Episode #22: 8 Kickstarter Secrets To 8X Your Funding Goal with Evi Triantafyllides
Listen Now
Tap Play Below or Listen On iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts
Have you ever wanted to launch a Kickstarter campaign but you’ve been overwhelmed with where to start? Well in this episode of Making It in The Toy Industry, Azhelle Wade, The Toy Coach, sits down with a fellow toy creator to dive into 8 Kickstarter Secrets to 8x your funding goal. Learn the importance of having a crystal clear brand message and target market BEFORE your Kickstarter launch, clever marketing techniques and so much more. If you’re interested in Kickstarter insights, tips, and secrets, then you cannot miss this episode!
In this episode, we interview Evi Triantafyllides, founder of World Wide Buddies, an educational startup that sells picture books and toys with the vision to help children become more culturally aware and more open-minded. Their newest item, The Book of Cultures, features 30 diverse characters from different cultures, and their stories. Each character has a story and interactive activities to support their stories and educate the reader about other cultures.
If you’re ready to up-level your Kickstarter game, then listen in!
-
This episode is brought to you by thetoycoach.com
World Wide Buddies - www.worldwidebuddies.com
World Wide Buddies on:
The Book of Cultures on Kickstarter.
A Special Gift For You! Get 20% Off When You Shop At World Wide Buddies With This Code: THETOYCOACH
-
Azhelle 00:00 You are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, Episode Number 22. Intro/Outro + Jingle 00:07 Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you. I'm now your host, as always. Azhelle 00:17 Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by the toy coach calm. I have been making some wonderful contacts in the world of Kickstarter and uncovering more and more successful stories within the toy sector. My guest today is Evi Triantafyllides Evi holds a Master's from NYU and creative writing and education. She is an experienced marketing director and is now founder of worldwide buddies. Align of picture books and toys that celebrate diversity by introducing children to the diverse cultures. cultures of the world now Evy raised over $162,000 on Kickstarter to fund the book of cultures, a picture book designed to introduce children to the diverse cultures of our planet. Welcome to the show. I'm so happy to have you here. Evi 01:19 Hi, thank you. I so nice to be on the show. Hi, everyone. Azhelle 01:25Well, to start out, why don't you just talk to us about worldwide buddies? What is it? How did it start?Evi 01:33 Okay, awesome. So when my buddies is centage occasional startup that creates picture books and toys that celebrate diversity with a mission to help children become more open minded and more more culturally aware. I think the idea has been doing it for the past 10 years maybe I I started thinking about it. When I was doing my undergrad in geography And I started learning about like, the different ways people leave and seeing and like realizing how I was never exposed to any of these during my childhood and like how I came to realize, no, there's so many different ways of living in the world and we're never exposed to them. And yet we, you know, like, learn about all these other imaginative worlds of Disney or, like, flying dragon. Like, there are so many other wonderful and interesting things around us to capture our imaginations. And especially at the young age, you know, children are ready to take in anything and everything and their minds are still forming. So I think it's giving them stories from around the world from a young age is a great tool to help them become more accepting and more open minded. So that that's how like the idea started, I was like, trying to figure out how to make it work and then I ended up going to NYU was he said to do my Master's in Creative Writing and education. So I started like, learning more about how children learn about children's literature and ended up doing my Masters theses on worldwide bodies or what was been a very, like rough idea of worldwide bodies. It was like a, an online platform with a series of stories and every story was from a different character from around the world. So very similar to the cultures but if you look at it now you laugh. Like Rafi boy, yeah, I think like, after I did that, I always knew that I wanted to pursue it full time professionally. Probably at the time. I just wasn't ready. So I like I finished my master's and then I went on to work for a different company where I wanted to learn more how to build my own thing. So that's where I became like, the marketing director of a payment startup. And then just Two years ago and I thought, okay, I'm working, I'm doing it, I left my job and then I met Nefeli and that's your business partner now with World Wide Buddies. Exactly Nefeli is like the CDO of World Wide Buddies. So she she's actually the young sister one of my best friends back home. And then like we we sat down I told her you know, like, I have this first story. What do you think like Do you want to try to illustrate it? Then one thing led to another and yeah.Azhelle 04:33
So she illustrated the whole book for you.
