One year ago today I held my breath, hit "submit", and launched my first crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter. I remember the date because it was my birthday (April 24th), and I couldn't think of a better 45th birthday present.
Not only did I want Drops on my own drums, but I had a feeling that drummers everywhere would be excited about them too. I thought "This is a product that should exist." My drummer friend saw the design and said "Why hasn't this existed before?" These are often the best kinds of products. I hoped so anyway.
So I hit "submit", and... crickets.
The waiting is exciting. Lies. It's torture. We never crowdfunded any of our products back at MONO and I was starting to wonder why I felt compelled to try it now. Maybe Kickstarter only works for mass market products, not specialized drum gear? Or worse, maybe the silence is the market saying Drops aren't a thing? Am I'm really the only drummer who doesn't want to put tape and gels on my drums anymore?
Mercifully, the first Kickstarter pledges started trickling in. I saw some familiar names from family and friends. That was heartwarming, but these were people who would back literally anything I did – and I had just shamelessly emailed my entire address book about the launch – so I was still nervous about the campaign.
Then we started seeing names I didn't recognize. This was the birthday present. Who are these people? How did they find us? It turns out other drummers are ready to say goodbye to gels, too.
Over the next few days momentum kept building as backers shared the link with other drummers. A few weeks into the campaign we were nominated as one of Kickstarter's "Projects We Love". Not only was this a true honor, but the accolade got us even more exposure. Drummers from all over started following our Instagram. Our goal was to raise $7,500 for the first production run of Drops, and we ended up raising 820% of our goal ($61,706) from 778 backers.
True to our word, we listed every single backer on our Backed By page, and they will remain listed on our site for eternity. We truly wouldn't be here without them.
Here are some historical artifacts from the launch:
1. The official Kickstarter video (filmed by Brady Anderson, voiceover by Randy Couvillon):
2. The first delivery – 3 tons of Drops parked in the garage:
3. Shipping orders with my daughter who will kill me for posting this:
4. The first batch of Drops going out to our backers:
Onwards,
DK
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