Episode #68: One Dad's Secret To A $3 Million Dollar Toy Kickstarter

Apr 14

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After being laid off during the pandemic in 2020, Conor Lewis was bit by the entrepreneurial bug and decided to go for it with his toy product, FORT. Conor put his marketing expertise to use and built an email list of over 80,000 people before launching his Kickstarter campaign. His share focused and gamified marketing campaign helped him build his email list organically.

Conor comes on the show today to share his journey of building his list, nurturing his interested customers, and ultimately funding a multi-million-dollar crowdfunding campaign in the first 24 hours. If you’ve ever considered a pre-order, a Kickstarter campaign, or an IndieGoGo, this is the episode for you.

Listen in to today’s episode and send me a message on Instagram (@thetoycoach) and let me know what you’ve learned.

Follow Get The Fort on Instagram and stay up to date with all of the products!
Visit getthefort.com for more information
Azhelle 00:00
You Are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, Episode Number 68.
Intro/Outro + Jingle 00:06
Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, a podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you. And now your host Azhelle Wade.
Azhelle 00:17
Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. Today I am joined by Connor Lewis, who is coming on the show for a conversation around his Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $3 million for his toy product. Connor is a St. Louis Missouri based entrepreneur. After losing his job in April of 2020. He started FORT, a kid's toy startup, the FORT is a magnetic pillow for that plays on the new wave of kids play furniture. FORT raised as I said $3.1 million during its Kickstarter campaign in early 2020. And Connor is going to be launching getthefort.com later in the year. Now, I'm so excited to have Connor on the show today. Welcome to the show.
Connor 01:17
Thank you so much for having me Azhelle.
Azhelle 01:20
Okay, so you told me that you didn't come from the toy industry from the start? Where did you come from?
Connor 01:27
Yeah, so my background is in is in marketing. Actually, I spent a lot of time doing social media and video production. And so you know, I was really inspired not as much by the toy industry, but actually by kind of e-commerce and Shopify, Kickstarter. And then a lot of these you know, I kind of grew up in the in this era of like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter blowing up. And so I loved that kind of tech worlds that. And so that's really what got me interested in making products and selling online.
Azhelle 01:59
Me too! Same, almost the same age, 100%
Connor 02:03
Yeah, definitely. I'm a hardcore millennial
Azhelle 02:05
But I kind of want to roll back a little bit and just here. What was it like going through the pandemic, losing your job? Did you have entrepreneurial dreams before that happened?
Connor 02:15
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I had always wanted to do something on my own, but I just had a cushy job as really lucky. And, you know, I was, well taken care of, I had a daughter and my wife was pregnant. And it just didn't seem like the time to start anything new. I had been looking at other jobs kind of at my old job where I did marketing. And you know, there's nothing like kind of getting a kick in the pants like losing your job. During a pandemic, I saw I spent like a month or two, kind of just like, Okay, well, I obviously don't need to go anywhere. I there's no thing to spend money on. So I could just hang out at home with my daughter and my wife's pregnant. And honestly, one day, the bug just kind of bit me. Like I was like, Okay, I think I can do it. Like, I think I can actually start my own company. I was lucky enough that I had a severance from my job. It's like a corporate job. And I actually sold my car. So we're a one car family and in a city that isn't exactly walkable all the time. So and I had this magnetic pillowfort idea that I just kind of jumped into.
Azhelle 03:18
How did you first come up with the idea?
Connor 03:20
Yeah, so it was really simple. And I wish I could remember the exact moment like I wish I had a photo of it, but my wife was building a four basically just like blankets and couch cushions for my toddler. And I just was like, there's got to be a better way to do this. You know, my brain was always thinking of new ideas. And I immediately thought like, oh, magnets stick together that would work and I wrote magnetic pillow for down to my phone and I kind of discovered that right after I lost my job. And that's kind of where the idea came from.
Azhelle 03:48
That's that's just so exciting. So I'm curious I have a couple of questions because as somebody who's been in the toy industry a while as soon as I hear magnet I'm like Oh no. Oh no. What safety tests are we gonna fail on this one? Was that a worry of yours from the beginning? Or was it like were you kind of like in a you know, you've never worked in the industry before so you just kind of rolling with whatever you had an coming you know a little bit from naive like ignorance but in a good way.
Connor 04:18
Yeah, you know, it was a huge concern pretty quickly you know, the first like few weeks I was pretty confident. I was like, Oh, this is great, you know not a big deal and as you do research you learn really quickly like not only do potential customers tell you that they're kind of scared of magnets but you learn that magnets inherently kind of come with some risks and you know, the biggest is kind of the swallowing issue which is like completely fair like I don't want my daughters to swap on magnets but we addressed it pretty quickly. You know, I knew that testing was kind of one of the key linchpins here I got most of the right people behind it, you know, since you're a toy industry professional like you know, you have to consult with the CPSC, Consumer Product Safety Commission. And so we pretty quickly kind of talked to everybody. The biggest step for us first was what are reclassified as, which is kind of interesting, it kind of could go furniture or toy. And so I don't know, like, since I'm not a professional at that, I actually don't know the exact like, like, how that all worked out. But once we kind of got that figured out and worked with manufacturers, you know, we obviously have, you know, testing professionals on staff at these manufacturers. So it's pretty easy now that that I'm at this point, you know, most of it comes down to the safeties of materials, which like, we were way, way cautious about from the beginning, we were like, you know, and as long as the magnets were safe safely in there, which was a huge concern, we made sure to, like really update all the stitching, and we did a lot of testing and a lot of ripping of things and all sorts of stuff to make sure they were okay. And so we were just really, it's been like a constant constant focus for us, because we know it's like a make or break thing. So that's a really insightful question. I mean, I just can't talk about testing enough. I just think you just got to be on it immediately.
Azhelle 06:12
Yeah. So I know you develop this item you did a lot of just the work on your own. You did sketches on your own, you found Freelancer designer to work with on your own, you reached out to dozens of factories to find the right one. Congratulations to you. But at what point of all of this, did you realize that you needed to go the route of crowdfunding.
Connor 06:38
So I originally didn't want to do crowdfunding, because I knew that there was such a huge cut that they take, right, you know, you're losing anywhere between eight and 10%, just to the platforms and processing fees, and things like that. And then on top of that, I just didn't really like the platforms, because they've gotten a bad taste for a lot of people over the past few years. I remember when the Kickstarter, Indiegogo started becoming popular, you know, it was really exciting. But then, you know, as it's, as they've aged, there's been a lot of drama, a lot of products that haven't shipped, and that that was really hard for me to swallow. Ultimately, what I just when I decided to go with Kickstarter, it was because I knew that there was an audience there that I could potentially capture from an organic standpoint. So the marketer in me was like, okay, there are people on Kickstarter, who will discover this, because it's kind of like a marketplace. If I just launched on my own store, it would be really small, and no one would really hear about it organically, I know that I'm probably going to get a little bit of press, I'm probably going to get make some connections that I wouldn't previously make. And I know that that will ultimately be worth it for me.
Azhelle 07:48
Oh, that's so interesting that I didn't expect that to be where your head was at. And then when you're thinking about the organic reach that Kickstarter had available in your marketing experience, or just in your know, how was there a number or $1 number that you knew or or theorize that you'd have to hit before that organic reach would kick in? Because when a new product is put up on Kickstarter, you know, you're not going to be on the first page, you know, just for being you. So how are you sure that you are going to be able to tap into the organic market that they had?
Connor 08:20
Yeah, that's a really good point. I think a lot of people underestimate that. So I mean, Kickstarter may have millions of people as users, like, however many millions a month, but like just because you put it up does not mean anything's gonna happen. So yeah, just like anything, you know, you're not just because you post an Instagram doesn't mean now you're an influencer. So I, I learned about this thing called crowdfunding math. And it's not really a thing. But that's what I call it now. And I learned about it from another entrepreneur, who founded a company called Sheets and Giggles, which is a really fun a sustainable betting company. And basically, it, what I learned was, you have to have a certain amount of people on a pre launch email list, who are ready to purchase on the day of launch, you email them, you build this email list, you email them, and then you get them to back to your campaign. And what they do is they fully fund or fund your campaign to a certain number. And that number is basically what kicks in with Kickstarter, and it helps get you on the front page or get you a newsletter mentioned, and puts you in front of all sorts of other places kind of organically. It also helps your Facebook ads and all sorts of stuff. And so I so so I knew like, basically, so like an email list converts at three to 4%. So if I want to raise $25,000, I have to like do kind of some reverse math to figure out how many people I want to have on my list to raise $25,000 in the first day. And so that's kind of what it came down to. And that math is pretty easy to figure out. I did that math and I figured out what I needed and ultimately that was what brought us cessful on first day.
Azhelle 10:01
But how did you know what that number was? That would be in Kickstarters, I viewed as successful was that just a matter of going on their website and researching similar products and seeing what they were funded at? And when?