Evi 04:36 That so she she does all the illustrations of like all anything design related. Yeah, she's charge. So like, all our all the books, all the toys, everything. So I create the content and then she creates the designs. So basically, we we started out two years ago. And then in the beginning, we had like, the idea of doing like one collection on each culture. And then we did like a picture book on a culture. And then together with a picture book, we would design a set of toys that would bring the book to life. So we're trying to make it an interactive experience, but off screen, so like, the first book was on Mexico. So then from there, we created like bilingual playing cards for memory. So English, Spanish, like most memory cards, and then we did like a plush toy that's modeled out of an endangered animal from Mexico. That was also part of the book. And then you know, like through different recipes or different arts and crafts, again, inspired by the book. So we would do a deep dive into every culture and this is how we were upgrading for the past two years now. And I think we, we realized that we were getting a lot of requests for more and more cultures, A and B, we also realized that products, mostly, like the people that were attracted to it. Our products were mostly like experts or people that had some sort of connection with a specific culture. Yeah. And even though that's great, and that's definitely a big market, and we're not we're we're going to continue doing that. With some of our products, we realized that if we want to attract parents that have nothing to do with some cultures, maybe we need to create a more holistic product. So like, if a parent has nothing to do with Mexico, maybe it would be like I'm not going to spend, you know, $46 for this like story set on Mexico, but like, if it's a book that has 30 countries feature, then the proposition becomes more attractive. So then that's how we ended up thinking, Oh, why don't we create one picture book that actually has like, a number of stories with different characters from different cultures. It's kind of like A small encyclopedia, let's say of like, featuring stories from around the world. So that's that's how we ended up with a book of cultures. Azhelle 07:09 So before you did the book of cultures, how were you selling your World Wide Buddies product?
Evi 07:15
Ah, we was a combination of b2b and b2c, we were mostly focused on b2b. We do have a website and we have all our products there. But we were mostly pursuing b2b. So we did like a book shops, museum shorts, like travel, retail, and so on. Azhelle 07:38 When you guys first started your b2b, how'd you start that? Evi 07:42 Interestingly enough, when we first started, we were thinking we're going to go down the b2c route-- Azhelle 07:47 right. Evi 07:48 But the the more we were like, you know, developing our website and whatnot, we we started getting more and more like requests from book shops and whatnot. And we I love that, that there was more interest in that and it was also a quicker way for us to get cash in the bank. Yeah, because for b2c, you usually need an initial capital to start advertising online and whatnot while b2b you just need to like knock on doors by emails cold call and because we had some initial requests were like okay, maybe it makes sense to see where we can go with our b2b so then the the more we started off with some like small you know your independent book shops. Azhelle 08:36 Yeah. Evi 08:37 And then then we would close deals and more confident we became maybe to start like hitting up some bigger accounts. So but mostly we would just you know, like, think of places that we thought were could be a good fit for products. And then we would like send them an email or cold call them or like creatively so like, we we found out that like New Zealand stories were a sweet spot for us because of the I think the educational angle, the diversity and the more sensitive content. And also because of the size I think like sometimes if you're a small company, you do tend to get lost in bigger stores by like the museum shop usually won't have that many products. So there's also a greater way for you to showcase your products here.
Azhelle 09:27 So what made you guys decide to move to Kickstarter, when you came up with this new idea for the book of cultures? What made you think maybe we should launch this on Kickstarter first. Evi 09:41 Um, I always call that Kickstarter would be a good platform for us. Especially since I get to play red platform for both like books and toys. But with our previous products, I felt that they were too specific And maybe the audience wasn't there. So for example, like since we were attracting more of like the expert community and people that had a specific like cultural affinity, it would be harder to reach them on Kickstarter. Oh, definitely. Exactly. So I think it was more of like a product and timing feed. I think the book of cultures was like, a great product for Kickstarter because of its like, you know, it's like it's a universal product. It's, it's a progressive product, it appeals to people that are more open minded and are looking for fresh ideas are more like, you know, like forward looking. And I think that's pretty much a kick starters audience. And I think also that the timing in terms of--if you're launching a Kickstarter, you need to have very clear answers, and I think many, many people have told me in the past that it's almost like doing a great branding exercise because you need to like just hone in on your messaging. Everything. So I think if we were to launch the book of cultures on Kickstarter, when we, when we were starting out, there would still be lots of unanswered questions that we weren't, we wouldn't be able to convey. I think we had the maturity now to know more about our audience to know more about our messaging and whatnot. So I think it was combination of like, the right product and like, being confident enough in our mission and in what we do,Azhelle 11:32Right. Now, I know you sent me over eight tips, because I actually noticed that when I went to your Kickstarter page, I was like, Oh, my gosh, she ate extra funding goal. And how great would it be if she could give us some eight tips you know, to help us maybe, you know, have the same type of success that you did? So Evie brought us a list of Tips for us to keep in mind if any listeners are considering launching their own Kickstarter. So I'm going to read off each of our tips. And as I do every is just going to kind of break down what that means and talk about book of cultures a little bit in between and just kind of give advice based on her personal experience. All right, sounds good. You ready? ready? I'm ready. Okay. All right. So tip number one, know your product and know that it works for Kickstarter. Evi 12:30 So again, like a just to, like, briefly describe our product, like the book of cultures is like 30 short stories. Each story features a character or what we call a buddy from a different culture. So it's like a 300 word story on that character. And it talks a bit about its culture about like different traditions and whatnot, but it follows a fictional plot so that children can you know, like, engage With the quantum and whatnot, and then it has a one page illustration. And then two page activities on that culture. So again, for children to engage more always like to make our books and products interactive. So there are 30 stories 120 page book. Um, so we thought that, as I said before, this was like a very suitable product for Kickstarter because of its like, universal element. great gift being. It's like it's a product that makes for a great gift. I think. That's also a big thing on Kickstarter. And we also made sure to launch it and say that we're shipping just in time for the holidays because I realized that especially on Kickstarter, you need to give people a reason for why they're buying and yeah, they buying and like to be able to make those connections. So I think for us, these products work Well for Kickstarter as I mentioned before versus other products we have and know your product again I think our Kickstarter audience is very different than any other customer they they will dissect everything they ins and outs of your product so margins are well, and even if you don't I think if you go through the process of like building a Kickstarter page, you will force yourself to know your product. But no matter whether you're killing the because, depending on whether you're launching a technology product or not, I think you you might develop a part of it. And then once you reach your funding goal, you go back and finish it. Yeah, it really depends on the creator and what they're building. But I think no matter what the case, you really need to know the specifics how it will work, you need to know all the details to be able to like answer the questions and also like sell it and explain to people what you want the money for it. What are you building? What are they get?
