Thank you, Kickstarter

Here is the truth: to say that we were anxious that our Kickstarter project was going to succeed would be a gross understatement. We were antsy. None of us had ever done a Kickstarter thing before. We had no idea how it was going to turn out, and until the very last minutes before launching our project we were sitting on the edge of our seats, biting our nails. Yes, we were very confident in our product (we spent many and long months developing it in our garage), but we had no sure way of knowing how the market will react.   Our 52 years old sewing machine, whom we love more than anything in the world.  We wouldn’t be here without you, Berta To bomb on Kickstarter would mean to us that either: (a) we are awful communicators, or worse (b) people just don't need or want our products. We never imagined it would turn out so well. The enormous support we got from our dear 1,551 backers gave us proof that we were on the right track, that we didn't just make products for ourselves but that there is a whole crowd of people out there who said "we like what you make!" We got hundreds of amigos around the world, dozens of ideas and advice and a huge ego-boost to boot. And that's a big part of what makes Kickstarter such a brilliant concept: how else could we have made friends and customers from all over the world in just 30 days?                       There are just so many good things we could say about Kickstarter.com, honestly we could fill a whole blog about it. If you are an entrepreneur starting out, we really urge you to consider this platform. We got invaluable insight and ideas from our backers and friends (really - Kickstarter is without doubt the world's best focus group). The dialogues we had with real people gave us inspiration and perspectives we would never had found elsewhere. We're grateful to our backers and to the creators of Kickstarter for helping us get our baby out and into the world, and for all of the people who helped us make our Kickstarter journey a success - especially our dear friend Nimi from the brilliant product and Kickstarter project "Pressy", who helped us out enormously. And lastly, we are grateful to all the bloggers who reviewed our products and shared their thoughts about them. Now it's time for us to give back. This is why some time in the near future we'll publish an interview with Guy, one of our three co-founders and the man behind our Kickstarter video, in the hopes of helping out other crowdfunding entrepreneurs wherever they may be. We'll share what we've learned from making our project - our difficulties, our frustrations, and how we solved our problems - with the hopes of providing you with the all the ideas, techniques and tactics that helped us succeed in our crowdfunding efforts. Oh, and one more thing. Our years of experience in designing camera bags had taught us that photographers prefer their camera bags in any color, as long as it's black. This is because many of them assume (possibly rightfully so) that camera bags that stand out tend to attract thieves, and therefore they prefer solid, inconspicuous designed bags. This is why we decided to put all our initial colorful, kooky designs aside and start out with more laid-back variations of black patterns and designs.                                                     Some of the nuttier designs we tried out. Yes, we probably tried any imaginable design. Almost as soon as we launched our Kickstarter campaign we began to receive requests by backers, asking us when will we release more colorful designs. This took us by surprise. Obviously we were very excited to release all the designs we were too shy to set free. This is why we are thrilled to tell you that soon these designs will become available to everyone - thanks to you. Thank you for being a part of our story.