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Kickstarter unsuccessful

by Rew MitchellPosted on
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Kickstarter unsuccessful

Boooooooooooooo! Yes, as the title of this article suggests, we were unsuccessful in reaching our goal. This is of course a disappointment to us and we know to you guys also! By the time the kickstarter campaign clock had ticked it's last few seconds we had reached 19% of our goal. There had been 103 backers with an average pledge amount of £58 (approx $90).  We know there was a multitude of reasons why there wasn't more backers and we can be realistic about the pitfalls that the campaign faced. Don't worry, we're still happy and positive about the future of Awakening and we can certainly take a lot away from this previous month.

It is no exaggeration for me to say that we quite literally spoke to hundreds upon hundreds of you during November.  Many, many athletes, supporters and coaches sending us positivity and wishes for the kickstarter to be successful in emails, on social media, in person, over the phone.  You name it, we were bombarded with love and we truly appreciate every bit of it. The campaign itself was shared over 3,500 times on social networks.  As I have said before, it takes a lot to get us humans to be compelled by something enough to share it en-mass to our friends and family on social networks. So for us to achieve 3,500+ shares proved to us that we were correct in thinking that there was an audience there that wanted this, and wanted Awakening to be the people to do it.

So what went wrong? Why wasn't it a success?  To be honest, lots of things. We made many mistakes ourselves and there were also things outside of our control which we didn't really consider before we launched. In hindsight, failing to consider these "outside of our control" elements was also a mistake by us, but me in particular!

What we did right:

  • The budget
  • The ethics
  • The vision
  • The weeks of pre-campaign preparation (as told by many kickstarter bloggers out there)
  • Got into many magazine both in print and online

What we did wrong:

  • In the first few days we asked for feedback from the community and were generally told that we had our messaging wrong.  It shouldn't be just about the Kitchen vs Haycraft, it should be about the actually long term vision we had. So we went back and changed the messaging and corrected it.  True enough, the response increased almost the same hour we changed the messaging.
  • We didn't have a date set in stone. We had assumed that people would see the vision and pledge based on that alone. We were were wrong.  Unfortunately nobody here is in a financial position to even pay the deposit on a venue. But this is probably the single biggest flaw of the entire camaign, and yes... not being able to book a venue until after the kickstarter funds came in actually meant we didn't reach our goal. Huge error on our part.
  • The time of year. Many people find November to February the hardest months financially.
  • The global economy, yes this currently sucks!
  • We failed to reach our tipping point.  That point in a kickstarter campaign where people start to really get excited and start pledging. I estimate that tipping point in our campaign to be at around £10,000 ($15,000). We should have reached this point by the halfway point.

So if you add up all of those "what we did wrong" elements, it was very much stacked against us.

We learned a lot of great things and received a lot of praise and love from you guys. This keeps us going.  We don't make any money here, and all three of us work very long hours and sacrifice a lot to bring you this website. We will continue on because it's the right thing to do, it's fun, and you appreciate it! Although the kickstarter was unsuccessful and this particular event won't be taking place.  We will find another way to bring you a fair, uncorrupt promotion that has both the athletes interest, and the female scene's development at heart.  We will find a way...... it just might take us a little longer to get there.  Thank you all for your support during the campaign, and even now, we really appreciate it.

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