Connor 10:13
Yeah, mostly, that's kind of a personal thing, it's actually more about, it's less about the actual number, and more about the fact that it's fully funded. I found so I'm sure there's a threshold, I'm sure if it's $1,000, you're trying to hit I'm sure that's a little bit different. But you know, anywhere in like the 10 to 30 $50,000 range, if you can raise that the first day, and be quote, unquote, fully funded. The first day, you're kind of gaming the algorithm, you know, it's it's saying to Kickstarter, oh, this is a popular project. And so we're going to put some more eyeballs behind it, we're going to put it on the front page, we're going to show it to people, we're going to recommend it to our super backers, things like that.
Azhelle 10:56
Okay, I love this because I know like, I am always constantly teaching that you need to build your visibility online, your following and your email list. But so many people think that, oh, if I put my product on Kickstarter, I share the Kickstarter link. That's all I need to do. But there's so much more pre work that goes into it on the back end. So I love talking email lists. So please, please share with me, where did you begin with your email list? If you already have one, when you first started? How big is it now? Where did you even start?
Connor 11:31
Okay, so I'm a nobody. I just want to like, get that out there. I'm not an influencer. I don't have any. I mean, I had some financial resources that not everybody has. And like, I'm super grateful for that. I did actually lose my job and sell my car. I'm not making that up. But I have a 93,000 person email list right now. Yeah, so got a huge email list. And before we launched, I had an 80,000 person email list.
Azhelle 12:04
What?
Connor 12:05
Yeah. So.
Azhelle 12:06
Okay, hold on. I have one other question. No. Yeah. How many emails Did you have the day you came up with the idea?
Connor 12:12
Zero!
Azhelle 12:13
No, come on. Stop it right now.
Connor 12:15
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I started completely from zero.
Azhelle 12:19
Okay, so, here's the key question, just as you're answering this email list question just to keep this in mind. This is what my my listener students this what everyone asks, If I have a toy idea, how do I build a list around it without giving away the idea or sharing too much about the idea when I haven't finished making it yet? Okay.
Connor 12:39
Oh, man. Yeah, so kind of the IP question like, Is someone gonna steal my idea?
Azhelle 12:44
Yeah, that and combined with like, even if you're you and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna go in on this FORT thing? What do you even gathering people's emails for? When you have a sketch? Like, what are you? What are you telling these peeps?
Connor 12:54
So I think I did. I do think I gathered a few emails on some 3D renders, which is you'll get a few. It depends on how you do it. So I think I got my mind, mostly, you know, family and friends, of course. But like, I think I what I started at is from the toy perspective, so I had really good 3D renderings. But what I mostly did was I waited until I had an actual sample, which is super hard. I know as someone who made a toy like it's getting the sample to you is like a monumental moment when you finally get the sample, even if it's not perfect. Yeah, like the fact that I had it in my hands. And it came all the way from China. The original ones were from China. And, you know, that was a huge, that was a huge win. So I actually took that original sample, I built some pretty general Facebook audiences on Facebook ads platform, and I posted that kind of with some text and whatever fun stuff to kind of see if I could get kind of targeted at the right people like probably Montessori or something like that, you know, people who are interested in Montessori because there's kind of a crossover. They're kind of like an organic product that's playful, not organic, as in like, made out of wool, but, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, and basically, it kind of, I got a little bit lucky, I'm in a really viral category with the nugget couch, which everyone's talking about, and we're kind of a competitor to them and kind of a sort of way. And so after kind of targeting those Facebook ads, and actually having my sample which, you know, there's a million things to get into sample to your front door, like a million steps. Oh, yeah. That those Facebook ads with that sample with kind of decent photography, you can do it on your iPhone. I mean, mine was, and I that's how I started building my list. And I was capturing emails at about like, $1 an email, which is pretty good, right?
Azhelle 14:07
Yeah, that's pretty good. But hold on. What was your Facebook thing saying? Like, what was what was your ad? Hi, I made a sample of this idea. Please give me your email.
Connor 14:54
Yeah, that's fair. So it was saying you know, for the magnetic pillow for launching soon Write a pretty big, and it was saying launching whenever soon, and maybe a few value props like, you know, save your couch cushions and magnets help keep it together, you know, kind of like with emojis, I wasn't 100% sure where I was going to launch or what I was doing. I was getting them on an email list, I was using a service called kickoff labs, which was a really cool service that that helps you create viral sharing campaign. So what happened was they see this ad, they go to my landing page to fill out their email. And then after they fill out their email, which not everybody does, but you know, you get a you get, like 10 to 25% of people who go there do then they're presented with this option like, hey, do you want to win a free one of these, like, we're gonna get free ones away. And we did actually, and so these free, so what you do is they get this special link, if they share this link, they get the chance to win a free one. And in the toy space, at least like with the nugget couch, which is really big, like all those adjacent products to the nugget, all the Pickler triangles and all this kind of wooded toy stuff. I mean, giveaways are huge on Instagram with mom, the mom crowd and all this. So like it was the perfect catalyst for me, giving people the option to win like a free fort, even when they weren't sure what it was, you know, everybody wants a free one for an email address on a bad deal.
Azhelle 16:17
Yeah. So it was a free, it was a chance to get a free fort.
Connor 16:22
Yeah, so what they had to do was they just had to share. So in order to get a free fort, so I'm trying to think about right, I don't have a ton of money, I can't sink a ton of money into if I want to get 10,000 email addresses that's potentially $10,000. I like I had $10,000. But that was the only $10,000 like I needed to put that towards samples and production and all this like pre stuff. So I was like how can I multiply my email addresses. And so doing a giveaway where in order to win a free fort, you have to share the most so the top five shares, and we track it on the service called kickoff labs, like get a fort. And so what it did is it gamified this giveaway system. And so people were really incentivized to give to like, sign up with their email and then share that link on like, right, what's the most powerful thing right now and toys? I'm guessing you and you and I may agree on this. It's probably Facebook groups, right?
Azhelle 17:18
Oh my gosh. Yes. I tell everyone I tell that right one yes.
Connor 17:22
Now. Okay. I'm glad you professional said that because, and I was kind of forcing it. But like, it's powerful. I got all 80,000 email addresses because of face private mom, Facebook groups.
Azhelle 17:33
Okay, so like to tell you this is not a professional toy industry thing yet. I feel like when I talk about it, people look at me a little side.
Connor 17:42
But you're right.
Azhelle 17:44
It's Yeah, the newbies in the industry, the people that are just coming in like you. Yeah, they all know, they're aware, like there are these mom groups, and they're looking for products. And it's a great place. It's a little tricky. It's getting trickier now, right? When you must know
Connor 17:57
That's super tricky
Azhelle 17:58
Right? You can't go in and just be like, Hi, I'm Connor, and I have this product. Here it is buy it, you'll get kicked out.
Connor 18:04
A 100%, a 100%.
Azhelle 18:06
Yeah, it's tricky. But if you can play it, right, you, you can connect with people that want to buy your product and get them to share your product for you. So
Connor 18:16
Yes, yeah, that's exactly what we did.
Azhelle 18:18
Okay, tell me more.
Connor 18:20
Just describe No. So we, we targeted our ads towards the people in those groups, which is really hard, because I had to figure out where the crossover of those people are. Right. So like, Oh my god, yeah, the biggest group is like the nugget Facebook group. That's where all of our growth came from. So I was picking back up off of another product. But like, I had to figure out what those moms were interested in. And I think I chose Montessori as like the crossover there. And so Montessori mom groups are huge. And so I targeted Facebook ads to parents of people who like Montessori, Facebook pages, or whatever, if you know Facebook ads, then this will make sense to you. And so then, and then I'm like, Okay, I know I'm gonna hit it if I get these moms to share it in that nugget, Facebook group, Montessori Facebook group. And so so, you know, the The goal was like, they get this private link on this kickoff labs thing, and they share it and if they share it, if they're the first one to share it in that nugget group like that's 1000s of new members potentially for my email list. That's exactly what happened is somebody shared it. I actually know her now. She's kind of become somewhat like she has my phone number. We talked about all this. She shared it in a in a Facebook group, and I got 1000 email list members for free basically.
Azhelle 19:30
Okay, hold on. So two questions, one question and one comment. So when you go to Target, Facebook groups, pages and people in your ads, some pages people don't show up as an option. So I'm curious, like were yours just big enough that they did show up or did you have to do what you're talking about and literally research individuals in that group on a personal level to figure out what their interests were? so that you can target those interests?
Connor 20:01
Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. Cuz I ideally I would have just targeted people who love the nugget couch, which is like would have been to me that would have been shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. And while it's a huge product, and you and I both know they've exploded, and rightfully so they're an amazing company. They're not on the Facebook ads platform, right? So I can't target people who like the nugget Facebook page. So I had to be like, Okay, what do people like? So I knew that I knew that Montessori was big, I knew that I could just target a general parenting with a focus on women, right, just so moms. And then I also knew that I could target things like there's really big sensory communities, people who are focused on ASD, and SPD sensory processing disorder, autism spectrum. And I knew that these types of products were big for those kids, because they could be really valuable for therapy, they could be really valuable, because they're really physical. My toys are very physical. And so I actually targeted I kind of looked at those groups and members, and I kind of went in a few of those groups and became a member and just just kind of observed, you know, I learned quickly like you can't share, there's no self promotion. Yeah. Never share it. If you share even the coolest thing in the world. Free, and I'm giving you a million dollars. They'll be like, get out of here.
