Good to see someone is trying out Kickstarter here...

PM sent also.

I"m suffering under an embarrassment of riches at the moment.

I now have 69 backers and funding is at 3.3X what I was shooting for. Going to be a busy month!

Wow, not a bad problem to have. If your hitting the limits of your production rate, you might not put as many of the cheaper rewards available and let the existing fill up.

Darren Wright said:

Wow, not a bad problem to have. If your hitting the limits of your production rate, you might not put as many of the cheaper rewards available and let the existing fill up.

Click to expand...

um yeah,about that... #toolate. I'm willing to make them, so long as people are willing to wait a bit longer for them to arrive. At this point however Someone will be waiting as I don't have enough wood to make all of the boards. HOwever, that's a nice problem to have at all, is it?

Ned I think you have had amazing response and serve as a lesson to all that are pros of what can be done, but i would not be making the mistake (imo) of not delivering on time. You only get one crack at credibility and even the guys that did that kickstarter 3D printer damaged theirs with late delivery. They had a good excuse their design had issues. Customer did not say you should commit to something you cannot pull off. Given where you are now and what time still lies ahead begin to think of alternative strategies to how you might get these orders fulfilled but in my view meet the commitment you made to the bidders come what may. Unless you don't intend doing any more kickstarter projects in the future.
Lesson here is be careful what you ask for because it can come to reality. Great pitch you made btw. You got something good going don't blow it in the final straights.

Congratulations! I wish you the very best on your endeavor. Watched the video and if I closed my eyes I thought I was listening to Cap'n Eddie Castelin of Big Guy Products. I hope you take that as a complement as it is intended to be. Your voice and "accent" reminded me of him.

Rob,
Thanks for the warm thoughts! I'm already milling lumber and starting on as many of the non-choice (ie, no species selection) boards that I can. And I've been up front with my backers as Darren and Bill can attest, I've told them what I originally expected to have to make, and what I'm Now going to have to make. worst comes to worst, I'm taking a couple of days off from work (trading with my counterpart) but that's down the road. I may just pull this off and ship them all by December. There will be a finite point when glue-ups will be the main bottleneck. Only so many clamps (yes I can buy more, but...) And only so much space to rest the boards in the clamps here in the house. I can't glue up out in the shop at this point due to the cold. So I'm going to have to keep them in the clamps long enough to set up, then re-use the clamps, that sort of thing. Lori and the boys are on board as well, and they'll help with the glue up schedule and out in the shop as well.
One thing I am going to do, is that any additional reward tiers that I put up, and I will be doing so at some point; will be for specific limited quantity sets and no choices on the backer's part. On the plus side, I've gotten feedback from several of my backers saying they're fine waiting for the latter wave of boards so I should be able to stagger my deliveries.

A large part of why I got into this is to flex my design and build talents. I've made dozens of simple wood whisperer glue, smooth, cut, flip glue, smooth/finish boards. And I have entire reward tiers which are exactly that design. Those will be cranked out in short order, simple to make. I'm also coming up with new and exciting alternatives, Vaughn made a quilt inspired cutting board a while back, I'm making somewhat simpler designs, but I'm also going to borrow from the quilting world:



I'm also paying homage to Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie school of design using some elements of his stained glass windows. (in theory at least, no one has selected that board for fulfillment yet, which is fine!) the last board on the right is still a design excercise as well. I thought I would try a recursive progression. In my mind that specific board uses (from smallest to largest) walnut, paduak, cherry, butternut, maple and finally ash. It would be a 12"by 12" board.

Pardon the simple skp 2d exports, I'm not very good at all with Sketchup, however I'm good enough for simple stuff like this I suppose.

Thanks for looking!

Paul Douglass said:

Congratulations! I wish you the very best on your endeavor. Watched the video and if I closed my eyes I thought I was listening to Cap'n Eddie Castelin of Big Guy Products. I hope you take that as a complement as it is intended to be. Your voice and "accent" reminded me of him.

Click to expand...

Paul,Thank you, I'll take that as High praise. I'm a big fan of the Cap'n, and have learned a lot from his videos. I understand he's been in the hospital of late, facing some pretty serious health issues. I'm keeping him and his family in my prayers.

Ned,

Congrats on the great level of interest. Will certainly be interesting to see where this goes!!

You might consider investing in a couple of heat lamps (commonly used for chicken brooders which is why I ended up with two). You can just hang them over a table with the glue ups on it and maybe put a plastic sheet around it (careful that doesn't get to hot). Works pretty well here down into the high 40s or so.

Next kickstarter: heat Ned's shop

oh I've got a daytime heat project in progress... but to make sure for the project, I'll bring it all in the house

Thanks Ryan!

Ned Bulken said:

oh I've got a daytime heat project in progress... but to make sure for the project, I'll bring it all in the house ...

Click to expand...

Another thing to consider is a heating blanket. The shops I worked in while semi-retired had several electric blankets that we threw over glue-ups or vacuum pressed items overnight when necessary. And that was in Florida! Anyway, another thing to consider to keep things moving along.