Azhelle 15:01 Right. Evi 15:03 Um, yeah. So for us, it was very much like adding as many majors as we had from the book already explaining on forces like giving all the details of like, how many pages like what will each page because it makes a difference. People want to know as much as they can about the product, but their way? Azhelle 15:22 Yes, I think that's a great tip. All right, let's move on to tip number two. Know your why and your mission. Talk to us a little bit about that one. Evi 15:33 Yeah, I think I guess Kickstarter community is very different than your average human like customer that just walks into a Walmart browses and gets a few things, right. I get the Kickstarter community is very involved. It's they're very passionate. So they, and I think all the products on Kickstarter, like they all always have either an underlying Nishan or a very strong message or a very strong Use Case I don't. I think like, not all products again, are well suited for Kickstarter. But I think there needs to be something more around your product that will either like move people or that they're gonna make them jump and be like, Oh my god, I need that or like there are specific parts of the population that are extremely obsessed. Let's say we, I don't know, like collecting comic books, but there needs to be a strong conviction of some sort of behind your product to the point or-- Azhelle 16:35 Yeah, like a strong emotional tie or passionate tie. That's a great point.Evi 16:40 Something it's might be an emotional tied might be like an urgent need for aid or like a very big gap in the market for a button. Because people are paying for something that will be delivered in like, three to 12 months, right. They need to be able to you know, like, identify with Because people are like purchasing something that will be delivered like six months down the line, it needs to be a product that will move something in them or will hit a court. Azhelle 17:13 That's really good. I love that tip. Let's do tip number three. know all the details under promise and over deliver. I like this one a lot. I haven't heard this from anyone. Evi 17:25 This is Yeah, I think I think I can't stress it enough. And I think if you asked me like eight months when we're past delivery, I I'll probably even like overstressed this more. Azhelle 17:37 Give me an example. I kind of want to know what you under promise and you plan to over deliver. I'm curious. Evi 17:42 No. So we, we--I think we've learned this the hard way with other products on where we always thought, you know, this is a timeline that's never there. Or Yeah, shipping can be figured out. It won't be here though. Right about beforehand. Yeah. It's fine, like we'll find a better factory where in our margins We'll work hard, let's just deliver the first. No, you you need to have everything ready especially because you're you're setting your target goal. You're explaining how the funds will be allocated your your you're putting money down to like produce a product. So especially if you're working with like products of have low margins, which is the case many times in the toy industry as well. Like you need to make sure that the amount that you're asking for we cover for all the production costs. There are like big enough margins. You need to know like if you're shipping internationally or not how you're going to ship how much shipping will cost, whether you're charging shipping or you're not charging shipping. Like I think this is something that Kickstarter stresses so much on their page I view like you need to research and make sure that you Traffic international shipping, you know already which providers are working with and that the rates do make sense for your products that you're not in for any surprises. So I think -- Azhelle 19:08 I want to stop you there because no one really ever goes deep into shipping. And I'd love you to be the one that does that. When Kickstarter or shipping fees pre determined like for international orders, if you put in say, like your location that you're going to ship from, do they automatically calculate what the shipping fees will be for you and then tag that on everybody's order? Evi 19:28 No, no, no, you you decide whether your chart whether you're charging shipping or not, and you decide whether you're offering international shipping or not, and, and so on. So it's, I think it's something that we need to look into because we've suffered from shipping before in the past, but if you're launching a product for the first time, you might underestimate the importance. of it example like if you're shipping internationally or not for us like international shipping was a big thing, especially since the book of culture we, we want everyone to be able to read it. So we we ended up getting backers from 64 countries. Azhelle 20:10
Oh my gosh. Evi 20:12 Yeah, we did not think that would happen. But again, like, you need to make sure that you have the infrastructure ready. And like if you need to charge shipping charge shipping, right? Don't just not charge shipping because maybe other people aren't charging. Oh, yeah, exactly. So you your numbers need to work don't like Be honest. yourself into your team about like, what your numbers are, what your margins are, don't try to like sell something very cheaply on Kickstarter to be able to meet your goal and then ending up having to pay more. And I know that that's something that like a lot of creators say they've run into issues post, campaign and being so we we were super careful on making sure we have everything right We know our rates are how fulfillment will work and whatnot and I mean the the other thing around like under promising over delivering has to do with product specific so like don't say it's gonna be like these amazing 200 page book and you have like zero pages like sending you know, like a 50 page book or I don't