When I launched this brand and these products, I had different possibilities offered to me. Each of them had its benefits and risks. In our case, crowdfunding seemed to be a good option for these three reasons:

• It would be a great way to tap into a huge community of innovators and early adopters for a relatively low investment
• It would be amazing to validate our products and to benefit from a lot of feedback from people, both positive and negative 
• The overall risk we were taking was quite limited compared to a standard launch

(For those who don't know, crowdfunding is a way to fund a project by raising money through the effort of friends, family, customers, and investors. The process takes place online and is supported by crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. If the campaign maker hits their funding goal, the campaign is funded, and they can start their project. If the funding goal is not reached, then the project is cancelled, and the money is returned to the backers.)

I started to gather information about crowdfunding, and I was looking at other successful campaigns to understand best practices. I discovered a whole new and fascinating world.

If you have never been on Kickstarter or Indiegogo or if you feel that you can’t find innovative enough products on the market, check out those platforms. These projects are amazing, motivating, and great to watch.

The best literature I found about crowdfunding was the book called "Crowdfunded" from Mark Pecota. This practical and very well-structured manual is a super helpful masterpiece, and the guy is really nice too. It's worth contacting him before organizing your campaign (this is something I realized after launching, of course).

After a few days of research, I was really overwhelmed but I felt ready and super motivated to start. For some reason, I was convinced that creating our campaign would be nice and easy... It was actually quite nice, but easy...no, it was not. 

The most challenging part of the campaign preparation was delivering a simple message, fluid and appealing. It may sound a bit surprising, but it was really a hell of a job! When I have a few seconds to catch and convince an audience, the story has to be really impactful and consistent. Deciding what to say and what not to say was difficult.

"Well, have fun and keep it simple" was the advice I received from a friend... Yeah right... Thanks mate... 

If I had to sum up the other challenges, I would say it was difficult to: build a community, find the right people to work with, write scenarios and content, organize photo and video shoots, build a PR strategy and catch people's attention before and during the campaign. 

But in the end, when I look back at everything today, I realize that, yes, it was a tough challenge, but it was also an amazing experience and I could not have done it without this team of brilliant people:

Alexandra, who has worked with me since day one of Untraced. She designed the jackets and polos and helped me on absolutely everything since the beginning. Here is her website.

Kurt, who has found the best places to shoot in Sydney and has made breathtaking pictures. Here is his website.

Nicolas, who has made all the videos and who helped me to make the message as clear as possible. Here is his website.

You guys rock, thank you!

Preparing this campaign has allowed us to discover and learn. It was amazing for me to see our ideas become concrete and real.

I will tell you more about the campaign in the next article. 

In the meantime, I share some nice behind the scene pictures!