As far as deliveries, I'd try to keep the date you had listed on the reward. If you feel things are getting tight, but still want to offer new rewards, be sure to set the delivery date out to a realistic time so they know that. I'm just blown away by the response you've had, $4k in 10 days is pretty good. I saw a few cutting board kickstarters, neither had very good intro videos, and I think they missed the boat on their rewards and not offering lower priced backing options like you did.

BTW, I'd probably limit the option to put the blood groove in them except for the higher priced rewards, seems that might add a lot of extra time and risk for errors in making them.

Darren,
trust me I've been agonizing over that quite a bit. The only fair solution I can come up with is to 'close' any current larger board tiers with December delivery dates, and then open new ones with January or later Estimated ship dates. This way I can then work hard on fulfillment of the current orders first, and still allow new orders to come in. I still have 19 days left in the funding window. I want to get boards to everyone I am able to, but I also want to make them to the best of my abilities. Looking at the tiers tonight, I'm only affecting perhaps 9 or ten potential orders. I will have to add new tiers anyway soon, so I'll simply put their delivery dates later on. Essentially from here on out, as the order comes in closer to the end of funding the delivery date will have to be pushed back. That is the only 'fair' way I can see to reward my early backers for their support, but still allow later backers to get their product as well.

Do you know if the money pledged is considered income or a gift by the IRS. Does one have to pay taxes on it????

oh yes, I'm presuming this is income

Ned you thought outside the box by giving kickstarter a go, now dont go cut off orders when the biggest retail period of the year is in full swing.

We could wax for hours over why people are supporting you. But one primary need that people have at this time of the year is for the gift giving season. Your own US knowledge of this effect should be clear from having lived with black friday shopping for all these years of your life. Something in the order of 25% of retail trade is done now.

To me your solution is to think outside the box as to how you complete these items. Collaboration is the order of the day. Look for a local person that has a heated shop and more equipment that you can team up with to get these done and take as many orders as you can while you can. This is like a fish run, you change the terms the fish will stop running in my opinion. Well they may not stop but the rate of flow will definitely slow.

You got something going that many i think would be envious of if they have a shop setup to be able to do this. Work on the bigger picture. Keep in mind you still got 20 days to go even at a moderate rate of one further backer per day that is something like 50 more backers based on just a plain average of where you at now.

I would be looking further afield than just this individual deal. Consider that you are going to have connected with and supplied 80 people with a sample of your wares. The aim should be to look past the one off and be expecting to keep some of these backers as customers going forward. To me this is the opportunity here not a short term cash grab. Ask the pros what they would give to have 80 people buying something from them right now.

even if you only do this on a seasonal basis related to various traditional gift giving and shopping events (valentines day, etc) you got a great opportunity here for something more sustainable than a one off event.

What you must do is stun the customer with quality, service and overall fulfillment and that in my view includes providing for decent packaging that sets up for the WOW factor on opening. First on opening the pack and then on opening the wrapping and feeling the board etc and a reorder card and a link to a website where a reorder may take place.

You might have gone into this with very moderate goals but the market place has taken your pitch and you cannot control when fish bite what you got to do is make hay while the sun shines ask any farmer that.

So think more of how you can work on your business opportunity rather than just in it. If cashflow is an issue try get a small loan from a credit union to help tied you over.

I dont know exactly where you live and if there are other FWWfamily members in your area. You may want to consider reaching out to some and seeing if you can get some help. BUt my 5 cents worth is dont go cutting off the order supply by changing delivery to Jan.

Get as creative as you did in making the video to resolve the issues you got with the execution of more than you expected. Be like a Texan and think big. now i am gonna get it. Alan B. help!!!

Rob, I hear you, and I'm so far outside the box right now I've lost sight of the darned thing. I'm certain that a LOT of my response is holiday retail driven, but not all of it. I am working on every alternative that I can. I've adjusted my delivery times, and as a backer of several other projects that's nothing new in the KS realm. Projects go viral, and creators Have to re-work their delivery schedules. I'll do everything I physically can to get the boards shipped, but my Estimated ship dates have been adjusted just in case.

On that note, I'm out the door in a few to go buy lumber. C'ya!

Ned, I was just looking at your Ks page. The new category delivery dates are a good idea.

On the rewards, I'd make one change on the 16" round board - make it with three (3) feet so it won't rock.

On your "Confetti" reward, you have a delivery date of December 2015.

One of your backers is shown as being in Ireland. Since you indicate you don't ship outside the US, how will you handle that?

Bill Arnold said:

Ned, I was just looking at your Ks page. The new category delivery dates are a good idea.

On the rewards, I'd make one change on the 16" round board - make it with three (3) feet so it won't rock.

On your "Confetti" reward, you have a delivery date of December 2015.

One of your backers is shown as being in Ireland. Since you indicate you don't ship outside the US, how will you handle that?

Click to expand...

Yeah... 3 feet would work better wouldn't it? can't change the confetti date, i'll be shipping that asap, just like the others.
and the Irish backer is $1 support, no shipping involved.

Ned Bulken said:

Yeah... 3 feet would work better wouldn't it? can't change the confetti date, i'll be shipping that asap, just like the others.
and the Irish backer is $1 support, no shipping involved.

Click to expand...

Well, with a date of December 2015, you have a year to knock it out.