know. Yeah what the product is yes. And also like timelines right i think timelines is a big thing around Kickstarter people especially if you're if you're promising a product for Christmas... You need to make sure that you give a realistic timeline so what we said was like, Okay, let's, let's try to factor in two more months to make sure that we don't end up delivering things are late, but I get like this is still we're still in the process of you know, like finishing a product. Delivering until November. So come and ask me again. But I like for example, I know a couple of campaigns that ended up you know, crashing their goals and like ended up not being able to deliver. For example, there's like one campaign which is like called the coolest cooler I think, which was one of the you know, like-- Azhelle 22:15I saw that one. I did see that one. They didn't deliver? Evi 22:20 I'm not sure exactly what happened. But there were a lot of hiccups in that way. And I think partly was because they, they did so well, they decided to launch. I'm not sure if it was a stretch goal or not, whether they were they offered, backers the option to choose between different colors or something along those lines. You should look into but the point being that even if things aren't going so well, you want to be able to like go from his more stretch goals and promise great things because you get super excited to meal to be a bit more careful and take a step back when we're releasing our stretch goals. right because you get so excited you feel that you I can I can do it. Yeah. Yes. Do that as well-- Azhelle 23:08 It's almost like sticking to your plan, like having a vision and just sticking to it. Exactly. Exactly. interests. Yeah, that's, that's a that's tip number three. Okay, so tip number four, research, prepare and plan. What do you have to say about that one for us?
Evi 23:26 Research? I think again, Kickstarter is very unique in all aspects, I think. But again, we'd like research. It makes it super easy for you to build a successful company. That was my take on it like, and even though you can't be a good like, you can't be a good like use case of testing your product, let's say because usually or by us, I think with Kickstarter, it was the first time where I was really able to like Go through our video and go through our page and look at it from an almost like unbiased third party because they have this template where all the campaign's follow the same structure. So it's very easy for you to see what other campaigns have done well, and then look at your campaign page of Nike try to compare and try to look at it from like, a Kickstarter user. There's so many great companies out there so many successful companies out there. So spend the time and like, watch videos of products that were similar to you and more successful or have products that you like their aesthetic or their mission or their tone and messaging. Look at how they structured their page. I mean, that's like I'd be lying if I said, you know, like, we had all these novel ideas. We we spent two weeks looking at Kickstarter videos Kickstarter pages on the lightning round. down what we liked given, you know, like pausing and seeing, like a like which Sekondi they introduce a product if you like, wow. Oh yeah, Azhelle 25:11I have to say this is the perfect time for me to give you this compliment. I loved your video. I loved it. It was great. It was so colorful and so fun and the kids you got were great. Were those like models or were those friends or families? Evi 25:30 It was a combination of like, some were like relatives and friends. Yeah, we're like children we met before and like we use in some of our photos. But we The nice thing is that we know by now all of the children have relationship with them. So it's always like a fun shoot day when they all come. Azhelle 25:51It was great. Yeah. And how you I was gonna say you and your sister, you and how do you My sister. Yeah. And your partner Nefeli. Yeah. How you guys came in and and just the whole vibe was so wonderful. You got to see you. You got to see the kid. It was just great. It was I loved it. Evi 26:13 Thank you very much. Azhelle 26:14 And now I know you did like serious research to make sure Evi 26:19 We did serious we did serious research for him that'd be done on the page because it was your, your, you're not reinventing the wheel. You're You're, you're reinventing the wheel with your product, but like Kickstarter makes things so easy for you just by going and like just see what others are doing and try to like, like, enlarge and Yeah, exactly. Because it's, that's why it's there. That's why the platform exists. So yeah, definitely research prepare, Azhelle 26:50 and plan.Evi 26:51 Plan. I mean, plan is a big one. You need to know what you're doing. Like no matter how long your campaign is, it's usually between like what 20 to 50 The days it's gonna fly by so quickly so like don't don't say okay, I'm going to launch it and then I'm going to figure out what I'm doing like Azhelle 27:07 you planned what you were going to do every single day? Evi 27:10within our time what we're gonna do every single day thankfully because our plans did not work out because of like Coronavirus yeah but we we did have a plan of like are we doing events are we like are running ads are we like launching initiatives were we reaching out to like we you know, we we I think we plan at least the first three days of like okay like the campaign launches like I'm one of our like, this team member with like, reach out to these people like present the campaign to like journalism on like a day before like, which newsletters we're launching and when letting our you know, like the followers know. So, we We didn't have a big like, calendar of what we were doing and when we had the reject calendar for the first two or three days because that's, you