RE: Launching on Indiegogo 22nd March26 Mar 2018 09:54
There are various options on Indiegogo and most campaigns (sensibly) take the "all funds repaid if we fail to meet our target" route, which effectively means that if you see something you like the look of you can become an early adopter an there's no downside. Astrea Water's stance is "whatever happens we'll keep the cash", which common sense says will be less enticing.
The campaign HAS only just begun and some campaigns do capture the imagination and make A LOT of money. On the plus side, as far as Astrea Water is concerned, every buck earned should result in three or four bucks in follow on sales.
I am quite concerned on a few fronts though. The first is quite vague and I'm by no means an expert, but the bottles seem quite expensive. I'd have expected heavily discounted bottles on the basis of potential lifetime value. Secondly, the company has apparently appointed a PR firm - goodness know what they're doing beyond begging phone calls to their 1 mate at Geekwire (oh, my other half also spotted some internet churn on a website for a PR magazine, which is almost funny), but if they want to build momentum they need to pull their fingers out pronto. Finally, and most worryingly, there is almost no Twitter following for Astrea Water - if I had a campaign coming up on Indiegogo and employed a media team, I would have made Twitter and Facebook one person's full time job.
OK, that's enough negativity. I'm convinced that there's a big market for this product and hopefully they'll start to get traction very soon. I'm going to watch the campaign carefully and I'll be particularly interested to see what happens in the media in the run up to and aftermath of the company's re-domiciliation.