Azhelle 21:17
Yeah, yeah.
Connor 21:18
So they had to share it themselves. And that was the key. And so I can't stress that enough. Don't share your own thing in those groups. You have to find those people target them on Facebook. And you may get lucky, I was really lucky. I'm in a viral category right now the growth of nugget has done has blown up this whole play furniture thing. And so that may not happen with everybody, but there is free growth that can happen.
Azhelle 21:40
Yeah, I mean, it's so good. Okay. I Well, this is not part of my plan questioning. But I do want to know more about, is it kickoff labs?
Connor 21:48
Yeah.
Azhelle 21:49
Because I heard you were I heard you on a podcast with them. And I want to clarify. Kickoff Labs is it seems to be like maybe a CRM system or a landing page system. Can you explain a little bit what that is?
Connor 22:01
Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, I so if you are interested, specifically, she's referencing a podcast called on growth. By kickoff labs, you can look it up. I talk really deep about kickoff labs, because it's their podcast. But I think it's great for the toy industry. Because, you know, I would guess you could probably tell me, we're probably talking mostly about marketing to women, I'm guessing. And I think that the giveaway system works really well, specifically for women specifically for mothers, because they're actually used to it, it's not sketchy anymore. It used to be sketchy. Probably back in the past, I'm guessing. I don't know, there may have been a point. But we've all signed up for giveaways or even all sign up for giveaway. And so kickoff Labs is it's kind of like it's got a CRM attached to it. And basically what it is, is it's a landing page creator, kind of like a drag and drop kind of like Squarespace mixed with like a CRM, like a back engine. And what the engine does is you can create different campaign giveaways. So you can create a sharing giveaway, where if you tweet out this link, you get entered into win. Or if you share, just like my giveaway with the people who share the most our win the free product, or even just if you sign up, you're entered to win. And what it gives you is it gives you a list of emails in the back end of it. And it gives you a lot of really good data. And so it's a really cool platform if you want to run and basically an email or social media based giveaway, specifically focused on generating links, and sharing those links. It was originally built for Harry's razors, when Harry's razors launched, they did a big giveaway, sharing giveaway, you know, if you share with five people, you get a free razor or whatever. And so you know, if you have a low price product, this is amazing for that or a really high priced product like mine, because you can give a few away and the chance you know, so I recommend it. You know, I'm afraid by putting all this out there, the market is going to be some saturated with kickoff lab campaigns, but it's really not a bad way to do it. And I think it's a really good system. And it's it's not cheap, but I do think it's worth it.
Azhelle 24:05
Sounds similar to like a click funnel system. Kind of
Connor 24:08
Yes.
Azhelle 24:09
Okay.
Connor 24:09
Absolutely. Yeah.
Azhelle 24:10
All right. Cool. That's great. Yeah, I love that. I love that we might have to do a whole episode just on that.
Connor 24:15
You should you should do a whole I mean, if you want we could do a YouTube video and teach people how to do it. Yeah, no, I mean, let's we can make, we can make a product and run people through a whole funnel. It'd be really interesting.
Azhelle 24:27
Let's do it. Okay. Keep you to that whenever you get a free minute. Okay, so he talked about your marketing strategy very heavily email focused. And somehow I don't even know you spent. Can I? Did I ask you or can I ask you how much you spent to build up your first 80,000 emails? Is it gonna get me upset? Am I gonna be jealous?
Connor 24:47
Yeah, it was $3,000
Azhelle 24:49
Oh my gosh. Okay.
Connor 24:51
It's basically impossible.
Azhelle 24:53
That's impossible. That's possible. Yeah, no. Okay. Well, he's a unicorn, that doesn't happen.
Connor 25:02
Please, please, please, listeners out there. This does not happen. I'm super lucky. So yeah, it's amazing.
Azhelle 25:08
I okay. I mean, you started with nothing. You had an idea, no email list, you built this email list 80,000 people with just a ridiculous budget, ridiculously small budget. And then you were like, Okay, I'm ready to launch my Kickstarter. So how well did you nurture that email list? Were you emailing them to make sure because the whole point of getting an email list is not to just have these emails and sit on them you want them to buy when you launch? So how often did you stay in contact with them so that you were sure at least they remembered who you are when you were ready to launch?
Connor 25:45
Yeah, so that's a great question. Because I think that education piece is undervalued, because I think you could have 1000 person email list and and make tons of money the second you launch because they're well educated, what we did was once they signed up for a whole kickoff labs thing, and potentially shared now the list of only like 4% of our list actually shared. So that's a crazy stat. But they we tried to get as many people as possible into a private Facebook group. And there's good and bad to that Facebook is a really volatile platform, politically, it's not the best time to be running a Facebook group. Those are different discussions. But the good part of the Facebook group is there's access to a dialogue, you hear what the customer wants, and you can educate them somewhat. It's not as good as email for education. But you can at least kind of engage and see what's going on. So what we did was we tried to get about 10% of our email leads into a Facebook group, which they did. And then we would use the Facebook group to kind of get the information from them like of what's going on, like what are they worried about? Right? So magnet safety. So so every you know, there's threads about people freaking out about magnet safety? What do we do, we make a YouTube video and a Facebook video, and then we send it out to the email list. Because if there's 10% of the people in the Facebook group that are worried about magnets, there's probably another 10 or 20% of our email list that are worried about magnets. And so it was a really great way to source information. And we would put out an email two to four times a week, I would say so we were pretty hard on it. Yeah. And I mean, you know, listen, the people who are gonna unsubscribe are gonna unsubscribe, right? We started our email list at the end of September, and we launched at the end of January. So we did you know, a good like four months of this. Wow. So we did a lot of education. I mean, by the end of it, it was almost like every person on our email list was like an investor in the company, because he knew so much that was going on.
Azhelle 27:37
Oh, wow. That's incredible. Did you ever feel like you were oversharing? The Did you ever share things like Oh, God, the sample from the factory today? Or was it all focused on like, buttoned up and polished education?
Connor 27:51
Yeah, so it was not button unpolished. And I think the growth that I had, there was a lot those first 1000 emails and those first 1000 people in the Facebook group had hardcore buy in because they saw me grow from nothing. You know, I was in the Facebook group every day for hours and on the email list, in retrospect, that's what needed to happen. And at a certain point, it became unsustainable, right? You know, we got over about about 15,000 email, I had to I had to step back from like, doing it all day, I actually had to hire somebody to help me because I just couldn't handle it. And emotionally, it was a really taxing, I shared way too much in the beginning, because I was naive. In retrospect, you know too much about the sourcing process or about the struggles. I was really, I was, like, all about transparency. And I think, I think the transparency is a really good word, I think the better word maybe more like honesty and integrity. Because transparency can mean like, Hey, I had a bad day, because I had a bad phone call with a source. And something really technical is happening, or like, the samples aren't gonna be to the testing facility when I thought they were and they're gonna lose money on this. And people don't need to know all that. Honestly. This isn't this is an industry podcast, and like, I shared too much, and I got myself in trouble. And so once I learned to step back a little bit and like invite people in to a point instead of just transparency, I'm like openness, honesty, integrity, I'm going to do the best for the customer, I'm going to do the best for my company. But sometimes what's best for the company and the customer, the customer doesn't always like and like this is a business and we're we are going to be a profitable business. We have to be otherwise I don't have a job. And so that was a really hard lesson. And so there is a really fine line. But I do really believe in educating hardcore, I don't think you can do too many videos of how to do something or about your product from like a, you know, showing them standpoint or an unboxing or like, Hey, here's how this part of the product works. I mean, I just don't I think people get tired. I mean, they can get tired of it, but it's just always valuable.
Azhelle 30:04
Yeah, I have to say, before I was the toy coach, I and I worked full time in the toy industry, I had a costume company called Costumize Me. And I was always feeling like, Oh, I'm posting about, you know, these clothes too much, or nobody wants to see another video of me and these leggings. But now doing what I do now, as a toy coach, I realize, yeah, they do. Because half of what you post, no one's going to see or half of what you put out, they're not going to even open the email. And then the things that they do see, they might not be watching it all the way through where they're doing something else, so they don't finish and so repetition is key is the only way to make sure they get the whole story. Right.
Connor 30:42
Yeah, totally, completely agree.
Azhelle 30:44
Okay, so Oh, man, you've given so much I should probably stop but I'm curious. Okay. So you had your list your launch in? You funded the first day? You How much did you make the first day?
Connor 30:57
Yeah, we made $2 million. First day.
Azhelle 30:59
Oh, my!
Connor 31:01
Casual $2 million \
Azhelle 31:02
Just a cash. Just okay. That's incredible. What was your what's the the funding goal?
Connor 31:10
Yeah, I mean, it's laughable. 25,000. So yeah, we did. We did almost like 1,000x or whatever. Oh, I don't know what the math is.
Azhelle 31:19
Do you really believed that 25,000?
Connor 31:22
No, no, no, I knew I would do more than 25,000. That was strategic. I, you know, like, I was like, I knew it was a number I could hit quickly. And I knew I was gonna make a lot of money the first day, but I did not think I would make $2 million.
