WHERE IT ALL STARTED - KICKSTARTER

We made the leap with The Barisieur and went live on Kickstarter on Thursday 26th May 2016. Below is an extract from MEDIUM, written on that day by our creative director and founder Josh Renouf:

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sick yet so excited in my life; at the point where my finger was hovering over the LAUNCH button ready to go live, I genuinely think my heart stopped!

In a second of The Barisieur being live, somebody had already bought our first ‘super early bird’: our first ever sale! We then proceeded to make £30,000 in 30 minutes. I was watching the numbers increase by the second and it was an incredible feeling. 6 hours in and we had raised over £100,000. I was in shock. Not just because of the amount of money I had raised, but because it showed that people cared and wanted to support me. I don’t think there is a better feeling knowing that there were people around the world putting there hands up and saying “Yeah I’ll back you, yeah I think your product’s cool”. This was a great moment of self-reflection when I realised this is why I do what I do. The long hours were hopefully going to pay off.

At the time of writing the blog, the amount was at £171,283 with 22 days to go, to reach a target of £380,000. That’s 45% funded. This is an ambitious target, but an honest one. This is the number we have arrived at after receiving multiple quotes back from factories, engineers, freight companies, going back and forth relentlessly. We think it is better to be completely honest from the start, taking these backers on what could be an incredible and insightful journey, allowing them to see the ‘behind the scenes’ action of what it takes to get a complex product like this to market. We are not putting the target high so we can raise funds, cash out and go sip margaritas on a beach somewhere (with this target, there is barely enough profit to go buy a beer after the hard work).

However, we don’t do it for the profit, we do it for you and for the story. We know this journey will be challenging and not cheap. We would rather set the goal high and not achieve it than set a low goal and achieve it, but deliver a product that doesn’t match our high-quality standards. This is why we have a strong team that can and will deliver, if we get the funding.