Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Crowdfunding campaigns, in general, work well when you have an email list or a community to promote your campaign to. It sounds like you already had an email list. How large was that community that you had brought together?

Kish Vasnani: It was around 5,000.

Sramana Mitra: How much revenue had you brought in from the previous accessories business?

Kish Vasnani: We were at around $150,000.

Sramana Mitra: Between $150,000, your part-time jobs, and the 401-K, you are now funding a new product category that you’re manufacturing in China. You’re also starting a crowdfunding campaign. This is where we are now, right?

Kish Vasnani: Correct. We received the final sample in April of 2018. That’s when we started photography and video work. We also created a landing page and we put up teaser images. We received additional email signups that way. 

Sramana Mitra: When did the crowdfunding campaign launch?

Kish Vasnani: It launched in June 2, 2018.

Sramana Mitra: How long was the duration and how many orders did you get from it?

Kish Vasnani: It was around 60 days. Within 60 days, we received $1.2 million worth of orders.

Sramana Mitra: How much of the 5,000 email list converted into actual orders?

Kish Vasnani: We’re not quite sure.

Sramana Mitra: I only advice startups to go for a crowdfunding campaign who have at least a customer base to seed the campaign. I’m sure $1.2 million orders came from Indiegogo itself, but that had to be seeded with your own community.

Vanessa Jeswani: A lot of the community definitely supported us.

Sramana Mitra: What was the price point of the bag?

Kish Vasnani: We priced it at $99. 

Sramana Mitra: The $1.2 million was for the $99 price point.

Kish Vasnani: Around 35% of those orders were at $99. We also steadily increased the price every few days and every couple of weeks until we reached $179. We had done some research. We looked at the competitive landscape. A bag of this quality should be priced at about $228. We backtracked from there. 

Sramana Mitra: What was the manufacturing cost?

Kish Vasnani: The manufacturing cost plus other costs was around $76.

Sramana Mitra: It would become a high-margin product at a steady state.

Kish Vasnani: Correct. In the future, we were able to place a larger order and got better pricing.

Sramana Mitra: Great! How long did it take you to fulfill that $1.2 million worth of orders?

Kish Vasnani: We fulfilled all orders within 10 months. Within the first five to six months, we fulfilled the initial orders that were all purchased within the first 60 days. Then we still had the opportunity for people who wanted to buy later on at a higher price point. We fulfilled those orders later on. We launched in June 2018. The campaign ended in early August. We were shipping out orders by November.

Sramana Mitra: The whole process of getting to fully manage $1.2 million in revenue took 10 months.

Kish Vasnani: In the Indiegogo, you have the initial campaign period. Then they have this feature called In Demand, which is where you can still continue taking orders afterwards. We did $1.2 million in the first 60 days. We ran the In Demand program from August 2018 until March 2019. In that time period, we were able to do another million dollars in sales.

Sramana Mitra: Wonderful. So Indiegogo really worked for you?

Kish Vasnani: It was. It was very pivotal. We also made a lot of mistakes.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Entrepreneur Couple Bootstrapping an E-Commerce Business Using a Paycheck and Crowdfunding: Nomad Lane Co-Founders Kish Vasnani and Vanessa Jeswani
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