Facebook Memories, Kickstarter, Cthulhu Claus, and Failure

I usually look forward to Facebook “Memories,” but the one it gave me today hit like a ton of bricks. Way back in 2011, two of my friends and I decided to start up our own company in the hopes of using it to create a number of products that ranged from table top gaming related items to webseries and a gaming related documentary. We all contributed an equal, but small, amount of start up funds and looked for a good first project for our company.

We wanted something that would have some interest in the gaming community, was easily producible, had scalability if it succeeded, and that we could use the new-ish Kickstarter platform to launch the product. I did some market research and got some printing estimates and pitched the Cthulhu Claus Greeting Cards idea to my partners. They agreed that it was a good idea and we discussed who should write the text and do the illustrations for the product.

I asked Cthulhu Expert, and excellent game designer, Kenneth Hite if he would be willing (for pay naturally) to draft four or five pithy holiday greetings for the insides of the cards. He agreed, and at a very reasonable rate, and that gave our project some legitimacy in my mind. I then asked my wife Jody if she would be willing to do the illustrations and she too provided a very reasonable rate, reasonable enough that I could print 200 boxes of cards and mail them for a total of $4,800. If we met that goal, we would have paid our costs and have 50 boxes left over to sell. This would give us a moderate profit before we sold any of the post backer inventory.

The Kickstarter ran in 2012 and it was a success. We raised $6,131 which would have given us an excellent profit margin if not for the fact that around 20 of the backers were located outside the US. We had promised shipping was included in the $30 fee and shipping to some locations was more than that. We still turned a profit, but it was only about half what it could have been. All in all, I considered the project a success with some lessons learned. I do wish it had caught on a bit more, but we couldn’t afford any advertising and had to rely on real world of mouth. Our project was highlighted by Kickstarter as a recommended project, but that didn’t help us much. Equivocating aside though, I was very proud of the project and it allowed us to begin planning our documentary.

That documentary ran into some logistics and funding problems, in part because there were about five different documentaries on the same topic coming out at the same time so we dropped that idea for the time being, but we did decide to try to produce a second wave of the Cthulhu Claus Christmas cards with new artwork from Jody and new text from Kenneth Hite. This would be followed by a Cthulhu themed children’s book based on our card series if this project was successful.

Because the first one didn’t go as viral as I had hoped, I solicited a number of partnerships and negotiated some stretch goals to go along with the project. If we got 100 backers, then we would pay the creator of the Sidekick Quest comic to release a 20s era supplement for the Sidekick Quests roleplaying game that would be released to fans. It would eat into our profits, but not much and would provide James Stowe with some revenue. I would design expansions for a couple of other kid themed role playing games if we achieved other goals, but the stretch goals were minimal and mostly designed to demonstrate that we were committed to the overall gaming community.

Jody wanted to go a slightly different route with the new card set, a little less comic strip and a little more children’s book and I think she hit the ball out of the park with the first image. Sadly, as I was reminded by Facebook today when it sent me a “Memory,” our Kickstarter project didn’t succeed and we weren’t able to produce either the second wave of cards or the children’s book. I’m still hoping to do the book project, but we’ll have to see. Jody is an artist and contrary to some stand up comedians’ opinions regarding artists, they don’t actually tend to not care what other people think. They often take rejection hard. Jody is very self-critical, but I think I’m winning her over slowly but surely that we should give the book project another go even as we leave the cards to the past.