A few years ago, I remember reading about the Coolest Cooler, a nice product that raised an amazing amount of money on Kickstarter: over 6,000 people bought it for a total of 13 million USD!! Yet, they went bust leaving a lot of frustrated backers and interested onlookers scratching their heads as to where it all went wrong for one of the most famous hardware startups of recent times and indeed the most funded Kickstarter campaign of 2014. In this post, I'll explore what went wrong for them … [Read more...]
How to Increase Speed of Developing New Products in China
Developing new products in China, especially if they're customized, is not an easy task. Many new products being launched using crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter have delays – in some cases, they are more than 6 months late. (See the typical delays we have observed here.) Actually, delays have to be expected if the business founders have no prior experience of manufacturing in China. Unless they get really lucky and pick a supplier that happens to be a very good fit and to … [Read more...]