Azhelle 31:35
Okay. So when you launch did you have to run Facebook ads in tandem, because most people they run, they start a Kickstarter. And then they have all these, like, you know, marketing plans, like, oh, we're gonna run email campaigns. We're gonna do Facebook ads, maybe we'll be featured somewhere. Did you do all of that? Or where you bring you just done?
Connor 31:55
Yeah. So I mean, we did this, you know, our pre launch was so strong that the emails, the I mean, the Facebook ads were really challenging. So that was actually my biggest struggle during the campaign. You know, I wanted to raise I don't know, a million dollars or more, probably 1.5 or something. And in once we hit $2 million, I realized like, oh, okay, so I sold $2 million product with zero profit, because they're all sold at cost, basically. And I did that thinking I'd sell a lot less right. So now I know I'm on the hook for a lot of product at a cost. So that's challenging, right? We just got ourselves into a little bit of a pickle. Okay, so now I have to grow a campaign and hoping that Kickstarter will kick in organic traffic, which in hindsight, they didn't kick in nearly enough. And so yeah, that's I mean, that's the position I am in now is like the product manufacturer and owner is like, I sold way more product at costs than I would have liked to the goal was to get people in the door so it got funded. So we got more organics or ads works well. And our ads did do well, we did 750k or 800k off of Facebook ads over the course of 29 days. But yeah, I mean, that is a real challenge. Facebook ads are no joke running for a Kickstarter campaign. You may need a professional or you may need to be good yourself like that. So you did a good thing
Azhelle 33:17
You did on your own?
Connor 33:19
I consulted with someone and I they didn't do all the running of it because I couldn't afford it because with the margins we were working on I just couldn't afford they people take like 15 or 25% of it and I just literally could not afford the cost so yeah, I mean that's the very real like challenge I'm in right now is selling product really cheaply plus Kickstarter taking you know, 10%, basically, so it's really it puts you in a tough spot.
Azhelle 33:43
Did you do Facebook retargeting ads? Or you were using Facebook to find new people to your Kickstarter?
Connor 33:49
Yeah, so we ran ads that were retargeting like look alike audiences based off our email list, which is obviously pretty big. Yeah, the real the real key, though is is Kickstarter doesn't let you use a facebook pixel. So it's really hard to build like an audience based off of purchasers. That's a whole nother podcast with somebody probably a Facebook ad specialist. But so yeah, we did broad audiences based off of you know, like parenting and based off of my email list based off of our Facebook or people who've, like, watched our videos and things like that, but it was really hard to target people and it was really hard to get to know who would buy and we spent a lot of money doing that. But yes, definitely a challenge.
Azhelle 34:29
Yeah, Facebook ads are no joke. I was gonna say if you could read retarget just your email list. But if you can't even take out the people that have already invested because you can't pixel Kickstarter, then that's exactly that's a challenge. Oh,
Connor 34:43
Yeah. You're spamming people with something they already see. Something they can cancel. Also, you know, they can you know, you don't pay the till the end of the campaign. So there's no
Azhelle 34:53
I didn't realize that. Yeah, and I did not know.
Connor 34:56
Yeah, you've got 30 days to think about your purchase.
Azhelle 34:59
So you really Wow, this isn't so insightful. You sold things at cost like you didn't, I thought you said like, No, we have to make profit. This is my business. But was it? Was it? Is it just more of like a setup so that you can do your real official business now? It's like, everything's funded. Now you can get samples over to the US, you figured out your logistics and your shipping? and all that?
Connor 35:22
So yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, product manufacturing costs, like cost of goods sold, or is kind of like a moving target, especially during COVID. Still, you know, everything's kind of in flux. You know, we're working partly overseas, partly domestically. And so I mean, Kickstarter brought me a lot of good connections with new manufacturers that like immediately clicked. And that was a game changer. But our costs, you know, yeah, that was a bad decision, probably my worst decision is to sell at cost on such an expensive product to make, it's more or less at cost. And I did that, because I hired an agency who told me to do that. And they probably they were consulting, they weren't like full time on the board. So they didn't understand the product as well. So I should have made some changes there. Because it is gonna put us in a challenging spot. But what we did was validate demand, we put we've got we sold 12,000 of these, you know, so we're gonna put 12,000 out into the world, and what are people gonna do when they get them, I mean, I'm sure 10% of people are going to absolutely hate them. Now, the burden that I you know, that, that always happens, though, and then the other 80, or 90%, at least, like 20, or 30% of the people are going to post on Instagram. And like that will hopefully be worth that lost money, because we validated the demands out there. And our price point is, you know, going to double because it's going to go to what it actually is to build a sustainable company. And, and that will hopefully help build the company, when we like with those people. instagramming, we'll get more people interested. And we'll be able to grow the company just pretty, pretty naturally based off of all the product out there in the world.
Azhelle 37:00
That's incredible. I mean, you really validated your product, but also your own marketing skills. You're pretty pretty good at this.
Connor 37:08
Yeah. Thank you.
Azhelle 37:09
Well done. Well done. I mean, is there anything else that you think maybe I haven't asked that might be helpful for somebody that has an idea for a toy? And they really want to put it on Kickstarter, any last takeaway advice you'd give?
Connor 37:24
Yeah, I mean, I would just say, don't expect like you've been preaching what you're dead, right is like, do your best to build up the interest beforehand, and nurture those people. I just don't think you can do enough education. And I don't think you can build too big an email list. So the biggest thing that I kept preaching is like owned, they call it like in marketing, like owned channels, right? So like, I own that email list, like Facebook can't some I mean, Facebook could someday be like, Oh, we don't like magnets. So we're closing your Facebook group, but they can never take away my email list. And so like, just find a way to build those lists valid or validate your product, find a way to build those lists. And and crowdfunding is not for everybody. And I would specifically say crowdfunding for toys is really hard. I'm a real I'm an outlier. And I've learned even in my outlier status, like raising $2 million in like 24 hours. Like it was hard to grow that product after that, like, like we had a really tough time doing ads running to Facebook, and I was I got half of the organic traffic from Kickstarter that I wanted, so I expected twice as much. And it wasn't there because kids products on Kickstarter just are not popular. So like, there may be better platforms, it may be better to just launch some Shopify with a pre order. It may be better to launch on Indiegogo, which allows you to use the facebook pixel. Those are just all good questions to ask yourself before you launch on Kickstarter. It is not the Savior platform that you may think it is so there's good and bad.
Azhelle 38:54
Oh, thank you. That's a really good point. I did remember you said something about Shopify having a plugin that can actually allow you to do something Kickstarter like and yeah those are great.
Connor 39:03
If you're small and want to do it yeah, absolutely.
Azhelle 39:05
Yeah. Oh, thanks so much for this Connor. I've learned a lot and I'm sure that my listeners have learned a lot to what is coming next for pillow Fort, anything you want to share? where can people go to find out more?
Connor 39:17
So I am launching on getthefort.com And you can find us at getthefort on Instagram and Facebook and we are going to be launching in May with another pre order with some new fancy colors. And then we are going to be basically hopefully opening up our store by the end of the year.
Azhelle 39:36
So exciting. Oh, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Connor.
Connor 39:39
Awesome. Thank you so much. It's been fun.
Azhelle 39:43
There you have it toy people. my interview with Connor Lewis, who raised $3 million with his Kickstarter for Fort. Now the biggest takeaway that I want you pulling from this episode is that you need to focus on building an email list up people interested in your toy or game product before you launch it. Now if you need help doing this, like I said, I can talk list building and social media ads all day long, so feel free to reach out. Now Connor story is incredible. A cost per lead of $1. And a lead is an email address. But a cost per lead of $1 is incredible. The plan he implemented to grow his email list organically with kickoff labs as his service to incentivize people sharing his campaign is something to aspire to for sure. But look, don't feel down if your email generation costs are in the 250 or even $5 range. That amount is standard. So I don't want you to feel like you're failing, if that's where you're at right now. But what you can do to help lower your cost per lead or try to keep it down from the beginning, is just think about the campaign that you're launching, can it or does it align to a viral trend or a viral toy category like Connors did, also utilizing look alike audiences if you're focusing on Facebook ads is a great way to keep your lead cost down. But that's going to happen if you're building that look alike audience off of an organic email list instead of one that maybe you paid for through other ads and other means that's the best way to keep your costs low. I also want you to take away that Kickstarter may not be the right platform at all to launch your toy or game product. So before you commit to this platform, make sure that you're researching others like Indiegogo that you're really shopping around to find where ITM your ideal target market is spending their time searching for innovative toy products like the one that you're going to be launching for your product. That place may or may not be Kickstarter, so just keep that in mind. Now it's time for a listener spotlight. This one comes from listener Coy, Coy says not only is this information setting you up for success as a toy inventor, anyone even wondering about the How to have toys we'll learn a lot. Thank you so much for that lovely review Coy. As always, thank you so much for joining me here today. I know there are a ton of podcasts out there. So it means the world to me that you tuned into this one. Until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
Intro/Outro + Jingle 42:26
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.Azhelle 00:00
You Are listening to Making It in The Toy Industry, Episode Number 68.