know, the campaign craze, we're like, it's just every minute. They're like, okay, we need to get there. We need to hit that. Azhelle 28:16 How much did you hit in the first three days? Can I ask? Evi 28:19 We reached our target in the first 30 hours we were trying to -- Azhelle 28:23 oh my gosh! Wasn't your target was like 20,000 correct? Wow, me. Evi 28:35 We were very lucky in an unlucky way. Because likeou. Wait, no, because I think we launched our campaign in March 10. And then March 11, like Coronavirus was like, pandemic and it was when like all the cities started shutting down. So I think we were very lucky because we were able to like rally our network and just bother everyone in anyone when you during those first 24 hours because I think after Azhelle 29:03 Gosh, wow. That's Wow. Yeah. Great job. Evi 29:13You should definitely have a plan you should. And you should also feel comfortable I think. Obviously we had no idea what was going to happen but I think we reached the point where we reached out to enough people enough customers tried to like, collect enough emails reach out to enough retailers to gorge interest and get that feeling of okay like people are some people at least will back this I need to have. You can never be sure, but there are some small initiatives you can launch beforehand to make sure that you're on the right track.Azhelle 29:51 Since we're talking about like, your goal and your budget. Did you decide how did you decide what your goal was going to be? Be Evi 30:03 how, huh? Well, a it needs to be more than what you're going to spend. Right. So that's the first benchmark Be it needs to make sense. And it needs to be aligned with like, the proposal while you're running the campaign. So for example, it's very different if you've like, been up and running for, you know, like 10 years and you're want to launch this Kickstarter campaign to like, increase your revenue times 10 in a month. It's very different if you're just starting out and you just need a few thousand to get go. So it really depends why you're launching the Kickstarter campaign and in which stage you are. But for us, it was it needed to we need to be able to cover costs. We said we needed to make sure that there's enough interest around the product to justify that We'll spend developing it versus like working on our current product. And then there was also a bit of an element of, let's also not be overly optimistic and have a goal that we can reach. So it was, let's say, the minimum maximum or a combination of minimum maximum of how much we wanted to raise, given the effort that would go into this campaign. And also an amount that we were comfortable enough that we could reach.
Evi 31:47 We never know. It's whole funny. We had these boards where we were like, We put up our launch date I I was like, very excited. By the end of March is on the 22nd of February because the 22nd is my favorite number, so that was my initial plan. And then we're thinking, you know, let's like push it a bit further, we need to be more ready and we had like all these like, different dates. Yeah, can you like let's find a date that will definitely work. Or like, okay, we definitely didn't choose the right one that But I think it was being able to like people and like, our jobs definitely made all the difference in the world to our campaign. I've like talked about it a bit like another on another podcast. But after we reach 20 K, the plan was to a heat up retailers, B heat up schools, because those were the two areas we felt more comfortable with because as I told you, like we most of our customers up until now we're like In the b2b space, so the plan was to hit up all of our retailers or the schools we have worked with, and do some, you know, in person events, because we always like to do readings and like, that's the way we engage with our community. So we would do like in person events, and obviously, none of the three ended up working out. Azhelle 31:55 What'd you do instead? So we, I think I get after those first 48 hours, you're thinking, Okay, like, we'll just stay at 20 K, and then no you didn't! Evi 33:40 dBut then I think like we we spent a couple of days come back to the drawing board, where the campaign I think the fourth and fifth day like, it may be, like $100 or $200 a day like there were there was like a period of three days where nothing would happen and we will We literally just went back to the drawing board we were doing nothing in terms of like pushing it. Um and you know like we we really evaluated we sat down and thought okay like definitely not hitting up like our like a cat like retailer a cow. So we need to like focus more on a B to C on the b2c model like parents are staying at home now what are they? What is their problem? Like how can we engage with them and I think that we that was also like we were liking the sense of we knew that parents would be more in line now and would be looking for activities for their children. So we decided to launch this like stay at home activity kids initiative, so we posted it as an update and we said you know, like, sign up and we'll start sending you free activity kid inspired by the looks so smart. So every day with Let's say three or four times a week we would send like a PDF with like introducing one of the characters of the book and then like a small activities like an eye or an art and craft around the then introducing, like the culture. So Azhelle 35:15 You posted this update on your Kickstarter. Yeah, exactly. I mean, how did you advertise it? Evi 35:21 And then we started like posting it on different Facebook groups and sharing blasted out to our email list. And like, for some reason, people started signing up. And that really helped and that helped us like, pick up on like, got like the momentum going again. And then we from there we we, I think we we got noticed by Kickstarter, and