Launching a Kickstarter for music tech blends excitement and challenge, as demonstrated by Kiviak Instruments. Their product, Wofi, reimagines classic keyboard samplers with modern features, illustrating how to fund and launch innovative music technology successfully. Starting October 17, 2023, the Wofi Kickstarter aims not just for pre-orders but to scale production effectively. This strategy involves balancing R&D investments with market pricing, reflecting a commitment to innovation and sustainability in the music tech industry.
Kiviak Instruments, led by Romain Giannetti, emphasizes realistic funding goals and market understanding in their campaign. Embracing Walt Disney’s philosophy, they view profits as a means to further creativity, not an end. This ethos drives their mission to provide innovative tools for musicians, focusing on longevity and growth. The article explores the nuances of a successful Kickstarter launch in the music tech realm, offering insights for creators in this evolving field.
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Could you walk us through the process of setting a realistic funding goal for manufacturing a musical instrument?
It all starts by opening an Excel spreadsheet!
More seriously, what was important for us was to weigh the exact point where manufacturing could allow us to set an accessible price on our first batch. A break-even point to economically survive after engaging the production costs.
There are many custom elements on the WoFi, from the injection molded caps to the aluminum housing, the wood cheeks, the silicon buttons, the feel of encoders’ torque, and other less noticeable elements. And this can quickly build up a high production launching cost for the tooling!
We had to find a balance between all our investments in R&D over 3 years (WoFi being our first product ever) and the need for a realistic price to meet musicians’ expectations. So, we combined this « ideal price » with the volume of pre-orders needed to make it even.
For WoFi, we took the time to make things right, or at least right, according to our defined specifications to set up a solid foundation for the future. Music and computer have always been my passions as I grew up, and when I launched Kiviak Instruments, I wanted to bring something different, something I, as a musician, would like to have. Most musicians’ wish is always to build their tools and instruments eventually.
And in the team, we have many more ideas that we hope to bring to life later.
This Walt Disney’s famous quote is a sort of mantra for us. Kiviak Instruments needs to be profitable to survive, but the goal is not to make money for the sake of it.
I worked in IT for more than 20 years. In my opinion, the synthesizer industry is not the best to pick if you want to make a lot of money! Eventually, we aim to sustain ourselves by developing new instruments and tools for musicians.
We don’t make machines to make money. We make money to make more machines. Well, technically, we don’t make money so far! But that’s the idea. So, to set a realistic funding goal, we had to mix all these components.
What were your key strategies for building a community around your instrument before going live on Kickstarter?
It all started at the very birth of the project when I contacted some people in the industry to work with me. Coming from the software world, I did no know how to make hardware.
Working with industry experts helped us plan things and reach people while our product was still in the early prototype stages. Knowing when to start « making noise » about our project was tough. Building communication momentum for a new brand is harder than expected!
So, we first distilled information on social media.
We had a booth at an electronic music festival two years ago to show the first prototypes. Then we joined some synth events last year, Synthfest (in France), Superbooth (in Germany), Bristonica (in the UK), and SoundMit (in Italy). We could meet synth enthusiasts, bloggers, YouTubers, media, synthesizer makers, and even distributors at those events.
For us, the community is a mix of all these people. Positive feedback about our project on those events was great and helped us validate our three years of work in the shadows.
During that time, we had more followers on our social media and more subscribers to our newsletter. We communicated extensively on those channels to inform people about the campaign’s beginning, and we also gave some content about WoFi and its sounds. About two weeks before the campaign’s launch, we published the Kickstarter page to allow people to pre-register for D-Day.
How important is transparency about the development process in your Kickstarter communication?
For us, it is utterly essential. We are also synthesizers’ owners. Most of us have backed projects in the past (whether it is musical instruments or not). So we know how it feels to be in backers’ shoes; we are backers, too!
We don’t want to go full silent until the dispatch of the units. We’ll inform our backers of all the important milestones during the production process.
It is more than just communication. It is customer service per se.
I have mostly worked on B2B projects my whole life in IT. Customer service is one of the things that always makes a difference.
When I started Kiviak Technologies, we created at the same time a support service with dedicated persons.
And we will do the same for Kiviak Instruments. We know how frustrating it can be not to have support when you have an issue with an expensive piece of gear.
So yeah, the Kickstarter campaign has marked the beginning of customer service for Kiviak Instruments. Hence, transparency in the communication about what happened and what is happening in WoFi’s production life-cycle is central.
What tactics did you use to maintain momentum and interest in your project throughout the campaign?
Oh, tough one!
WoFi was our first campaign ever, and even though we had some tips from industry experts, this was probably the most challenging part overall.
A campaign has two big peaks of sales: the first 48h and the last 48h.
And in between, it can be more or less flat if you don’t take action. What we did was basically to show more candid content.
Being a new company, we have built something very serious technically, and we wanted our brand image to reflect this. We didn’t want to have a « boutique » look. Don’t get me wrong, we love boutique machines and pedals at Kiviak Instruments; we all have super niche machines as good synth nerds! But Kiviak Instruments was not built with this approach in mind.
That being said, we realized that we didn’t really « humanize » Kiviak Instruments and the project for the campaign communication. So after the first week, we did some Twitch, and YouTube live sessions, Facebook live sessions, and some spontaneous videos of us playing with WoFi. The lives were nice because of the direct interactions with other musicians. We did a live Q&A as well. And I think this was helpful. It helped explain a bit more in-depth the philosophy behind the machines and our choices, and it also brought new backers.
Can you describe the challenges of prototyping your instrument and presenting it to potential backers and what lessons did these challenges teach you about the process?
The first challenge is timing and sourcing. We started this project circa Covid time, and sourcing CPU was complicated. It slowed us down a bit.
The second one is building your libraries, your own architecture, and custom hardware. It is the first instrument we are making, so we not only build WoFi; we build the framework and environment for future projects (hardware, software with plug-ins, and platforms with mywo.fi).
So the takeaway lesson is roughly the same as the one I had after renovating my house: make a pessimistic timeline for your project, add 20% more time, and you’ll roughly get the right amount needed for your project!!
Murphy’s general laws are true!
What advice would you give about the post-campaign transition from fundraising to fulfilling orders?
We are not quite there yet because we are just reaching the end of the campaign.
But the advice is to anticipate and have all your production ready to roll.
And in the meantime, communicate often enough with backers to get them involved and aware of the status of WoFi’s production. That’s what we are planning to do.
In retrospect, what would you have done differently in your crowdfunding campaign for your musical instrument?
Perhaps more investment in communication/marketing to reach more musicians. Pick a better time for global economic conditions! But this is not something we can anticipate, honestly.
And overall, we should have insisted more on the project’s background: the whos and the whys. To better explain what we want to bring to people with WoFi.