Intro/Outro + Jingle 00:06
Welcome to Making It in The Toy Industry, a podcast for inventors and entrepreneurs like you. And now your host Azhelle Wade.
Azhelle 00:17
Hey there toy people Azhelle Wade here and welcome back to another episode of the toy coach podcast Making It in The Toy Industry. This is a weekly podcast brought to you by thetoycoach.com. Today I am joined by Connor Lewis, who is coming on the show for a conversation around his Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $3 million for his toy product. Connor is a St. Louis Missouri based entrepreneur. After losing his job in April of 2020. He started FORT, a kid's toy startup, the FORT is a magnetic pillow for that plays on the new wave of kids play furniture. FORT raised as I said $3.1 million during its Kickstarter campaign in early 2020. And Connor is going to be launching getthefort.com later in the year. Now, I'm so excited to have Connor on the show today. Welcome to the show.
Connor 01:17
Thank you so much for having me Azhelle.
Azhelle 01:20
Okay, so you told me that you didn't come from the toy industry from the start? Where did you come from?
Connor 01:27
Yeah, so my background is in is in marketing. Actually, I spent a lot of time doing social media and video production. And so you know, I was really inspired not as much by the toy industry, but actually by kind of e-commerce and Shopify, Kickstarter. And then a lot of these you know, I kind of grew up in the in this era of like Facebook and Instagram and Twitter blowing up. And so I loved that kind of tech worlds that. And so that's really what got me interested in making products and selling online.
Azhelle 01:59
Me too! Same, almost the same age, 100%
Connor 02:03
Yeah, definitely. I'm a hardcore millennial
Azhelle 02:05
But I kind of want to roll back a little bit and just here. What was it like going through the pandemic, losing your job? Did you have entrepreneurial dreams before that happened?
Connor 02:15
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I had always wanted to do something on my own, but I just had a cushy job as really lucky. And, you know, I was, well taken care of, I had a daughter and my wife was pregnant. And it just didn't seem like the time to start anything new. I had been looking at other jobs kind of at my old job where I did marketing. And you know, there's nothing like kind of getting a kick in the pants like losing your job. During a pandemic, I saw I spent like a month or two, kind of just like, Okay, well, I obviously don't need to go anywhere. I there's no thing to spend money on. So I could just hang out at home with my daughter and my wife's pregnant. And honestly, one day, the bug just kind of bit me. Like I was like, Okay, I think I can do it. Like, I think I can actually start my own company. I was lucky enough that I had a severance from my job. It's like a corporate job. And I actually sold my car. So we're a one car family and in a city that isn't exactly walkable all the time. So and I had this magnetic pillowfort idea that I just kind of jumped into.
Azhelle 03:18
How did you first come up with the idea?
Connor 03:20
Yeah, so it was really simple. And I wish I could remember the exact moment like I wish I had a photo of it, but my wife was building a four basically just like blankets and couch cushions for my toddler. And I just was like, there's got to be a better way to do this. You know, my brain was always thinking of new ideas. And I immediately thought like, oh, magnets stick together that would work and I wrote magnetic pillow for down to my phone and I kind of discovered that right after I lost my job. And that's kind of where the idea came from.
Azhelle 03:48
That's that's just so exciting. So I'm curious I have a couple of questions because as somebody who's been in the toy industry a while as soon as I hear magnet I'm like Oh no. Oh no. What safety tests are we gonna fail on this one? Was that a worry of yours from the beginning? Or was it like were you kind of like in a you know, you've never worked in the industry before so you just kind of rolling with whatever you had an coming you know a little bit from naive like ignorance but in a good way.
Connor 04:18
Yeah, you know, it was a huge concern pretty quickly you know, the first like few weeks I was pretty confident. I was like, Oh, this is great, you know not a big deal and as you do research you learn really quickly like not only do potential customers tell you that they're kind of scared of magnets but you learn that magnets inherently kind of come with some risks and you know, the biggest is kind of the swallowing issue which is like completely fair like I don't want my daughters to swap on magnets but we addressed it pretty quickly. You know, I knew that testing was kind of one of the key linchpins here I got most of the right people behind it, you know, since you're a toy industry professional like you know, you have to consult with the CPSC, Consumer Product Safety Commission. And so we pretty quickly kind of talked to everybody. The biggest step for us first was what are reclassified as, which is kind of interesting, it kind of could go furniture or toy. And so I don't know, like, since I'm not a professional at that, I actually don't know the exact like, like, how that all worked out. But once we kind of got that figured out and worked with manufacturers, you know, we obviously have, you know, testing professionals on staff at these manufacturers. So it's pretty easy now that that I'm at this point, you know, most of it comes down to the safeties of materials, which like, we were way, way cautious about from the beginning, we were like, you know, and as long as the magnets were safe safely in there, which was a huge concern, we made sure to, like really update all the stitching, and we did a lot of testing and a lot of ripping of things and all sorts of stuff to make sure they were okay. And so we were just really, it's been like a constant constant focus for us, because we know it's like a make or break thing. So that's a really insightful question. I mean, I just can't talk about testing enough. I just think you just got to be on it immediately.
Azhelle 06:12
Yeah. So I know you develop this item you did a lot of just the work on your own. You did sketches on your own, you found Freelancer designer to work with on your own, you reached out to dozens of factories to find the right one. Congratulations to you. But at what point of all of this, did you realize that you needed to go the route of crowdfunding.
Connor 06:38
So I originally didn't want to do crowdfunding, because I knew that there was such a huge cut that they take, right, you know, you're losing anywhere between eight and 10%, just to the platforms and processing fees, and things like that. And then on top of that, I just didn't really like the platforms, because they've gotten a bad taste for a lot of people over the past few years. I remember when the Kickstarter, Indiegogo started becoming popular, you know, it was really exciting. But then, you know, as it's, as they've aged, there's been a lot of drama, a lot of products that haven't shipped, and that that was really hard for me to swallow. Ultimately, what I just when I decided to go with Kickstarter, it was because I knew that there was an audience there that I could potentially capture from an organic standpoint. So the marketer in me was like, okay, there are people on Kickstarter, who will discover this, because it's kind of like a marketplace. If I just launched on my own store, it would be really small, and no one would really hear about it organically, I know that I'm probably going to get a little bit of press, I'm probably going to get make some connections that I wouldn't previously make. And I know that that will ultimately be worth it for me.
Azhelle 07:48
Oh, that's so interesting that I didn't expect that to be where your head was at. And then when you're thinking about the organic reach that Kickstarter had available in your marketing experience, or just in your know, how was there a number or $1 number that you knew or or theorize that you'd have to hit before that organic reach would kick in? Because when a new product is put up on Kickstarter, you know, you're not going to be on the first page, you know, just for being you. So how are you sure that you are going to be able to tap into the organic market that they had?
Connor 08:20
Yeah, that's a really good point. I think a lot of people underestimate that. So I mean, Kickstarter may have millions of people as users, like, however many millions a month, but like just because you put it up does not mean anything's gonna happen. So yeah, just like anything, you know, you're not just because you post an Instagram doesn't mean now you're an influencer. So I, I learned about this thing called crowdfunding math. And it's not really a thing. But that's what I call it now. And I learned about it from another entrepreneur, who founded a company called Sheets and Giggles, which is a really fun a sustainable betting company. And basically, it, what I learned was, you have to have a certain amount of people on a pre launch email list, who are ready to purchase on the day of launch, you email them, you build this email list, you email them, and then you get them to back to your campaign. And what they do is they fully fund or fund your campaign to a certain number. And that number is basically what kicks in with Kickstarter, and it helps get you on the front page or get you a newsletter mentioned, and puts you in front of all sorts of other places kind of organically. It also helps your Facebook ads and all sorts of stuff. And so I so so I knew like, basically, so like an email list converts at three to 4%. So if I want to raise $25,000, I have to like do kind of some reverse math to figure out how many people I want to have on my list to raise $25,000 in the first day. And so that's kind of what it came down to. And that math is pretty easy to figure out. I did that math and I figured out what I needed and ultimately that was what brought us cessful on first day.
Azhelle 10:01
But how did you know what that number was? That would be in Kickstarters, I viewed as successful was that just a matter of going on their website and researching similar products and seeing what they were funded at? And when?
Connor 10:13
Yeah, mostly, that's kind of a personal thing, it's actually more about, it's less about the actual number, and more about the fact that it's fully funded. I found so I'm sure there's a threshold, I'm sure if it's $1,000, you're trying to hit I'm sure that's a little bit different. But you know, anywhere in like the 10 to 30 $50,000 range, if you can raise that the first day, and be quote, unquote, fully funded. The first day, you're kind of gaming the algorithm, you know, it's it's saying to Kickstarter, oh, this is a popular project. And so we're going to put some more eyeballs behind it, we're going to put it on the front page, we're going to show it to people, we're going to recommend it to our super backers, things like that.
