TMS 034: From Crowdfunding to Shipping. A Follow-Up with James Olander
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Special thanks to Thomas Borowski for this follow-up interview on thinkmakesell.com
 ⢠Follow the link to listen to the interview.Â
Takeway Points
- Try to figure out your âtipping pointsâ, e.g. how many units you need to sell to make buying expensive equipment make economical sense.
- Once a Kickstarter campaign ends, you cannot modify the campaign page anymore. So be sure to put a link to your website or store in early on.
- Figure out early on what youâre going to do if any of your productâs parts get delayed.
- Consider having backup manufacturers in place for standard parts.
- Never assume manufacturers will meet their delivery time estimates.
- Delays within one step of your manufacturing chain will have a ripple effect on all the steps that follow.
- Not every one of your backers is going to be familiar with how Kickstarter works. Be prepared for negative feedback by less experienced backers and consider communicating with them separately from the others any doing some âhandholdingâ.
- Figure out how youâll deal with orders of multiple items by a single customer. Partial shipments, especially to international customers, can be a hassle.
- Doing the fulfillment yourself can make sense when you start out. But as your order volume grows and your focus moves from making to marketing, itâs probably more efficient to outsource.
- Fulfillment companies need to inventory your product, they wonât work as a âpass-throughâ of single shipments.
- It can make sense to ship SKUs with lower order numbers yourself while outsourcing your fast-moving items to a fulfillment service.
- Ideally, youâll want to keep manufacturing in line with demand so you donât build up too much inventory.
- A crowdfunding campaign wonât always turn a profit. Its primary purpose is to break even on starting your business.
- If manual labor is part of your assembly and/or fulfillment process, be prepared to continuously optimize.
- Instead of paying just a fixed salary to your workers, consider paying a lower base salary and incentivize performance.
- If youâre not âgoing it aloneâ, be prepared to use your soft skills (if you have any).
- Incentivizing group instead of individual performance can be beneficial to team building.
- Instead of micromanaging people, give them permission to find their own solutions.
- Make sure everyone on your team knows that theyâre all working towards a common goal and theyâre making something together.
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More: Building The Roost with James Olander ⢠Denver Post Best of 2013 â˘Â #ERGOEXPO ⢠Fitting Guide