Using Kickstarter to Grow a Business | Hayley Knouff | Episode 563

Hayley Knouff | Episode 563

Hayley Knouff is a self taught potter and owner of Desert Sun Ceramics, a small community clay studio in Moab, UT. Hayley’s passion for ceramics and her desire to support art in her rural community are what drive her to create a thriving studio space where all skill levels are welcome.

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What sort of research did you do to find out if Kickstarter was the right program for you?

Some of the research that helped me was thinking about my audience. Thinking about who can I, who should I ask for support from with this cause. I think it is different than if you were trying to fund a purchase for your own personal studio. So that is kind of a patron scenario where a patron likes your art and wants to help you succeed and so they help you get your studio set up. My story is a little different than that in that we are trying to create a community space and also create a business model with that space that will allow it to be successful and thrive long term. And what I liked about Kickstarter was that I could reach out not just to locals but I could also reach out to the wider ceramics community online just by providing this link that is accessible to anyone. A lot of potters, I have noticed, have used Kickstarter to help fund their projects so that might be something in the ceramics community if you are hoping to support other potters that you might go to look to see where you can pitch in.

How did you go about refining your storyline?

That’s a great question. It’s been an ongoing process. And also trying to communicate that in a video is very different than writing a page description for your Kickstarter page. So as I have started recording and making a video I have fine tuned that message a little bit more. We all have short attention spans when we are watching videos. The moral of the story is we could really use the money to make some major long lasting changes in out space to help it run better but also the story is important because that is what people are going to relate to and feel motivated by. So if anyone is wanting to do a Kickstarter I would say the act of creating your ideas and creating that presentation actually helps you refine your message as you go especially the video process.

Why is video an important part of the process?

Well. I think, again , it just comes down to the fact that we are all very busy and as concise as the information can be the better and video is a passive way for people to take in information, just click play and listen. And you also get to really show as well. It would be hard for me to describe what my studio looks like and it would be a really dry read if I just wrote every thing out. To see people using the space, to see how much equipment we have, it gives people a lot more context in a shorter amount of time.

How did you go about setting your goal, your funding goal? How did you go about nailing down that amount?

I would say I am still nailing that down a little bit, but what it took for me to feel confident about my goal was creating an excel spreadsheet and I had an idea of what rewards we were going to make but I wanted to weigh all the pieces. So we made an example piece of everything. The way Kickstarter usually works is you are making things to order because you don’t know how many donations at a certain level you are going to get and at the end of the day you aren’t even 100 percent sure you will have a successful campaign. So you don’t want to make all these things upfront. You get to make them later. But I made an example version of each of our rewards and then weighed them and estimated the shipping costs of each just assuming that a chunk of them would not be local pick ups. And with the spreadsheet I was able to calculate exactly how much the funding is going to require and also expenses or taxes. So once I figured out how much I needed for my project and then how much I would need to spend then that gave me my goal.

Does the amount of levels matter on the rewards?

Yes. So for example, if you are a potter who has a name for themselves already, but you want some funding for a project, you could motivate someone to donate 80 dollars just to get a mug. Whereas if you are lesser known potter maybe that number is 40. I think there is a sweet spot there where people are willing to pay more because they want their money to go to your project but at the same time they don’t want to look at this 80 dollar mug and think, You don’t have an iconic style and I don’t think that is an 80 dollar gift to get back. So those are things I sort of struggled with was where is that sweet spot where someone donates but they also feel like they are getting something for their buck as far as contributing to your project and having a sweet little reminder.

How did you pick your launch date?

In some ways I feel like the studio could have used some of these projects yesterday. And so as soon as possible was part of my motivation to finally bite the bullet and take on making a Kickstarter campaign. Also if you do look online people have analyzed thoroughly crowdfunding campaigns and what they best month of the year to launch is, what the best day of the week is , what the best time of day is to launch your campaign. So I kind of did that research but took suggestions with a grain of salt. The timing really just depends on your project and your audience.

What are you doing to build your day one backer list, people who will say, Yes, on day one and back your Kickstarter?

Yes, that was one of the things that research showed and so I have some emails lined up to go out and basically do a three day count down for our launch day. Within those emails I have a separate email with our Kickstarter video to be kind of sharing our message before we even launch and get people excited about it before it goes live. Then planning through email and then obviously through social media, Instagram and Facebook to remind everybody on the day of launch is the best time to support us. Also throwing in a little bonus gift for the first day of donations. So I think that will help sweeten the pot a little bit for people to donate immediately.