a hobby room in the house.   I thought the Kickstarter topic was interesting to me to see the responses but still curious about the ones that did it.  Parker at Stock and Barrel generated 400 wallets and never did another one that I can see.  Was it more than he wanted to do?  Did they take too much?  I did email him and didn't get a response so thought I would post it here..  Anyway.. I appreciate all the responses.. Was happy to see it grow to 2 pages of responses.    

[Spyros]

On 1/31/2022 at 1:37 PM, ToddW said:

Its a place where startups go to fund projects.  Its "kinda like" a go fund me but really project driven.  I bought a steak dry ager as well as a pizza oven.  Usually, its an early stage product that might need some refinement.  The project either funds and the person builds it or it does not and no money is collected.  It is a bit expensive as Kickstart takes a lot as well as the credit card processing.  Typically the product is deeply discounted making it a great deal and people buy.

Here is a wallet Parker did at Stock and Barallel.

 

 

I think he mentioned in one of his videos that he can make 5-10 wallets an hour (not these particular ones but similar).  He makes them machine stitched, clicker cut, no lining, no edge paint, simplest designs possible.  That's how you make money from wallets, and to be fair most people don't want a hand stitched wallet or even understand why they might want one.  They just want something that looks nice to put their stuff in.

Personally I make handstitched wallets for myself and family only, I would never bother to try and sell one unless someone was prepared to pay a crazy price.  I made one for my sister recently and it ended up being 17 pieces... I was battling 2 days to finish the damn thing

Edited February 1, 2022 by Spyros

[Gulrok]

21 minutes ago, Spyros said:

I think he mentioned in one of his videos that he can make 5-10 wallets an hour (not these particular ones but similar).  He makes them machine stitched, clicker cut, no lining, no edge paint, simplest designs possible.  That's how you make money from wallets, and to be fair most people don't want a hand stitched wallet or even understand why they might want one.  They just want something that looks nice to put their stuff in.

Personally I make handstitched wallets for myself and family only, I would never bother to try and sell one unless someone was prepared to pay a crazy price.  I made one for my sister recently and it ended up being 17 pieces... I was battling 2 days to finish the damn thing

So one of the challenges with handstitching items is the fact that you have to consider time to punch the holes. So you can get a die made which is extremely expensive with holes or laser cut them.

Personally speaking I've moved towards handstitching items. The big caveat is that its laser cut. It allows me to consistently stitch a lot of products in rapid succession. I get done a lot more wallets than before.

I had one wallet set quoted out at over a thousand dollars when you factored in stitching holes.

[Spyros]

1 hour ago, Gulrok said:

So one of the challenges with handstitching items is the fact that you have to consider time to punch the holes. So you can get a die made which is extremely expensive with holes or laser cut them.

Personally speaking I've moved towards handstitching items. The big caveat is that its laser cut. It allows me to consistently stitch a lot of products in rapid succession. I get done a lot more wallets than before.

I had one wallet set quoted out at over a thousand dollars when you factored in stitching holes.

I'm (slowly) going in the opposite direction.  I bought a sewing machine, and in all honesty I can't visually tell the machine stitching apart from my own hand stitching.  And if I can't tell it apart then I'd struggle to convince anybody that it's better.  I mean I could argue it's stronger but I'm using such thick thread that any extra strength due to the saddle stitching is probably irrelevant for most peoples' use.  I don't see the point to hand stitching any more.  I was watching a video by Hermes and it was showing how they machine stitch watch straps, but they finish the last three stitches by hand, both for finishing look and for strength purposes, and that makes sense to me and I've started doing the same.  There will always be other handstitched areas, places I can't reach with the machine, and keeping the look of all stitching consistent on the same project is a bit of a struggle, but it is possible.

[ToddW]

2 hours ago, Gulrok said:

The big caveat is that its laser cut

I have been pricing the lasers and about to pull the trigger on one..  Looking forward to it..

[ToddW]

1 hour ago, Spyros said:

I bought a sewing machine, and in all honesty I can't visually tell the machine stitching apart from my own hand stitching.

I'm waiting for the Cobra class 26 to get back in inventory, so hopefully I can get there as well..

[Spyros]

23 minutes ago, ToddW said:

I'm waiting for the Cobra class 26 to get back in inventory, so hopefully I can get there as well..

If you want a handstitched look from your machine just make sure to get LR needles and some thick thread.  Everybody in the machine stitching world will try to stir you to thinner and thinner thread (which makes sense for many technical reasons, bobbin lasts longer, cheaper machines, cheaper thread etc etc)  but if you want your stitching to look similar to hand stitching, you have to go the opposite direction.  Hand stitching on average is done with thread double the thickness of the average machine stitched item.  And then you have to tune your machine just right to match the teeth of your chisels.  Like I said it's bit fussy, but doable.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Spyros