Kickstarter

1- Get Approved… actually, the first Kickstarter project I submitted (not spoke pencil) was not approved, so step one was to get approved.

2- Get funded… it was looking pretty doubtful there for a while, but we finished with a flourish and that was very exciting. I certainly appreciate all of the backers who found ways to get the project some visibility and/or upped pledges to make sure we got there. 

3- Do not lose money…  I really wanted to get funded and I really wanted to use US manufacture, so I targeted a relatively low margin to keep the pencil price at or below most typical KS pen projects.  Seemingly small items can add up… KS fees, prototyping iteration costs, multiple shippings from manufacturers, labeling, packaging, etc.  It worked out well enough… I was able to add some fun extras along the way while staying in the green a small amount… but I do come away from the project with planned ‘extra’ pencils that I hope will sell to make the project financials look much better. 

4- Have fun… I’d hate to see the project financials if I factored in ‘labor’ time… but the ‘have fun’ aspect was key to making the time spent worthwhile. My whole family got involved and were most helpful, so a big thanks to my wife and three daughters! I do new product development as my real job… and it was a fun switch to take on an entire project and make absolutely all of the decisions from start to finish. The whole process was enjoyable. Many backers pledged and I never heard a word from them… but many others were very engaged with comments and emails and that made for a great experience. 

I suppose #5 would be ‘deliver’ a good product on schedule, but that really was always a given. I am disappointed that I was not ‘on time’. By only allowing time resolution in months, the schedule really came down to ‘if everything goes well, it will be towards the end of September’ versus ‘if there are some unexpected delays, it will be October’. I was concerned that putting a date too far out may turn off some potential backers, so I went aggressive with a September schedule. As fulfillment covered a span of 3 weeks (the as machined parts went out very quickly, the anodizing took longer than expected)… I ended up being late by 2-4 weeks depending on the configuration being shipped. Overall, I’m reasonably happy with the product… not everything is 100% what I wanted, but on balance I think they turned out pretty well and the reviews have been positive. The machine shop folks were great people to work with and I’ve definitely learned a lot along the way (my design background is mostly in molded plastics and electronics packaging versus machined metal parts) and am excited to try this again… hopefully with the spoke stopper and then with spoke pen. 

Along the way, I kept the project updates restricted to backers only mostly, but this ‘post mortem’ is public and I’ve attached some pictures below of the final product for all to see. I’m going to work to tune up the website, www.spokepencils.com and I plan to add some custom, hand finished versions as options for those interested in something even more unique. 

Lastly, thanks again to all of you backers, I sincerely appreciate you folks making spoke pencils a reality!  Now on to the next adventure… After I press ‘send’ on this update, I’m going to switch over to the new Spoke Stopper project and press...  ‘LAUNCH'!

As always, very best regards, 

Brian