[EZ Sign NFC Development Story] ⑧ Kickstarter Challenge - Answers from 38 Countries Around the World
Hello everyone! 👋
The other day, I was on the train heading to an exhibition wearing an EZ Sign T-shirt when I heard someone behind me point and say, "
Oh, it's EZ Sign!". This is Chi.
😅
I couldn't help but turn around, but it made me happy to realize that awareness is gradually spreading.
Now, taking the baton from our reliable senior team member, Murai, I'm here to share the behind-the-scenes story of our "Kickstarter" challenge, which followed our campaign on Makuake in Japan! Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform from the U.S. that brings together buyers, supporters, and tech enthusiasts from all over the world.
✨ Looking back at the excitement of the highly successful Makuake campaign
🌎 The day we posed a question to the world
For us, Kickstarter wasn't just a place to sell products. It was a challenge to see if,
"would the concept of EZ Sign be accepted globally?"🔥
was the question we wanted to answer.
"We want people all over the world, not just in the Japanese market, to know about EZ Sign."
With that thought in mind, I was personally involved in the preparation and content creation for this Kickstarter project at our San Diego headquarters. That's why I still vividly remember the tension before the launch.
Because what we created wasn't "a higher-performance display," but rather "
a simpler display".
🔥 The results of challenging the world
November 4th arrived. It was the launch day for Kickstarter.
The results completely defied our expectations.
Incredibly, we reached our funding goal in just one day. In the end, we received
$21,963 in support from 38 countries around the world!
Comments poured in from all over the world, and we were happily overwhelmed, unable to keep up with the replies! For a few days, I think the whole team was so excited and full of adrenaline that we couldn't quite keep up with reality (laughs).
💡 Interesting differences seen between Japanese and American users
Here, we noticed some very interesting "differences in reaction" between the previous Makuake campaign (Japan) and this Kickstarter campaign (overseas).
Japan (Makuake): Resonated with "concrete uses in daily life and work," such as payment QR codes and occupancy status displays.
Overseas (Kickstarter): Enthusiastic about "hackability as a gadget," such as API integration and system development.
Although the approach differed, people from all over the world, across countries and cultures, deeply resonated with our idea of a "simple, paper-like, and flexibly usable information display tool" and gave us answers that exceeded our expectations.
😅 The behind-the-scenes wasn't that glamorous
However, of course, the behind-the-scenes wasn't all glamorous stories.
In fact, we were sent back for revisions multiple times during the Kickstarter review process.
We didn't know the reason, and the whole team spent days re-reading the guidelines over and over, wondering, "What's wrong...?
And the cause we finally discovered was, surprisingly, our image assets.
They contained AI-generated images.
At that moment, a sense of relief that "that was it!" and the despair of "we have to reshoot everything now!?" hit me at the same time.
I rushed to a nearby shopping mall, asked for permission to film, gathered materials, and somehow resubmitted. 🏃♀️
It's a funny story now, but at the time, everyone was truly desperate.
⏱️ A 24-hour relay connecting the US, Japan, and China
That wasn't all.
The US, Japan, and China.
It was a team with different time zones and cultures, but everyone worked together to move the project forward.
The US team would send messages in the morning, the Japan team would take over, and the China team would handle things further.
The project kept moving even while someone was sleeping, like a 24-hour non-stop relay.
Sometimes tasks were solved when I woke up, and other times, new tasks had increased (laughs).
📦 The day we realized, "It really sold"
To respond to the support we received from all over the world, we ended up shipping 1,200 EZ Signs.
The whole team assembled boxes, applied labels, packed, and prepared for shipment.
At first, "1,200 units" was just a number.
But as we packed them with our own hands, that number suddenly became real.
Cardboard boxes piling up.
Shipping labels being applied one after another.
Addresses from countries all over the world.
Watching that scene, it finally hit me: "EZ Sign is really going out into the world." and I finally felt it was real.
Our challenge continues
Honestly, it was quite tough.
But strangely, no one complained.
I remember everyone actually looking somewhat happy.
I think we were able to overcome it because everyone was looking in the same direction.
"Deliver EZ Sign to the world."
That desire was common to everyone, even if our countries were different.
Kickstarter might have been just the first step.
This challenge has only just begun.
We will continue to share the behind-the-scenes reality as much as possible, including both the good times and the troubles.
We hope you will continue to enjoy the journey of us and EZ Sign together!
See you next time!👋
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