#Testimonial: Frescopod raised $213.000 on Kickstarter for eco-friendly coffee pods. How did they do?

Raising $213.000 on Kickstarter for the first crowdfunding campaign. Is that possible?

Yes! And that's the amazing goal reached by my client Yannis, founder of Frescopod innovative eco-friendly coffee pods allowing you to enjoy your favorite coffee brand in completely plastic-free pods!

I had the pleasure to help the creator Yannis during this journey, and I have to say that he and his team really did a great job on setting the pre-launch strategy in order to start their first crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, but they also managed the campaign during the launch excellently.

I also made a previous article talking about how Frescopod reached the goal of $8,000 in just 2 hours on Kickstarter!

In this interview, you will discover more about his campaign and what made him reach the goal in few hours and raise $220.000, and what secrets you have to learn!

Before watching the video or reading the article...

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1. WHAT IS FRESCOPOD AND WHAT WAS YOUR CROWDFUNDING JOURNEY?

Frescopod is an eco-friendly alternative to plastic coffee pods known as ''k-cups''. I had the idea 2 years ago, but wasn't sure about doing a crowdfunding campaign, but as I began doing some research it was more clear that it was the right choice in order to launch a new product in the market. As a normal guy with little to no budget, it would have been hard to launch a new product on the market without means, plus, I wasn't sure if people were going to buy it. Crowdfunding with Kickstarter was a good choice because it gave us capital to mass-produce the product and also proved that people wanted and needed the product. More than this it is way much better than an e-commerce platform because you have low risks on the production side since you already know how many items you sold and you don't have to produce them prior to the sales.

2. WHY CHOOSING KICKSTARTER TO LAUNCH INSTEAD OF INDIEGOGO?

While planning I was indecisive between Indiegogo and Kickstarter, because Indiegogo is more focused on physical products, while Kickstarter is more focused on creative products. However, since the devices compatible with our pods are only sold in the US and Canada, it had more sense to go with Kickstarter that mainly focuses on that specific areas, while Indiegogo is a more international platform focused on selling all over the world. Other than that, one thing I noticed when we shifted to Indiegogo Indemand, is that I felt that Kickstarter had a stronger community of people that wanted to help to bring new products to life, especially if is a new product like our frescopod, that is not like any other product in the market.

3. WHAT WERE THE BIGGEST STRUGGLES IN YOUR CROWDFUNDING JOURNEY?

The biggest struggle was starting from zero, also something apparently easy like building a website and collecting emails was hard for someone with no experience like me. Something difficult is also creating the campaign page, anybody could post a picture or a simple description but that won't convert, for us the hard part was, filming, thinking and editing the videos, which took us a lot of days in order to do a good job. Also, the storytelling part was difficult because it required a lot of info, high-quality text and more... Another struggle was keeping the traction going, because usually in the first days, especially if you've built a proper pre-launch, you get a big spike in sales, but the second day it went down for thousands dollars in sales, the hardest part was getting past that hump and generate sales through the second half of the campaign.

4. WHAT WAS YOUR KNOWLEDGE ABOUT CROWDFUNDING BEFORE STARTING?

The knowledge I had was very little, I've never used Kickstarter or Indiegogo to purchase products and never created an account. When I was thinking about launching my new product I started reading, doing researches, consultancy with you, watched videos etc... So you don't need to be an expert, you just need to find the right information and people to help you. I know there is a lot of misinformation about crowdfunding, but if you dig deeper or talk to people who already did that before you can figure out what really works!

5. HOW MUCH IMPORTANT WAS RUNNING A PROPER PRE-LAUNCH PHASE?

Extremely important. I think nobody should launch a campaign without a proper pre-launch, that has to do with creating a community that will help you in the first 48 hours, but also you can create communities with more than 20.000 people, but to do that you have to be strategic in how to spend your money, I had 2.500 emails collected when I launched, which is not a huge number but lead us to do 14.000$ on our first day, and I would attribute 60% of that goal to our community, and it was good on the first hours to get to the goal thanks to the community, because other people will feel confident to back your project. Other than that, you can also reach the community and keeping them updated also when the campaign is live. If you haven't build the community first, do it before the launch.

6. HOW MUCH IMPORTANT WAS HAVING AN EXPERT CONSULTANT FOLLOWING YOU?

It was really important to have a consultant like you Mattia, because no matter how good you prepare there are gonna be things that will confuse you, so when an expert like you help me with precious advice and foundations everything it's much easier, also along the way I had some questions about specific things and I emailed you and schedule a call in order to clear my doubts, so it was very helpful along the way to have someone to refer to.

7. WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?

In the beginning, we were working with an agency that wasn't doing a great job because their ads weren't converting and we wasted 3 precious weeks, when we switched agencies we saw results overnight, the ads were exploding, this was the most crucial part of our crowdfunding if something isn't working out try to cut it out fastly, time is money so give it a try for a week maybe or move quickly to fix things. Another important thing is that manufacturing a new product is very difficult, and I'm happy that we developed good part of the product before the launch, but what I would have done differently is to develop the whole product before launching the campaign, but maybe you can do that if it's the second or third campaign, so that you already know people are going to buy the product.

8. WHAT ARE YOUR FUTURE PLANS?

Right now the most important thing is manufacturing and make sure the final product is perfect, fulfill the orders and shift the website to Shopify, when we will have all our Indiegogo Indemand orders fullfilled, we'll open our e-Commerce to go directly to consumers. Then, we want to create more color options for our frescopod device and create more rings suitable to different coffee brewers, also we have version 2 and version 3 in the works. Our biggest goal is to eliminate 1 billions of plastic pods waste by 2024, currently, we sold 4.000 just from Kickstarter, and we did our calculations based on the items sold, so if 2 person makes 2 cups of coffee, we forecast 5.8 million plastic pods eliminated by 2022, by 2024 we hope to make a big difference. The future plan is for every family to have a frescopod in their house in order to make a revolution.

WRAPPING IT UP

This was a really great achievement for Yannis and frescopod, I really wish his product will make a big difference in solving plastic pollution issues! It is always a great pleasure to talk about my client's achievements, it makes me so proud and that's the reason why I do this every day.

So creators, always remember to create a community of interested people around your new product, gather them and keep these people warm with special and detailed content about your new product, in order to make them want to support you and be part of your journey.

If you want to analyze and prepare your pre-launch phase to launch your first product I’ve got you covered with my crowdfunding pre-launch free e-book called ''3 steps to success on Kickstarter and Indiegogo''. 

As always make sure to check today's interview video right on top and comment to ask me questions and subscribe to my channel to stay updated on fresh new content that I’m gonna drop there.

Ciao ciao! 

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