Azhelle 10:56
Okay, I love this because I know like, I am always constantly teaching that you need to build your visibility online, your following and your email list. But so many people think that, oh, if I put my product on Kickstarter, I share the Kickstarter link. That's all I need to do. But there's so much more pre work that goes into it on the back end. So I love talking email lists. So please, please share with me, where did you begin with your email list? If you already have one, when you first started? How big is it now? Where did you even start?
Connor 11:31
Okay, so I'm a nobody. I just want to like, get that out there. I'm not an influencer. I don't have any. I mean, I had some financial resources that not everybody has. And like, I'm super grateful for that. I did actually lose my job and sell my car. I'm not making that up. But I have a 93,000 person email list right now. Yeah, so got a huge email list. And before we launched, I had an 80,000 person email list.
Azhelle 12:04
What?
Connor 12:05
Yeah. So.
Azhelle 12:06
Okay, hold on. I have one other question. No. Yeah. How many emails Did you have the day you came up with the idea?
Connor 12:12
Zero!
Azhelle 12:13
No, come on. Stop it right now.
Connor 12:15
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I started completely from zero.
Azhelle 12:19
Okay, so, here's the key question, just as you're answering this email list question just to keep this in mind. This is what my my listener students this what everyone asks, If I have a toy idea, how do I build a list around it without giving away the idea or sharing too much about the idea when I haven't finished making it yet? Okay.
Connor 12:39
Oh, man. Yeah, so kind of the IP question like, Is someone gonna steal my idea?
Azhelle 12:44
Yeah, that and combined with like, even if you're you and you're like, you know what, I'm gonna go in on this FORT thing? What do you even gathering people's emails for? When you have a sketch? Like, what are you? What are you telling these peeps?
Connor 12:54
So I think I did. I do think I gathered a few emails on some 3D renders, which is you'll get a few. It depends on how you do it. So I think I got my mind, mostly, you know, family and friends, of course. But like, I think I what I started at is from the toy perspective, so I had really good 3D renderings. But what I mostly did was I waited until I had an actual sample, which is super hard. I know as someone who made a toy like it's getting the sample to you is like a monumental moment when you finally get the sample, even if it's not perfect. Yeah, like the fact that I had it in my hands. And it came all the way from China. The original ones were from China. And, you know, that was a huge, that was a huge win. So I actually took that original sample, I built some pretty general Facebook audiences on Facebook ads platform, and I posted that kind of with some text and whatever fun stuff to kind of see if I could get kind of targeted at the right people like probably Montessori or something like that, you know, people who are interested in Montessori because there's kind of a crossover. They're kind of like an organic product that's playful, not organic, as in like, made out of wool, but, you know, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and so, and basically, it kind of, I got a little bit lucky, I'm in a really viral category with the nugget couch, which everyone's talking about, and we're kind of a competitor to them and kind of a sort of way. And so after kind of targeting those Facebook ads, and actually having my sample which, you know, there's a million things to get into sample to your front door, like a million steps. Oh, yeah. That those Facebook ads with that sample with kind of decent photography, you can do it on your iPhone. I mean, mine was, and I that's how I started building my list. And I was capturing emails at about like, $1 an email, which is pretty good, right?
Azhelle 14:07
Yeah, that's pretty good. But hold on. What was your Facebook thing saying? Like, what was what was your ad? Hi, I made a sample of this idea. Please give me your email.
Connor 14:54
Yeah, that's fair. So it was saying you know, for the magnetic pillow for launching soon Write a pretty big, and it was saying launching whenever soon, and maybe a few value props like, you know, save your couch cushions and magnets help keep it together, you know, kind of like with emojis, I wasn't 100% sure where I was going to launch or what I was doing. I was getting them on an email list, I was using a service called kickoff labs, which was a really cool service that that helps you create viral sharing campaign. So what happened was they see this ad, they go to my landing page to fill out their email. And then after they fill out their email, which not everybody does, but you know, you get a you get, like 10 to 25% of people who go there do then they're presented with this option like, hey, do you want to win a free one of these, like, we're gonna get free ones away. And we did actually, and so these free, so what you do is they get this special link, if they share this link, they get the chance to win a free one. And in the toy space, at least like with the nugget couch, which is really big, like all those adjacent products to the nugget, all the Pickler triangles and all this kind of wooded toy stuff. I mean, giveaways are huge on Instagram with mom, the mom crowd and all this. So like it was the perfect catalyst for me, giving people the option to win like a free fort, even when they weren't sure what it was, you know, everybody wants a free one for an email address on a bad deal.
Azhelle 16:17
Yeah. So it was a free, it was a chance to get a free fort.
Connor 16:22
Yeah, so what they had to do was they just had to share. So in order to get a free fort, so I'm trying to think about right, I don't have a ton of money, I can't sink a ton of money into if I want to get 10,000 email addresses that's potentially $10,000. I like I had $10,000. But that was the only $10,000 like I needed to put that towards samples and production and all this like pre stuff. So I was like how can I multiply my email addresses. And so doing a giveaway where in order to win a free fort, you have to share the most so the top five shares, and we track it on the service called kickoff labs, like get a fort. And so what it did is it gamified this giveaway system. And so people were really incentivized to give to like, sign up with their email and then share that link on like, right, what's the most powerful thing right now and toys? I'm guessing you and you and I may agree on this. It's probably Facebook groups, right?
Azhelle 17:18
Oh my gosh. Yes. I tell everyone I tell that right one yes.
Connor 17:22
Now. Okay. I'm glad you professional said that because, and I was kind of forcing it. But like, it's powerful. I got all 80,000 email addresses because of face private mom, Facebook groups.
Azhelle 17:33
Okay, so like to tell you this is not a professional toy industry thing yet. I feel like when I talk about it, people look at me a little side.
Connor 17:42
But you're right.
Azhelle 17:44
It's Yeah, the newbies in the industry, the people that are just coming in like you. Yeah, they all know, they're aware, like there are these mom groups, and they're looking for products. And it's a great place. It's a little tricky. It's getting trickier now, right? When you must know
Connor 17:57
That's super tricky
Azhelle 17:58
Right? You can't go in and just be like, Hi, I'm Connor, and I have this product. Here it is buy it, you'll get kicked out.
Connor 18:04
A 100%, a 100%.
Azhelle 18:06
Yeah, it's tricky. But if you can play it, right, you, you can connect with people that want to buy your product and get them to share your product for you. So
Connor 18:16
Yes, yeah, that's exactly what we did.
Azhelle 18:18
Okay, tell me more.
Connor 18:20
Just describe No. So we, we targeted our ads towards the people in those groups, which is really hard, because I had to figure out where the crossover of those people are. Right. So like, Oh my god, yeah, the biggest group is like the nugget Facebook group. That's where all of our growth came from. So I was picking back up off of another product. But like, I had to figure out what those moms were interested in. And I think I chose Montessori as like the crossover there. And so Montessori mom groups are huge. And so I targeted Facebook ads to parents of people who like Montessori, Facebook pages, or whatever, if you know Facebook ads, then this will make sense to you. And so then, and then I'm like, Okay, I know I'm gonna hit it if I get these moms to share it in that nugget, Facebook group, Montessori Facebook group. And so so, you know, the The goal was like, they get this private link on this kickoff labs thing, and they share it and if they share it, if they're the first one to share it in that nugget group like that's 1000s of new members potentially for my email list. That's exactly what happened is somebody shared it. I actually know her now. She's kind of become somewhat like she has my phone number. We talked about all this. She shared it in a in a Facebook group, and I got 1000 email list members for free basically.
Azhelle 19:30
Okay, hold on. So two questions, one question and one comment. So when you go to Target, Facebook groups, pages and people in your ads, some pages people don't show up as an option. So I'm curious, like were yours just big enough that they did show up or did you have to do what you're talking about and literally research individuals in that group on a personal level to figure out what their interests were? so that you can target those interests?
Connor 20:01
Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. Cuz I ideally I would have just targeted people who love the nugget couch, which is like would have been to me that would have been shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah. And while it's a huge product, and you and I both know they've exploded, and rightfully so they're an amazing company. They're not on the Facebook ads platform, right? So I can't target people who like the nugget Facebook page. So I had to be like, Okay, what do people like? So I knew that I knew that Montessori was big, I knew that I could just target a general parenting with a focus on women, right, just so moms. And then I also knew that I could target things like there's really big sensory communities, people who are focused on ASD, and SPD sensory processing disorder, autism spectrum. And I knew that these types of products were big for those kids, because they could be really valuable for therapy, they could be really valuable, because they're really physical. My toys are very physical. And so I actually targeted I kind of looked at those groups and members, and I kind of went in a few of those groups and became a member and just just kind of observed, you know, I learned quickly like you can't share, there's no self promotion. Yeah. Never share it. If you share even the coolest thing in the world. Free, and I'm giving you a million dollars. They'll be like, get out of here.
Azhelle 21:17
Yeah, yeah.
Connor 21:18
So they had to share it themselves. And that was the key. And so I can't stress that enough. Don't share your own thing in those groups. You have to find those people target them on Facebook. And you may get lucky, I was really lucky. I'm in a viral category right now the growth of nugget has done has blown up this whole play furniture thing. And so that may not happen with everybody, but there is free growth that can happen.
