This guy cashed in on popular crowdfunding campaigns by straight up copying them…
The Hustle
Tues, Feb 1
Storytime: The copycats of crowdfunding
Crowdfunding has fundamentally changed how products get made, how businesses launch and grow, and most importantly, how dreams become a reality. Yay, dreams!!!
However, it’s also given copycats a golden opportunity to get rich. And, depending on where you stand, that’s either great (“The best product wins!”) or unfair (“Moochers!”).
Here’s a story to further explain the sitch
Shortly after graduating college, “Jack,” as CNBC agreed to call him, came across an Indiegogo campaign for KAISR, an inflatable lounge chair.
First thing he noticed: The product was absolutely crushing it (goal was $18.5k, raised $4.1m, no big deal).
Second thing he noticed: The idea wasn’t unique. In fact, an identical inflatable lounge chair had finished 2nd on the Dutch TV show “Best Idea of Holland” way back in 2010.
So, Jack figured he’d copy the copycats and make his own
After a brief internet search, he found a Chinese manufacturer who was willing to make the product. Soon enough, he had a name (The Cozy Bag), a website, and hundreds of units en route to Canada, ready to be sold to customers.
A few months later, our boy was looking at $100k in revenue… from a knock-off.
Naturally, he decided to do it again, only bigger
Remember The Fidget Cube? The handheld desk toy with 6 sides worth of clickers, gears, and joysticks designed specifically for fidgeters? It was one of the most-funded projects in the history of Kickstarter ($6.5m raised).
However, when manufacturing issues caused delays, Jack (now a veteran at this game) swooped in with a carbon copy called The Stress Cube. Next thing you know, he was selling 800 per day en route to $350k in revenue in just 2 months.
Moral of the story:
As we mentioned up top, there are 2 sides to take here:
You’re team Jack. Hustle hard! May the best product win!
You hate Jack’s cherry-picking face. Come up with your own idea, kid! How bow dah?!
There’s also this takeaway: Making money on the internet has never been easier. Get out there.
Team Jack? Or Team How bow dah?
A potential chink in Under Armour’s armor
Today, Under Armour’s stock took its biggest hit in 9 years, with sales estimates coming in way below analysts’ predictions (about $650m below).
This dip is causing many to speculate that the activewear maker’s growth may finally be plateauing after seeing 20% sales growth every quarter for the past 8 years.
And, since “moisture-wicking” is no longer a cutting-edge technology, more and more traditional apparel companies are rolling out their own lines of athletic clothes — meaning Under Armour’s home field advantage will continue to dwindle.
Especially now that spandex is a fashion statement
These days, we all wear our stylish track jackets and sneakers to do pretty much everything except work out (nothing like eating ice cream in some “joggers”).
The growing trend of “athleisure” has put Under Armour decidedly out of their element compared with brands like Old Navy (Old Navy Active), Victoria’s Secret (Victoria Sport), and GAP (GapFit) — which have a little more experience making clothes that don’t just feel good, but look good too.
Case in point: UA’s release of Steph Curry’s “dad shoes,” which left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths (ah, but the memes were delicious).
But they’re certainly trying
In an attempt to revamp their image, Under Armour released a “fashion-forward” line from award-winning Belgian designer Tim Coppens.
Unfortunately, however, it hasn’t juiced their numbers as much as they’d hoped. And even more unfortunate — they don’t hand out participation trophies on Wall Street.
If you’re not first, you’re last
Slack goes corporate
Last week we talked about Slack’s new thread feature, aimed at distancing themselves even further from cluttered inboxes.
This week, the company has another industry in its crosshairs — enterprise software suites. It unveiled its latest product, Enterprise Grid, to target large corporations like customers Capital One, Paypal, and IBM.
What’s included?
A lot of the things you might expect, like better administrative controls to allow IT departments to manage teams, tighter login security, and data recovery.
It will also include new bot integrations to manage travel, expenses, and performance via a partnership with SAP.
Ah mmyess… the grid…
Okay, so “the Grid” refers to different “workspaces” within a single company, allowing teams to work independently of one another, while still collaborating when needed.
For example, in the current model, a company of 500 people might rely on a single Slack workspace… which doesn’t work so well when you’re a company like IBM with nearly 400k employees.
In the Grid structure, sales can have their own workspace separate from HR, etc, while still being able to communicate through specified shared channels.
So, they’re selling out to the man?
Not necessarily, but they are going to face the reality of working with huge companies.
Older, more established corporations not only pose a technical challenge with a ton more communication channels to coordinate and simplify, but a cultural one as well — users may not be as quick to adopt Slack’s new style of communication, let alone the app’s constant stream of updates.
Slack against the machine
LEGO wants to be the next Instagram…
Alright, that’s probably a stretch. But to be fair, the Danish toymaker did just launch its own social network called LEGO Life yesterday.
And, considering it functions quite similarly to IG (news feed, individual profiles, likes and comments below each post), who knows, maybe that is the ultimate goal.
More likely objective: create an internet safe haven for kids
Aimed at kids 13 and under, LEGO Life naturally has a bunch of restrictions to keep things G-rated. Those include:
No real-life photos (LEGO vets every image)
Parents have to approve the sign up through email verification
You can only comment using LEGO emojis
Once they’re inside the app, kids can follow specific topics and groups (Batman fans, assemble!), complete real-life LEGO-building challenges, and cyberbully each other.
Just kidding, they can’t do that last part — that’s literally the whole point! Keep it safe for the kids! Ugh, aren’t you paying attention?
This is either solving a problem or just creating a new one
Kudos to LEGO for realizing 2 things: 1) kids love phones and 2) no sane parent wants their 12-year-old dabbling in social media’s vast universe of sketchiness.
So yeah, one could argue that they solved a problem by creating a product to appease both parties.
Then again, why are we pushing social media on kids? Shouldn’t we stick to “Go play in the yard, Billy” for as long as possible before they turn into smartphone-addicted zombies like the rest of our godforsaken species?
Idk, man. World’s weird.
Play with sticks or something
wednesday what-have-you
What’s one of your favorite smartphone apps that people might not know about?
In other words, tell us about an app you frequently use that isn’t named Facebook, Snapchat, Google Maps, or Uber.
Join the conversation →
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