Matteo Fogale

0:20[Applause]

0:24everyone working yeah.

0:28So yeah as it says I'm just going to talk today about my actually. Actually my first product project as a independent designer and this Kickstarter campaign we did with a really good friend of mine yosha Bros we did this campaign because we both we working for Design Studios for many years. And we got a little bit we wanted to do something on our own and launch our own Design Studios and projects so we thought we really like to design something.

0:58And then both being being a little bit Bor of hard the usually the design process works we been a bit tired of the long times and the many many people who get who is involved between the design process the production and the distribution.

1:16So we thought we would like to do it slightly different and and challenge the way things are put in the market and try to do everything ourselves so take control of the whole process and Design piece produce it distribute it and and use the technologies that we have available nowadays I mean everything is made on the internet you can buy online you can sell online you can get access to manufacturers and producers in all around the world much easier than before and and obviously you have platforms which helps you do that like Kickstarter crowdfunding and get money and funding to to produce your things.

1:57So we thought was a brilliant idea. And we really wanted to go and and test that and try it.

2:01So we both quit our jobs and we went and we give everything we had to this project. And we did this as well because obviously we wanted our product to be a quality design product which is what we've been doing all these years.

2:15But we wanted to make it affordable and accessible to to everyone to our friends and with people who couldn't usually afford that so Kickstarter could help us do that by cutting middleman cost so by producing and selling directly we will cut markups which are brand profits a lot of times or whatever is a retail markup.

2:36So we will be able to make something more accessible so we decided to design this piece the one you see down there it's a a flatback valid stand obviously the reason why it's flatback is because we saw this is going to be sold online so people will have to ship it around to people. So we have to think about the way.

2:58This is more easy for people Everyone is buying online closes food and stuff like that.

3:05But we found a little bit of a gap two years ago and said fiture is not as strong people is not buying fiture online as much. And in Kickstarter as well we noticed that.

3:16There was not much fit in Kickstarter there was a lot of films video games gadgets but not fit. And we found out later why probably there was much Furniture in kickstart because it's not easy at all was really really hard time we really had struggled quite a lot because obviously our Market was not on Kickstarter people using Kickstarter were not expected to buy furniture There we were expecting not to spend too much money and obviously piece of furniture whatever cheaper you can make it is always a big investment so this was our really big fear of failing really this we were looking at this like every day since we started the campaign we knew we needed to reach that Target in order to get 100% of founding to be able to to pay for our production and and produce so was really we were targeting okay we're we're not at the middle and under the middle yet and we were really really really scared so we kind of freaked out and when we started to we decided to actually we started this project online the idea of we can sell online we can do everything online we can promote through social medias Facebook Twitter but but then we found like no we need to go out on the street we need to go to our local market we need to you know all style Flyers print and because we were really desperate and and worried of not getting this project because we really put everything we had on it we lost we left our jobs we left everything. So it's it's funny how things sometimes really come back to yeah we can use online things.

4:50But we can also go more like physical and it's a physical product so people needs to see it luckily at the end have to say the kickstarter campaign was actually successful we managed to get the founding we got the founding by 145 buckers we got 122% so even more than what we were explaining after really really lot of work and a lot of stress so this was a success in a way we didn't really fail and we were like really really happy about it.

5:24But then more chances of failing came along and we were like okay now we have this huge list of 145 people who need to ship the product Before Christmas because that's what we promised so we're like we can fail on this we can't really put people down. And we have like over 20 countries we have to ship all around the world so was like that's really really lot.

5:46So we started to get this pieces done and obviously long of the way we hadot a lot of problems that you can never expect and you can never really think about it you know we have issues with the manufacturer they they delay the production we receive pieces which were not U respecting the quality that we expected so we have to ship them back we have to fly over to our to manufacturer in in northern Europe and all this came out of our pockets we were putting money was okay we make make some margin with the pieces we sold but we have to spend a lot of money now by you know chasing out suppliers buying new materials all those things that you don't really really consider before and you were like oh my God I mean we're you know we are really short of money now.

6:32And so finally we receive all these boxes and as I said before we were doing everything ourselves and I mean we were just two designers we never done business before we never done a distribution before we never never didn't knew how it works so we were really learning about it every day learning how to distribute Stuff how to deal with a lot of different people. And so was really really lot of stressing work but after all this paid off as well so although we knew we were late I mean we couldn't we failed to deliver the pieces Before Christmas as we promise we were three months late unfortunately we had a lot of people disappointed about it but everyone show us a lot of support and they said they're really happy to wait.

7:23And then you know the Press came out the produ was really everywhere we were really really over by but the amount of people who was interested in the product and and we managed to produce the pieces for the kickstarter and we also opened an online store in our website and we sold all the remaining pieces on this website as well so was really good but we realized okay now we are we are a brand we are actually company we are manufacturers of design we we we make our brand called Bros FAL and obviously you need to be you need to be competitive with all the other brands out there otherwise that would be it we couldn't really really wish for while so we again invested that money we had into taking part of fairs around the world exhibitions everything because everything that you could promote your brand is really really important but that's basically really really all our money was just like flying away as quick as as it came in so we we at the end we found out on a situation which was was quite hard because that money that was going into investing in the brand was supposed to go into investing in the next production of of the of the second batch of product to carry on.

8:44Basically because it's really like a domino effect if you stop at some point then you don't so so we did send sell all the products we did completely sold out of the stuff we produce but we not only finished the product we also finish the money so we in a way we found ourselves okay what so what's next I mean we are almost at the same point of the starting point so we don't have foundings we don't have products and unfortunately we didn't have anything to bug us up I mean we spent a year because it really took us a whole year to do the product without a job apart from this we still have to pay our rent so unfortunately we couldn't we couldn't be able to to pay for a second batch production so now we we have to really slow down. And we stop selling the products online we're trying to made that approach of made to order project.

9:39But this is not really what we wanted because a made to order product always going to cost more money to produce because we making one by one probably made locally or made in the so that's not really what we wanted to achieve from the first time we wanted to make something that was really working as producing small bdes and selling to a good in a good price so we have to close down our online shop and also we just close the company because I think the whole thing was everything took over much bigger than what we expected we never really expect initially we were planning to produce 50 pieces and that was our plan let's produce 50 pieces on Kickstarter we produce 125 plus all the accessories so about 300 product which was much more bigger than what we plann and unfortunately I think none of us were really businessmen or we didn't really know how to run a business and we found that we needed a help or we needed support so I think now we will see if we find someone who wants to invest in business or go probably again into the more traditional way of selling your design to someone to manufacture so I guess we we probably fell into trying to challenge the way things are made but hopefully this I mean it gives us a lot of courage to try anyways and we will try again and we will keep doing and have a new studio now with the tiia and we are making our own things.

11:07And we just learned learn from our learned from our mistakes and we learn from not just mistakes but also we learn to get better every time. So yeah that's I think I'm minutes