they made us like a featured project. Yeah, and then from there, I think they start including us newsletters and they would like had us featured in the publishing category for some time. Azhelle 36:01 So wait let's go back a little bit You said you built activities and you posted this as an update now you're getting people to sign up to get these activities that was just given email address or was that contribute to the Kickstarter to get these activities you you could put your email address on a landing page or Evi 36:22 you could access them for free via our Kickstarter page so you would either give us your email from our landing page or you would have to go to our Kickstarter page and access them for free via updates. So it would we it kind of redirected people to our Kickstarter page right and how do they find them once a hit your Kickstarter page? In our updates in updates... Azhelle 36:44 Okay, I'm not that familiar with Kickstarter sometimes. Oh, I see it. I see it. Evi 36:51Exactly so we posted every activity as an update. So we said if let's not make people give us their email if they don't pay attention Well, we're all comfortable with that. But let's redirect them to our Kickstarter page nonetheless. Azhelle 37:08 And they did not have to contribute. They just got to get a free activity. Evi 37:12 Mhm they could download the activity kit. Azhelle 37:14 And then what would happen when they download it? Did they get anything else about worldwide buddies? Evi 37:21 So, two options, the first option, you would sign up on a landing page, and you would receive them via email. So those people would receive like emails every two or three days from us. Okay. The other option, anyone at any time could go on our Kickstarter page and could find different activity kits that had already been out via our updates. So when I see an activity kit, yeah, so I think that really, really helped. Get us back on track. Azhelle 37:51 Good idea. That's so great. That is a really great smart marketing idea. That's good. Thank you. Evi 38:00 But I think after that we we got some energy back and we're like, Okay, let's do this. And then it was like a number of different initiatives. So we, we did some Facebook ads, we posted them on Facebook groups we try to engage with like other creators and see if we could work together. We did some like live readings on our Instagram feed. So it was very much trying to adapt with what was going on at the time and like saying, okay, like, what do people need? How can we offer back? How can we engage with them? Then obviously, like Facebook marketing had become cheaper because of that was going on. Okay. Yeah, exactly. So we we took advantage of that. So it's, you need to like you know, you always need to have a plan, but You need to be able to, you know, like, go back and ask yourself, okay, like, is my plan still valid? Should I still continue these? What has changed? Like, what's going on around me? Is there a better plan right now and whatnot. And there's always there always needs to be a balance, obviously, for us, like the Hunter was clear because me companies are like, okay, yes, our plan won't work for sure. Like no Henry column. Sorry, Ben. You guys need to be able to adapt and respond to what's going on around. I think that's, for me. One of the biggest things about building a business. Yeah. Azhelle 39:43 Oh, great job. That's great. I mean, we could we could stop right there. But no, we have more tips more value. Okay, here we go. All right. Let's go into Tip number six. dive in and engage with the community. It's kind of similar to what you were just talking about. You offered these free activities for parents when they needed them the most. But were there other ways that you you interacted with your customers throughout this process? Evi 40:10 For me come in, like Kickstarter community is made up of four different categories. Okay, first is Kickstarter. on its own, like the platform. We reached out to Kickstarter before we launched the campaign. They, they were amazing. I'm giving us feedback. And I don't know if enough people do it. But like, just tell them hey, I'm launching a Kickstarter campaign. I'd like to get some feedback. How do you reach out to them? They have like a, they have an email or you can find someone that works there, from like LinkedIn or whatnot. You can find people from like, Kickstarter articles that are posting advice. So we try to engage as much as we could with them to get their input. And then from there, like, I mean, the Kickstarter platform has a very strong followers like 25 percent of our bikers came from Kickstarter really need to believe in the power of the platform that saying try to engage as much as you can. With the community. Second, I think it's there are lots of services built around Kickstarter, a lot of people will email your friends or services during the campaign. Make sure to you know, like, you can interact with different services but make sure to not like start working with all these services, I would promise the moon but depending on what campaign you're running, there could be services that can help so for example, like we're working with a service now that will help with fulfillment and whatnot. Third is other creators. We talked a lot with other creators and like they all creators are always willing to help offer their advice if they're like, further along in the process or even willing to like, you know, Give you a shout out on their Instagram account or whatnot, but like, it's your network during those 40 days, they're in the same boat as you. So like, connect with them engage. And you find them throughout the platform also. Yeah, you can find them through a platform, you can look at projects that you like, and maybe message them and be like, hey, would love to jump on a call or, you know, what are you doing? Right, like, last