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Turning Kickstarter into Kickcontinuer

These guys have built a successful product design business via serial crowdfunding—15 campaigns and counting!

By Rain Noe - July 10, 2015

in Design Business | Crowdfunding

The company's name might be BigIdesign, but their latest product is tiny. Take a look at this thing:

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So, what did you think? Was it innovative? Underwhelming? A novelty that might be useful to have, but that you'd never actually buy? It might be all of those things, but what it certainly is is financially successful: The creators were looking for $2,500 and garnered $43,000 at press time, with 20 days left in the pledging period.

It's just a bit part

As for who those creators are, Chadwick Parker and Joe Huang are a design and manufacturing duo we first looked in on years ago, when they were hawking a small retractable cable reel. While I wasn't surprised to see their names on Kickstarter again, I was surprised to look into the company they've since formed—BigIdesign, which handles design, manufacturing and fulfillment—and find that they've launched no less than fifteen Kickstarter campaigns in total.

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Their designs are mostly simple—and oddly, nearly all cylindrical—as well as very doable, like writing implements and desktop organizers. The four campaigns where they deviated from this formula, attempting coasters, notebooks, children's furniture and wallets, all failed. The other 11 have all succeeded, and Parker and Huang are now selling their gear on five continents.

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Interestingly enough, while the pair have started 15 campaigns, they've also helped fund 22 other peoples' campaigns, including a competitor's titanium pen.

While we've seen repeaters on Kickstarter before, we've never seen eleven-peaters. BigIdesign illuminates the possibility that one could cautiously launch a successful product company without having to once reach back into your profits to fund the next project, or worry about going belly-up if the new idea doesn't pop.

For those of you thinking of crowdfunding anything, whether one project or fifteen, you'll want to check out "How to Make a Self-Shot Video Look and Sound Good, on the Cheap" and you'll definitely need to read our interview with Alex Daly, "The Crowdsourceress" consultant with the 100% success rate.

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dci / Decor craft

9 years ago

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http://shop.dcigift.com/p/travel-tools/accessories?pp=12
Design in 2012 in HK by Brazzo

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Toby B

9 years ago

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I like small Ti tools as much as the next person, but I would say that if you wanted to carry random hex bits using one of these would be more flexible (you can carry it with only a bit, too) : http://countycomm.com/edckey.html

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Noodle Time

9 years ago

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sweet... now im going to make use of all the 'extra' bits i have lying around... just drill a hole and stick it on a keyring! rust wont be an issue either (for me at least)

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Michael Cody

9 years ago

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Always cool to see new designs, but less so when they are pretty straight rip-offs of previous pen designs; http://www.schondsgn.com/

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- Chadwick Parker
  
  Michael Cody
  
  9 years ago
  
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  I think there may be a bit of confusion concerning who's design came first, the Solid Titanium Pen + Stylus launched first on June 15th, 2012 and Ian's Pen Project launched over a month later on July 17th, 2012.
  
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