Sales of Finland’s Eve tablets and Lithuanian Filippo Loreti watches topped $1 million this weekend, wrapping possibly the greatest week for Nordic startups on global crowdfunding platforms.
Lithuanian brothers Matas and Danielius Jakutis launched last year the most funded crowdfunding timepiece project ever, but they have improved further with this year’s campaign. They have pre-sold their new collection of cheap Italian luxury watches for already 1.05 million euros to over 5,100 clients.
Finnish Eve V 2-in-1 tablet computer broke records on Indiegogo, raising massive support already on the first day of the campaign and have now reached $1.08 million from 2,139 supporters.
The small team behind the product built an open community for supporters after they launched their first device and in total over 1,000 people had their say about the features of the Eve V. The team asked the supporters opinion about many different features – and in the ended built a product 1 millimeter thicker than its key rivals as customers saw longer battery-life more important than 1 millimeter.
The active community following the development and having a say about the tablet was the key success factor for the Eve V. The interest surely surprised also the team behind it. “Crowd developing a computer is not the most sexy thing out there,” said Riku Rastas from Eve.
Eve is undercutting prices of similar products of all its rivals in part due to the fact that it sells only online, leaving out wholesalers or retailers.
Elsewhere among Finnish projects Loupedeck, a photo editing console for Lightroom, reached 310,000 euros, with over 1,200 backers from around the world. Loupedeck promises to make photo editing faster, improves the ergonomics and most of all, it lets you be more creative and focus more on the photo.
Estonia & Elsewhere
Two Estonian projects are succeeding in Kickstarter: Sprayprinter and Click & Grow. Smart flower pots maker Click & Grow has raised so far $155,000 from over 1,000 supporters. The campaign has 20 days until the end, but it is a long way from the $625,851 the team raised back in 2013 – which is still the most successful crowdfunding project by any Estonian startup.
SprayPrinter has built a unique product for painting anything on the walls. The user needs to download its application to a smartphone, choose the image, attach the SprayPrinter nozzle to a spray can, point the phone towards the wall and start “printing” whatever image they chose.
Kickstarter gave an extra boost to the team this week – lifting the campaign to the front page of the whole platform. So far they have raised $72,000 from 310 supporters.
“Crowdfunding is a perfect tool for a startup to validate the market and get to know its customer profile. We have done it now twice and we have much better idea of who is going to use SprayPrinter,” said co-founder Richard Murutar. “This gives us unmeasurable value when setting our goals when actually entering the market.”
In Denmark Mate eBike – the most successful Danish crowdfunding project ever – is nearing $4 million for pre-sale of its e-bikes. The campaign ended last month, but the company uses Indiegogo’s InDemand feature to get in further orders.
In Norway, Flowmotion stabilizer has reached $177,000 from 870 backers.