exchange notes. And then the fourth is actually your backers. And again, like, I never interacted with so many customers in the past two years I have during those 14 days, they really, really care about the product that they bought. And it's like, amazing, they're always there to offer feedback. I wish all of our customers were that engaged. And I think again, it's a special feature of the Kickstarter community but we we we really made made a point of life. Answering every comment and to really interact with all of the questions and we actually learned a lot about our product and even change some things while the campaign was like ongoing based on feedback that we got valuable. Yeah, so I think you should, you should engage with the entire Kickstarter community as much as you can. Azhelle 43:28 That's a really great tip. I don't know which tip is my favorite anymore. That's great. Okay, tip number seven. Keep pushing, no matter how many times you think you've tried everything you haven't. That's a good one. Tell us about that one. Evi 43:45 I mean, I guess that's also like tape for any entrepreneur as well as like, when you're running a Kickstarter campaign, right. But I, there's this theory that I read somewhere I was like about how you can view the world with a mind that mind Instead of abundance, versus a mindset of lack, yeah. And if you're an entrepreneur and you're building a product, you, you, you have no options. I look at the world with a mindset of abundance because like, yes, you'll get, you know, you Everyone knows, but you'll, you'll fail so many times I get, if you don't get up again, you'll never know which time we'll work. And we take starcher as well, like it's you have 40 that we have 40 days or you have 30 days, depending on how long your campaign is running. Right? You need to you need to like, be able to change and like try new things and like not give up after you've posted in a few Facebook groups and nothing Yes, yes. Um, because I mean that there are so many ways to engage with people but you you need to be very resourceful. Yeah, I think one thing that people I don't know how many people use it, but Kickstarter has a dashboard where you're able to create referral tags. And you can see where your backers are coming from. So that's super helpful in knowing which initiatives work and which don't. Azhelle 45:18 I've heard of this. Yeah, Evi 45:20 Yeah. Especially since like during Kickstarter, you're trying so many things, are they? And if you don't know which ones work, then you're just, you have no idea what you'll do the next day, right. So I think it's very important to like, set up those referral rings. Correct. Try a few things every day. Be able to again, quickly adjust and say this hasn't worked. Okay, what's next? But you should definitely not give up. You have 14 days to do it. Yeah, give it your all like you need to be resourceful. Azhelle 45:54 I think one of the things you did is when COVID happened and everything stopped. You didn't just think Like, oh, that's it, no one's interested in this product anymore. You thought, you know, my customer is still out there. But yeah, they have other things on their mind what's on their mind and how can I help them with that so that they can start caring about my product again. And I think that that's exactly what you did and so I think other people if they're feeling like oh, I tried everything in this business idea, this toy idea and it's not working they just either they have to come at their customer a different way maybe they have to remove a roadblock for for their customer somehow, with some freebie some gift some maybe it's a price point block. And if their customer maybe isn't there, then maybe they just have to widen their niche. Maybe their market is almost a little bit too tight. Maybe they have to look at converting people into their market. So I just I love that I love I love everything. You're all the goals are given us. This is great. Good. It's really great marketing and the marketing perspective of Kickstarter, which is really important.Evi 46:56 No, and I definitely think that like I mean Sure, like if you're trying to sell a product for three years and nothing's happening, then maybe you should like re evaluate whether it's my concern and whatnot, but it's not the time to do it when you're running a Kickstarter. You just need to give it your all and try every day to figure it out. But they're like, you're going at full speed, round, full speed on the sales battle. Azhelle 47:26 So your final tip, tip number eight, do it with all your heart and enjoy the journey. Evi 47:33 Yeah, that's, that's that's a big one. I think that's probably the biggest one. I mean, it's running a Kickstarter campaign is a very intense experience. I think. Any project creator you talk to that has run a Kickstarter campaign, they always say, Oh, yeah, I remember my Kickstarter thing. I mean, there's no one who has ever forgotten their keys. It's like running a school project on steroids. Almost. And I think because you know, like, it's also a stressful process. It's also a process where like, you really put yourself out there and you feel more vulnerable. Like, you need to make sure to enjoy the journey like we, what we did was we, we made a point of, you know, like, all getting on a call. When we were launching the campaign to like, press the Launch button together, we all got on a call to celebrate when we reached our like, target when we reach 50% of our target when we reached our first stretch goal, because then you can, you can get carried away because everything is moving so fast that you end up like looking back and thinking like oh my God, when did that happen? I didn't have time to like, celebrate those little wins and there are so many wins attached to the whole process, even if it's a good thing to even get into that first care you feel so good about Yeah, you need to take that time to celebrate it and enjoy because it's a it's a wonderful project. And it's a, it's a wonderful thing, but it has a beginning and an end. It makes it you know, like it's a three month project, a five month project, whatever it is, but even you need to make sure to like, take the time to appreciate it. Azhelle 49:26