Azhelle 21:40
Yeah, I mean, it's so good. Okay. I Well, this is not part of my plan questioning. But I do want to know more about, is it kickoff labs?
Connor 21:48
Yeah.
Azhelle 21:49
Because I heard you were I heard you on a podcast with them. And I want to clarify. Kickoff Labs is it seems to be like maybe a CRM system or a landing page system. Can you explain a little bit what that is?
Connor 22:01
Yeah, totally. I mean, yeah, I so if you are interested, specifically, she's referencing a podcast called on growth. By kickoff labs, you can look it up. I talk really deep about kickoff labs, because it's their podcast. But I think it's great for the toy industry. Because, you know, I would guess you could probably tell me, we're probably talking mostly about marketing to women, I'm guessing. And I think that the giveaway system works really well, specifically for women specifically for mothers, because they're actually used to it, it's not sketchy anymore. It used to be sketchy. Probably back in the past, I'm guessing. I don't know, there may have been a point. But we've all signed up for giveaways or even all sign up for giveaway. And so kickoff Labs is it's kind of like it's got a CRM attached to it. And basically what it is, is it's a landing page creator, kind of like a drag and drop kind of like Squarespace mixed with like a CRM, like a back engine. And what the engine does is you can create different campaign giveaways. So you can create a sharing giveaway, where if you tweet out this link, you get entered into win. Or if you share, just like my giveaway with the people who share the most our win the free product, or even just if you sign up, you're entered to win. And what it gives you is it gives you a list of emails in the back end of it. And it gives you a lot of really good data. And so it's a really cool platform if you want to run and basically an email or social media based giveaway, specifically focused on generating links, and sharing those links. It was originally built for Harry's razors, when Harry's razors launched, they did a big giveaway, sharing giveaway, you know, if you share with five people, you get a free razor or whatever. And so you know, if you have a low price product, this is amazing for that or a really high priced product like mine, because you can give a few away and the chance you know, so I recommend it. You know, I'm afraid by putting all this out there, the market is going to be some saturated with kickoff lab campaigns, but it's really not a bad way to do it. And I think it's a really good system. And it's it's not cheap, but I do think it's worth it.
Azhelle 24:05
Sounds similar to like a click funnel system. Kind of
Connor 24:08
Yes.
Azhelle 24:09
Okay.
Connor 24:09
Absolutely. Yeah.
Azhelle 24:10
All right. Cool. That's great. Yeah, I love that. I love that we might have to do a whole episode just on that.
Connor 24:15
You should you should do a whole I mean, if you want we could do a YouTube video and teach people how to do it. Yeah, no, I mean, let's we can make, we can make a product and run people through a whole funnel. It'd be really interesting.
Azhelle 24:27
Let's do it. Okay. Keep you to that whenever you get a free minute. Okay, so he talked about your marketing strategy very heavily email focused. And somehow I don't even know you spent. Can I? Did I ask you or can I ask you how much you spent to build up your first 80,000 emails? Is it gonna get me upset? Am I gonna be jealous?
Connor 24:47
Yeah, it was $3,000
Azhelle 24:49
Oh my gosh. Okay.
Connor 24:51
It's basically impossible.
Azhelle 24:53
That's impossible. That's possible. Yeah, no. Okay. Well, he's a unicorn, that doesn't happen.
Connor 25:02
Please, please, please, listeners out there. This does not happen. I'm super lucky. So yeah, it's amazing.
Azhelle 25:08
I okay. I mean, you started with nothing. You had an idea, no email list, you built this email list 80,000 people with just a ridiculous budget, ridiculously small budget. And then you were like, Okay, I'm ready to launch my Kickstarter. So how well did you nurture that email list? Were you emailing them to make sure because the whole point of getting an email list is not to just have these emails and sit on them you want them to buy when you launch? So how often did you stay in contact with them so that you were sure at least they remembered who you are when you were ready to launch?
Connor 25:45
Yeah, so that's a great question. Because I think that education piece is undervalued, because I think you could have 1000 person email list and and make tons of money the second you launch because they're well educated, what we did was once they signed up for a whole kickoff labs thing, and potentially shared now the list of only like 4% of our list actually shared. So that's a crazy stat. But they we tried to get as many people as possible into a private Facebook group. And there's good and bad to that Facebook is a really volatile platform, politically, it's not the best time to be running a Facebook group. Those are different discussions. But the good part of the Facebook group is there's access to a dialogue, you hear what the customer wants, and you can educate them somewhat. It's not as good as email for education. But you can at least kind of engage and see what's going on. So what we did was we tried to get about 10% of our email leads into a Facebook group, which they did. And then we would use the Facebook group to kind of get the information from them like of what's going on, like what are they worried about? Right? So magnet safety. So so every you know, there's threads about people freaking out about magnet safety? What do we do, we make a YouTube video and a Facebook video, and then we send it out to the email list. Because if there's 10% of the people in the Facebook group that are worried about magnets, there's probably another 10 or 20% of our email list that are worried about magnets. And so it was a really great way to source information. And we would put out an email two to four times a week, I would say so we were pretty hard on it. Yeah. And I mean, you know, listen, the people who are gonna unsubscribe are gonna unsubscribe, right? We started our email list at the end of September, and we launched at the end of January. So we did you know, a good like four months of this. Wow. So we did a lot of education. I mean, by the end of it, it was almost like every person on our email list was like an investor in the company, because he knew so much that was going on.
Azhelle 27:37
Oh, wow. That's incredible. Did you ever feel like you were oversharing? The Did you ever share things like Oh, God, the sample from the factory today? Or was it all focused on like, buttoned up and polished education?
Connor 27:51
Yeah, so it was not button unpolished. And I think the growth that I had, there was a lot those first 1000 emails and those first 1000 people in the Facebook group had hardcore buy in because they saw me grow from nothing. You know, I was in the Facebook group every day for hours and on the email list, in retrospect, that's what needed to happen. And at a certain point, it became unsustainable, right? You know, we got over about about 15,000 email, I had to I had to step back from like, doing it all day, I actually had to hire somebody to help me because I just couldn't handle it. And emotionally, it was a really taxing, I shared way too much in the beginning, because I was naive. In retrospect, you know too much about the sourcing process or about the struggles. I was really, I was, like, all about transparency. And I think, I think the transparency is a really good word, I think the better word maybe more like honesty and integrity. Because transparency can mean like, Hey, I had a bad day, because I had a bad phone call with a source. And something really technical is happening, or like, the samples aren't gonna be to the testing facility when I thought they were and they're gonna lose money on this. And people don't need to know all that. Honestly. This isn't this is an industry podcast, and like, I shared too much, and I got myself in trouble. And so once I learned to step back a little bit and like invite people in to a point instead of just transparency, I'm like openness, honesty, integrity, I'm going to do the best for the customer, I'm going to do the best for my company. But sometimes what's best for the company and the customer, the customer doesn't always like and like this is a business and we're we are going to be a profitable business. We have to be otherwise I don't have a job. And so that was a really hard lesson. And so there is a really fine line. But I do really believe in educating hardcore, I don't think you can do too many videos of how to do something or about your product from like a, you know, showing them standpoint or an unboxing or like, Hey, here's how this part of the product works. I mean, I just don't I think people get tired. I mean, they can get tired of it, but it's just always valuable.
Azhelle 30:04
Yeah, I have to say, before I was the toy coach, I and I worked full time in the toy industry, I had a costume company called Costumize Me. And I was always feeling like, Oh, I'm posting about, you know, these clothes too much, or nobody wants to see another video of me and these leggings. But now doing what I do now, as a toy coach, I realize, yeah, they do. Because half of what you post, no one's going to see or half of what you put out, they're not going to even open the email. And then the things that they do see, they might not be watching it all the way through where they're doing something else, so they don't finish and so repetition is key is the only way to make sure they get the whole story. Right.
Connor 30:42
Yeah, totally, completely agree.
Azhelle 30:44
Okay, so Oh, man, you've given so much I should probably stop but I'm curious. Okay. So you had your list your launch in? You funded the first day? You How much did you make the first day?
Connor 30:57
Yeah, we made $2 million. First day.
Azhelle 30:59
Oh, my!
Connor 31:01
Casual $2 million \
Azhelle 31:02
Just a cash. Just okay. That's incredible. What was your what's the the funding goal?
Connor 31:10
Yeah, I mean, it's laughable. 25,000. So yeah, we did. We did almost like 1,000x or whatever. Oh, I don't know what the math is.
Azhelle 31:19
Do you really believed that 25,000?
Connor 31:22
No, no, no, I knew I would do more than 25,000. That was strategic. I, you know, like, I was like, I knew it was a number I could hit quickly. And I knew I was gonna make a lot of money the first day, but I did not think I would make $2 million.
Azhelle 31:35
Okay. So when you launch did you have to run Facebook ads in tandem, because most people they run, they start a Kickstarter. And then they have all these, like, you know, marketing plans, like, oh, we're gonna run email campaigns. We're gonna do Facebook ads, maybe we'll be featured somewhere. Did you do all of that? Or where you bring you just done?
