Revolutionizing a Timeless Product for Today’s Market

For this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we caught up with Graeme and Alex of The 5TH SWISS. Tune in to learn more about how they built their initial brand and following online, developed a prestigious, high-quality product for a fraction of the price, and utilized Kickstarter for testing in today’s millennial market. Topics Discussed and Key Crowdfunding Takeaways Implementing a pre-order, limited-release strategy to build their business before crowdfunding How they approached taking a mature, “old-age” product and developing it for today’s millennial market Utilizing the strategies of the direct-to-consumer model for a legacy product Applying Kickstarter backer feedback to the future plans of their business What they took into consideration when determining the best crowdfunding agency for their needs Links The 5TH SWISS on Kickstarter Good to Great Shoe Dog The Story of UGG Sponsors Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by The Gadget Flow, a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. The Gadget Flow is the ultimate buyer's guide for cool luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Click here to learn more and list your product - use coupon code ATOKK16 for 20% off! Transcript View this episode's transcript Roy Morejon: Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host, Roy Morejon, president of Enventys Partners, the top full service turnkey product development and crowdfunding marketing agency in the world. We have helped startups raise over a $100 million for our clients since 2010. Each week, I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur, or a business expert in order to help you take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Roy Morejon: Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit and The Gadget Flow. BackerKit makes software that crowdfunding project creators use to survey backers, organize data, and manage orders for fulfillment by automating your operations and helping you print and ship faster. The Gadget Flow is a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. It is the ultimate buyer’s guide for luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Now, let’s get on with the show. Roy Morejon: Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today I am joined with Graeme and Alex from The Fifth. Graeme, Alex, thank you so much for joining us today. Alex: Thank you for having us. Graeme : Thanks Roy. Roy Morejon: I’m really excited to start this interview with the story and where the inspiration to create this company came back in 2014. If you would, let’s go through the journey that you’ve taken thus far. Alex: Yeah, well it’s been a really interesting journey. We started in 2014, and in many respects we had a dream, kind of started the business. We sold a thousand watches on day one of release and we sold out of production, which led to a problem of, you know, we weren’t able to supply customers for about three and a half months. What we did was we came up with a concept where we presold on the fifth of every month. Every fifth of the month, we would restock our watches and they were all preorder, customers could get them. Alex: What we saw was that that release mentality and kind of dropping things on the fifth of every month, that excitement generated a lot of demand for the product. We saw, you know, a really rapid growth in the business. We generated a large customer base, and we went on quite a journey with the business that kind of, in many ways, we launched our watches, we launched bags, we launched sunglasses and we kind of, we went with the energy of the business. It was a fast paced environment and kind of, here we are again today, you know, about to release something that’s really exciting, something that’s new and we’re here to do it on Kickstarter to an entire new audience.