A Chat With ChargeAll, Selected By Indiegogo For Its “Forever Funding” Trial

Crowdfunding platform Indiegogo is launching a trial program called “Forever Funding” which will enable certain campaigns that have already met their targets to continue accepting funding indefinitely.

The change signals a shift in the fundraising platform from primarily a development launchpad for nascent projects promising rewards for backers to something more like an online store with an emphasis on the continued refinement of the product after each project’s completion.

“By allowing campaigns to continue after they reach their goals,” Indiegogo wrote in a blog post, “this turnkey pilot project reflects the increased use of Indiegogo by businesses, artists and activists who seek to attract and develop new audiences.”

For several years, Indiegogo enjoyed crowdfunding supremacy in Canada, while Kickstarter delayed launching here until September 2013.

The platform has been used successfully by many Canadian tech entrepreneurs, perhaps most prominently for InteraXon’s Muse headband campaign.

At the moment, “Forever Funding” is being run on a trial basis, with a few select campaigns participating, including Tens: The Real Life Photo Filter and TrackR bravo: The Thinnest Tracking Device. Ever.

One of the campaigns selected for Indiegogo’s new trial program is ChargeAll, the World’s Smallest Power Outlet, which raised more than 10 times its fundraising goal.

Cantech Letter chatted via email with ChargeAll CEO Jeffrey Maganis about his company’s participation in the program.

How did you decide on the Indiegogo platform in the first place?

The IndieGoGo platform is much more hands on/accessible, and their staff also provides phenomenal support. IndieGoGo allows you to track conversions for internet marketing reasons and support a campaign via ads on Facebook/Google/Retargeting. It’s ultimately up to the campaign team to drive traffic with IndieGoGo. It’s a much more robust platform as opposed to Kickstarter. While the campaign looks very successful from the $327,000 figure, our margins are very slim and we still haven’t made a profit. There are SO many costs involved with running a hardware campaign. We’re not out of the woods yet, and still need lots of support to get this in the hands of more and more people around the world.

You previously ran two crowdfunding campaign that you described as “miserable failures”. What would you say you learned from those attempts that helped you get it right the third time?

A great product and a great marketing approach are absolutely needed for a successful campaign; although there are anomalies. For the most part, every successful IndieGoGo/Kickstarter campaign I’ve heard of, there was always a marketing or PR team leading the efforts. The analytics show the majority of page visitors come from IndieGoGo.

ChargeAll has been selected by Indigogo to participate in a trial for “Forever Funding”. This sounds pretty intriguing. Can you describe it for us? And why do you think they selected ChargeAll to lead the… uh… charge on this new initiative?

LOL. Forever Funding means a campaign can be funded, well, FOREVER; there’s no end date. It’s great for companies like mine that can take advantage of the IndieGoGo sales platform. It’s always better to capture a visitor on that particular site where they learned about that “cool product”. Most Kickstarter/IndieGoGo project don’t see much life after the campaign. You can start selling on Amazon, but then you’re starting from scratch directing traffic to start buying your product there. Kudos to IndieGoGo for enabling this and allowing us to reach even more supporters. Well… they definitely picked the crowd favorites to trial this campaign. The Apple iPhone6 was just released, and the number one complaint is always about battery life. The only reason why it dies so is because you use it so much! A phone charger is as important as the phone itself.

In fact, the average person checks their phone over 150 times a day. Phone charging is the entire backbone of the mobile industry.