by Jonathan08 » Sat Sep 19, 2015 8:03 pm
Hi Marty,
I've had a look at your campaign and I would just cancel it right now and save yourself the time. It will not work, I guarantee you. As soon as I read the bottom about all that you wanted to do and what the plan was it made no sense, you want 5,000$ to
"We need to raise capital for the following areas: -Buildout of a full service Ecommerce web site/coding/design/hosting -Cost of leasing an industrial fulfillment facility and shipping center -Costs of additional equipment -Hiring of additional staff -Inventory - fresh Maine lobster meat is not cheap -Advertising and Marketing costs -Additional regulatory costs We have relationships with lobsterman and buy directly off the boat, however, depending on the volume of our business - we likely will have to expand beyond the current storefront."
there is NO way you are going to do all that with 5,000$, you will barely cover the cost of the website if you go completely custom route.
It's a good idea and seeing those pictures and video has my mouth watering, but it's a BIG idea and you're trying to start way too big. You have too many reward levels with too much in them which makes things complicated and confusing.
You need to start much smaller, kickstarter is all about keeping things simple and giving investors a return on their money. The good thing about what you're doing is that you can make the "product" right there at your shop, you don't need to incur extra shipping costs or worry about taxes and duties and all that.
Structure it like this:
talk about phase one, mom and pop shop looking to share their awesome lobster maine rolls with the world.
----- offer home made lobster meat and a bun in a package all ready for shipment as a reward,
then maybe just have a few more tiers of larger quantities. Keep it simple. And explain how you are going to ship them because that's one of the biggest questions I'm sure people have.
Brand the box with a cool logo so people will spread the word, "hey, I can get awesome, unique main lobster rolls from this place....." and the word will spread. But KIS--keep it simple.
you might only get a 100-200 backers, but that's ok, you take that money and then invest in a website that will do ecommerce like shopify, you can create an account for only 30$/month. Then maybe hire and train a few college students to help you make rolls and then you can start shipping them out once the word starts to spread from your successful kickstarter campaign. All in baby steps.
again, just my2cents
hope this helps.
Jon-