Exploring Scaling Product Brands and Crowdfunding platforms.

My experience with crowdfunding platforms (and p2p lending) is limited to Kickfurther , Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and Upstart.

I feel as though it's only better to go with Kickstarter if you're able to put the time and effort into marketing your initial campaign. In order to do that, you have to have somewhat of a team to do so or have enough bandwidth and experience to do so yourself. This brings me to the advantage of doing something like p2p or equity funding. They allow you to gather the resources in order to build a team if that is a concern. Then you run into the issue of how much debt are you willing to accrue/ how much equity are you willing to give out for the funding. This will also affect which people you can bring on to your team because you may want a bigwig that requires more equity then you can budget for them.

As for the last platform being Kickfurther, I feel as though they could be the best rising option for funding once you're already established. Lets consider a scenario where you the business owner have 100X more demand then supply. You could turn to a few options to finance the inventory. They are paying for it yourself with a line of credit (if it's good enough), going to a bank and potentially having to deal with their unreasonable rates or the high chance of getting denied, going through p2p/p2b platforms(you can use any of the hundreds here for an example) , or going through consignment platform like Kickfurther. I feel as though the advantage of Kickfurther opposed to these others is that there is generally less risk because it's not an investment (i'll explain why i feel that), they market you independently and work with your team, and you get a chance to give back to your users/fans.

Now when I said there is less risk, I said that because it's not an investment. If you are using the Kickfurthers platform, you are able to purchase inventory on consignment. As the brands sell the products you earn profit. The other nice part that I find attractive about this platform is that many of the brands looking to raise money are purchase order backed. As for giving back to your community, Kickfurther allows your community to support your brand which they love by purchasing it and earning profit.

I'm obviously biased to Kickfurther currently because i'm making money. I'm completely up for someone to play devil advocate here though!

When it comes to whether or not Kickfurther can work with people outside the U.S, its simple. They used to work with companies regardless of where they are located. In the past few months, they have changed over to requiring the inventory to be held in the U.S and they have to have a bank account in the U.S. The reason for the inventory being held here is because they have to be able to potentially ship the inventory to the users in the U.S. and they require U.S bank accounts to easily transfer capitol (to and from the users). Now I know they work with expats because my brother went through Kickfurther and his company is incorporated in Delaware but now runs out of Thailand.

The importance of the inventory being held in the U.S rest in the consignment they provide. Now what I mean by that is they offer brands the ability to engage the KF community to purchase the inventory on consignment. This just means that instead of the brands financing the inventory, they reach out to the KF community. The community then has the option to purchase packs of inventory so when the brands sell said inventory, the community earns profit as they technically own the inventory. That is why I said the inventory has to be held in the U.S because if the company fails, the KF community can receive their inventory or choose to allow KF to liquidate the inventory. It's important to realize that many of these brands have the inventory already sold through purchase orders. This reduces the risk of not earning profit because you are technically purchasing inventory that is already sold. I hope that explains it thoroughly, I can probably answer more an be more specific for you too.

Sorry for the slow reply, I completely agree with you that it's easier to work with individuals then a big group of people. I have found the fact that they are able to get everyone together for a co-op to be amazing. It might the romantic in me but I admire their process. As for the inventory, you're right. I have only been getting email with the brands updating me on the status of my inventory. I prefer that though because Ive practiced drop shipping and done reselling before. The drop-shipping was nice because my tiny house never turned into a warehouse like it did when I resold. It's definitely the platform for me at this time.