Connor 31:55
Yeah. So I mean, we did this, you know, our pre launch was so strong that the emails, the I mean, the Facebook ads were really challenging. So that was actually my biggest struggle during the campaign. You know, I wanted to raise I don't know, a million dollars or more, probably 1.5 or something. And in once we hit $2 million, I realized like, oh, okay, so I sold $2 million product with zero profit, because they're all sold at cost, basically. And I did that thinking I'd sell a lot less right. So now I know I'm on the hook for a lot of product at a cost. So that's challenging, right? We just got ourselves into a little bit of a pickle. Okay, so now I have to grow a campaign and hoping that Kickstarter will kick in organic traffic, which in hindsight, they didn't kick in nearly enough. And so yeah, that's I mean, that's the position I am in now is like the product manufacturer and owner is like, I sold way more product at costs than I would have liked to the goal was to get people in the door so it got funded. So we got more organics or ads works well. And our ads did do well, we did 750k or 800k off of Facebook ads over the course of 29 days. But yeah, I mean, that is a real challenge. Facebook ads are no joke running for a Kickstarter campaign. You may need a professional or you may need to be good yourself like that. So you did a good thing
Azhelle 33:17
You did on your own?
Connor 33:19
I consulted with someone and I they didn't do all the running of it because I couldn't afford it because with the margins we were working on I just couldn't afford they people take like 15 or 25% of it and I just literally could not afford the cost so yeah, I mean that's the very real like challenge I'm in right now is selling product really cheaply plus Kickstarter taking you know, 10%, basically, so it's really it puts you in a tough spot.
Azhelle 33:43
Did you do Facebook retargeting ads? Or you were using Facebook to find new people to your Kickstarter?
Connor 33:49
Yeah, so we ran ads that were retargeting like look alike audiences based off our email list, which is obviously pretty big. Yeah, the real the real key, though is is Kickstarter doesn't let you use a facebook pixel. So it's really hard to build like an audience based off of purchasers. That's a whole nother podcast with somebody probably a Facebook ad specialist. But so yeah, we did broad audiences based off of you know, like parenting and based off of my email list based off of our Facebook or people who've, like, watched our videos and things like that, but it was really hard to target people and it was really hard to get to know who would buy and we spent a lot of money doing that. But yes, definitely a challenge.
Azhelle 34:29
Yeah, Facebook ads are no joke. I was gonna say if you could read retarget just your email list. But if you can't even take out the people that have already invested because you can't pixel Kickstarter, then that's exactly that's a challenge. Oh,
Connor 34:43
Yeah. You're spamming people with something they already see. Something they can cancel. Also, you know, they can you know, you don't pay the till the end of the campaign. So there's no
Azhelle 34:53
I didn't realize that. Yeah, and I did not know.
Connor 34:56
Yeah, you've got 30 days to think about your purchase.
Azhelle 34:59
So you really Wow, this isn't so insightful. You sold things at cost like you didn't, I thought you said like, No, we have to make profit. This is my business. But was it? Was it? Is it just more of like a setup so that you can do your real official business now? It's like, everything's funded. Now you can get samples over to the US, you figured out your logistics and your shipping? and all that?
Connor 35:22
So yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, product manufacturing costs, like cost of goods sold, or is kind of like a moving target, especially during COVID. Still, you know, everything's kind of in flux. You know, we're working partly overseas, partly domestically. And so I mean, Kickstarter brought me a lot of good connections with new manufacturers that like immediately clicked. And that was a game changer. But our costs, you know, yeah, that was a bad decision, probably my worst decision is to sell at cost on such an expensive product to make, it's more or less at cost. And I did that, because I hired an agency who told me to do that. And they probably they were consulting, they weren't like full time on the board. So they didn't understand the product as well. So I should have made some changes there. Because it is gonna put us in a challenging spot. But what we did was validate demand, we put we've got we sold 12,000 of these, you know, so we're gonna put 12,000 out into the world, and what are people gonna do when they get them, I mean, I'm sure 10% of people are going to absolutely hate them. Now, the burden that I you know, that, that always happens, though, and then the other 80, or 90%, at least, like 20, or 30% of the people are going to post on Instagram. And like that will hopefully be worth that lost money, because we validated the demands out there. And our price point is, you know, going to double because it's going to go to what it actually is to build a sustainable company. And, and that will hopefully help build the company, when we like with those people. instagramming, we'll get more people interested. And we'll be able to grow the company just pretty, pretty naturally based off of all the product out there in the world.
Azhelle 37:00
That's incredible. I mean, you really validated your product, but also your own marketing skills. You're pretty pretty good at this.
Connor 37:08
Yeah. Thank you.
Azhelle 37:09
Well done. Well done. I mean, is there anything else that you think maybe I haven't asked that might be helpful for somebody that has an idea for a toy? And they really want to put it on Kickstarter, any last takeaway advice you'd give?
Connor 37:24
Yeah, I mean, I would just say, don't expect like you've been preaching what you're dead, right is like, do your best to build up the interest beforehand, and nurture those people. I just don't think you can do enough education. And I don't think you can build too big an email list. So the biggest thing that I kept preaching is like owned, they call it like in marketing, like owned channels, right? So like, I own that email list, like Facebook can't some I mean, Facebook could someday be like, Oh, we don't like magnets. So we're closing your Facebook group, but they can never take away my email list. And so like, just find a way to build those lists valid or validate your product, find a way to build those lists. And and crowdfunding is not for everybody. And I would specifically say crowdfunding for toys is really hard. I'm a real I'm an outlier. And I've learned even in my outlier status, like raising $2 million in like 24 hours. Like it was hard to grow that product after that, like, like we had a really tough time doing ads running to Facebook, and I was I got half of the organic traffic from Kickstarter that I wanted, so I expected twice as much. And it wasn't there because kids products on Kickstarter just are not popular. So like, there may be better platforms, it may be better to just launch some Shopify with a pre order. It may be better to launch on Indiegogo, which allows you to use the facebook pixel. Those are just all good questions to ask yourself before you launch on Kickstarter. It is not the Savior platform that you may think it is so there's good and bad.
Azhelle 38:54
Oh, thank you. That's a really good point. I did remember you said something about Shopify having a plugin that can actually allow you to do something Kickstarter like and yeah those are great.
Connor 39:03
If you're small and want to do it yeah, absolutely.
Azhelle 39:05
Yeah. Oh, thanks so much for this Connor. I've learned a lot and I'm sure that my listeners have learned a lot to what is coming next for pillow Fort, anything you want to share? where can people go to find out more?
Connor 39:17
So I am launching on getthefort.com And you can find us at getthefort on Instagram and Facebook and we are going to be launching in May with another pre order with some new fancy colors. And then we are going to be basically hopefully opening up our store by the end of the year.
Azhelle 39:36
So exciting. Oh, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Connor.
Connor 39:39
Awesome. Thank you so much. It's been fun.
Azhelle 39:43
There you have it toy people. my interview with Connor Lewis, who raised $3 million with his Kickstarter for Fort. Now the biggest takeaway that I want you pulling from this episode is that you need to focus on building an email list up people interested in your toy or game product before you launch it. Now if you need help doing this, like I said, I can talk list building and social media ads all day long, so feel free to reach out. Now Connor story is incredible. A cost per lead of $1. And a lead is an email address. But a cost per lead of $1 is incredible. The plan he implemented to grow his email list organically with kickoff labs as his service to incentivize people sharing his campaign is something to aspire to for sure. But look, don't feel down if your email generation costs are in the 250 or even $5 range. That amount is standard. So I don't want you to feel like you're failing, if that's where you're at right now. But what you can do to help lower your cost per lead or try to keep it down from the beginning, is just think about the campaign that you're launching, can it or does it align to a viral trend or a viral toy category like Connors did, also utilizing look alike audiences if you're focusing on Facebook ads is a great way to keep your lead cost down. But that's going to happen if you're building that look alike audience off of an organic email list instead of one that maybe you paid for through other ads and other means that's the best way to keep your costs low. I also want you to take away that Kickstarter may not be the right platform at all to launch your toy or game product. So before you commit to this platform, make sure that you're researching others like Indiegogo that you're really shopping around to find where ITM your ideal target market is spending their time searching for innovative toy products like the one that you're going to be launching for your product. That place may or may not be Kickstarter, so just keep that in mind. Now it's time for a listener spotlight. This one comes from listener Coy, Coy says not only is this information setting you up for success as a toy inventor, anyone even wondering about the How to have toys we'll learn a lot. Thank you so much for that lovely review Coy. As always, thank you so much for joining me here today. I know there are a ton of podcasts out there. So it means the world to me that you tuned into this one. Until next week. I'll see you later toy people.
Intro/Outro + Jingle 42:26
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.

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April 2021

Azhelle Wade

Episode #68: One Dad's Secret To A $3 Million Dollar Toy Kickstarter

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Hey there! I’m Azhelle, aka The Toy Coach.

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Episode #68: One Dad's Secret To A $3 Million Dollar Toy Kickstarter

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Episode #69: Why I Left My Corporate Toy Job To Become The Toy Coach

Episode 67: Objectively Vetting Your Amazing Toy Ideas

Hey there! I’m Azhelle, aka The Toy Coach.

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