Well... what a ride the last 28 days have been! Firstly, I want to deeply and sincerely thank everyone for the immense levels of interest and support that has been shown for Making Sense® over these last few weeks.
Although I didn't make the goal on this first attempt, I just have to take this moment to acknowledge - 61 backers. £4000 raised. Making for an average pledge of £65. This just blows my mind. It really does. The appetite for these cards is clearly out there. This has been super heartening to discover, and all very much taken note of!
So... where do we go from here? Well, although the goal hasn't been met on this first attempt I do have some good news:
...the goal for the production of Making Sense® has been ^effectively^ raised. Just...through two different strands:
1). The amount pledged through the Kickstarter campaign (you beautiful beautiful people you!)
2). A number of workshop bookings solicited outside of this campaign.
...and it's that latter point that has brought about the issue of falling short of the goal through this crowdfunding channel. So this is the road bump I will be working through in the coming weeks.
Bottom line - many of the organisations that have booked workshops with me just aren't set up to pledge through a crowdfunding platform. Although a few of these parties did manage to pledge via The Group Workshop reward tier (with some heroic backwards bending might I add!) most just had no means to do so. In most cases I can only be set up as a supplier, and paid on delivery - that's the way the cookie has crumbled.
So because this is an all-or-nothing affair here on Kickstarter I need to take this into consideration for attempt #2! (...your damn right there's going to be a second run here!)
Now that I know there are two very distinct revenue streams that will help bring this project to life, I am going to come back to this campaign, make some adjustments to the NEW goal to cater to a minimum public sale volume, and give this a second shot. And I really hope that you'll all renew your pledges when the second attempt is launched!
The great news is if all of you do kindly repledge for your rewards next time on launch of the campaign, we'll be right at the foot of the NEW goal within the first few days, and this will have a really dramatic impact on the campaign reaching more like-minded creative practitioners and help us hit that goal - and hopefully even a little bit beyond! ...and next time, we also have the exciting prospect of some stretch goals, in the form of AR features, of which the cards have been designed to support within future development - more on that to come next time!
So that's the plan!
Once again a huge thank you to all who supported the campaign. It's touched me greatly and I can't wait to come back to this in April to see this through! For now - I have a postgrad to finish in the next 9 days (wish me luck!) and to flip the academic coin, a whole bunch of Higher Education assignments to mark myself... all sitting alongside my usual creative hijynx - it's going to be a very busy few weeks!
So I'll hopefully see you all on the otherside very soon when we can rally behind attempt 2 and get these cards out into the world and into your hands!
Lastly - I'm aware many of you have reached out to me directly about the future of this campaign with some additional/specific questions - so I will be in touch with you all over the coming days to respond directly to these!
Once again - thank you all so much!