And yeah, I think that's important. So I'm curious to know with this successful Kickstarter behind you, how has it or how might it change the future of worldwide buddies? Haha, um, that's a good question. Evi 49:44 I would also like to know, Azhelle 49:47 do you think you'll still be doing like b2b or more b2c? What are you thinking? Yeah, Evi 49:52 That's an interesting one for us, especially right now like we we've been debating it quite a bit the past few weeks by now. After what has happened and as I mentioned before, like when we first started, we were initially planning on doing like a, solely B to B to C. And then we got like some different feedback and some response from B to B. So we shifted to that. But I think, with everything that's going now, especially during, like the pandemic, and given the response we had with our Kickstarter campaign, we said that we will spend the next three months trying to see how we can continue our b2c efforts on our website. So yeah, I think one thing that has definitely changed this is going back to exploring B to C, right. Which is a Azhelle 50:49 it's gonna be an interesting experiment. Let's see how it Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot of little orders, compared to my little orders. Evi 50:59 I love little orders. Again. I think it's, it's also a matter of timing with everything else that's going on. Azhelle 51:06 Yes, definitely. Oh, this was so great. I'm so glad to have you on the show today. And I think that every one of my listeners is going to find tremendous value in the tips that you laid out. They were just so clear, and really focused. So I think it's going to give anyone listening right now thinking about doing a Kickstarter, a really, really great starting point. I'm so glad before you go, could you just let my listeners know where they can find your product? Evi 51:35 Ah, yeah, of course. You can find the book of you can pre order the book of cultures than any of our other products on our website. So it's worldwide bodies.com. And you can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook. Again, it's worldwide bodies. Azhelle 51:53 Yeah, and I'm gonna include a link to worldwide buddies in my show notes. So you can directly click in They're, and you'll see their beautiful website, you'll see their successful Kickstarter. And you'll just see all of the books that you guys have put together for different cultures that are really, really great. Awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. Evie, thanks. Have a good evening. You too. Take care. All right, toy people. There you have it. That was my wonderful informative interview with Evie from worldwide buddies. Before I do a quick recap of all of the goodness that she dropped today. I just want to let you know that Evie gave us a really awesome gift. Any listener of this podcast is going to get a 20% off discount code for worldwide buddies.com. To get that code, just head over to the toy coach comm forward slash podcast forward slash 22. And that's a 20% discount code. So get that today. All right, so let's quickly recap what we learned in this episode. So number one, know your product and know that it works for Kickstarter. And be ready because there are some pretty picky shoppers on Kickstarter number to know the why behind your product. And think about the fact that people are ordering something that's gonna be delivered way down the line six months down the line. So to get their dollars, you're going to need to deliver something that really feeds them emotionally or an urgency. Number three, know all of the details you want to under promise and over deliver. So be sure you're considering things like international shipping costs, and don't make stretch goals that overstretch your capabilities. Number four, you want to research prepare and plan extensively. Number five, be ready to adjust and pivot your marketing strategies. You want to always be addressing your customers current needs. Number six, dive in and engage with the entire Kickstarter community. That includes Kickstarter Corporate Services like advertisers and fulfillment centers, other creatives and customers. Number seven, keep on pushing. No matter how many things you've tried, you haven't tried everything. So adopt a mindset of abundance. There is always more to do learn and gain. Number eight, do it with all your heart and enjoy the journey of your Kickstarter campaign. Celebrate every little win. I'm so glad that you stopped in today to listen to this episode. I hope you learned something extremely valuable. And if you want to learn more about worldwide buddies and the book of cultures, head over to the toy coach comm forward slash podcast forward slash 20 You'll get all of the links to Evie and worldwide buddies. Everything I've got for you will be over there. You will also find a link to join our Facebook group for Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a place where other toy people like yourself can gather and give each other advice and ask me questions about the podcast or about the toy industry. And we're all happy to help. So I hope to see you in there. Until next week, I'll see you later toy people. Intro/Outro + Jingle 55:33 Thanks for listening to Making It in The Toy Industry podcast with Azhelle Wade, head over to thetoycoach.com for more information, tips and advice.
-
🎓Learn more about how you can develop and pitch your toy idea with Toy Creators Academy® by clicking here to visit toycreatorsacademy.com and join the waitlist.
