Jul 16, 2012

Dynomighty Looks to Kickstart its New Fall 2012 Products

Dynomighty Design, a small company on the eve of its 10th anniversary, has turned to Kickstarter in the hopes crowd-funding will provide the financial support that banks did not.

In 2002, struggling artist Terrence Kelleman invested $300 in a box of magnets to develop a prototype that would hopefully allow him to quit his day job at the Museum of Modern Art. Nine years later, he is the president of Dynomighty Design, the 758th fastest growing privately held company in the US according to Inc Magazine. For nearly a decade, this small business has been cash positive and has never sought outside funding or investment.

To celebrate their 10 years in business, Dynomighty wanted to expand into new accessories, and yet was struggling to cover the additional production costs alongside other large Fall purchase orders that will cover the companies seasonal growth in Q4.

After trouble securing financing from several banks, Dynomighty decided to turn to Kickstarter, a crowd-funding website, to raise the capital necessary to start production.

“Kickstarter is a platform that some friends and fellow entrepreneurs have used to successfully launch new products and I thought, why not use Kickstarter to get the financial support I needed. Kickstarter is also great because you can get media coverage and an active fan base excited about our new designs at the same time” says Kelleman, President of Dynomighty.

This is just the most recent example of Dynomighty using creative marketing to go directly to the consumer for the support that the company needs. Dynomighty is no stranger to bootstrapping and non-traditional marketing tactics. The company became a YouTube case study for being one of the first to use online video as a cost effective marketing opportunity. Today their YouTube channel has 175 videos and over 17 million views. According to Kickstarter, projects with videos have a higher success rate than those without, and Dynomighty certainly knows how to make a video that sells.

“Everyone says its a ‘good problem to have,’ but it doesn’t feel that way when you can’t get support from banking institutions. It’s frustrating since banks are more comfortable gambling on derivatives than supporting small business”. The internet has acted as a great democratizer in many fields, and now with the help of Kickstarter many businesses like Dynomighty are finding a better alternative to conventional financing options and saving their equity by raising capital without banks.” says Kelleman. “What’s so beautiful about the Kickstarter platform is that it is financial democracy in action. If you like a project you can easily support it. Thousands of start-ups are getting the support they need to realize their own entrepreneurial dreams”.

Bootstrapping and leveraging their creativity online has brought global recognition and distribution to this company of nine employees in Dumbo, Brooklyn and once again they are turning to the internet to make their dreams come true.

Kickstarter has been called “the people’s NEA” by The New York Times and TIME Magazine named it one of the “Best Inventions of 2010” and “Best Websites of 2011”. As of July 03, 2012, there were over 62,000 launched projects (3,973 in progress), with a success rate of 44%. The completed successful projects had raised a total of $229M. However, projects that do not meet their goals–over half of the projects started–do not receive any of their funding. Even though Dynomighty has a pretty good history of beating the odds, there is no true guarantee the Dynomighty campaign will be successful.

Despite the pressures of making the project a success Terrence Kelleman claims “It’s a make or break moment for Dynomighty but I’m remaining positive because we have a vibrant fan base, great new products and years of experience in online video. Besides Kickstarter embodies exactly what we at Dynomighty call on our fans to do all the time, “Be Mighty!®” and go after your dreams”.

ABOUT THE “Be Mighty! with DYNOMIGHTY” PROJECT ON KICKSTARTER
The project will be available for funding from July 13th to August 12th and will seek to raise $50K to cover production costs of their new product designs. Many pledge levels allow customers to “purchase” these items in advance and when they are produced the goods are shipped to the backers.

View the “Be Mighty! with DYNOMIGHTY Project via the following URL: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/652115179/be-mighty-with-dynomighty or by visiting kickstarter.com and searching for Dynomighty.

ABOUT KICKSTARTER
Founded in 2009, Kickstarter is a crowd funding website that allows artists, visionaries and entrepreneurs to raise money for creative projects from individual contributors. Funding is only released to the creator when the project reaches the funding goal. Kickstarter takes 5% of the funds raised; Amazon charges an additional 3-5%.

Press Contact: Liz Tomazic
Email: liz@dynomighty.com
Phone: (917) 398-4020
High Res Photos: dynomighty.com/folio
(user name: retailer / password: dynomighty)