Fledgling Fashion Designers Use Fund-Raising Site to Raise Capital - NYTimes.com

Fledgling Fashion Designers Use Fund-Raising Site to Raise Capital - NYTimes.com:

Their creation? The Versalette by {r}evolution apparel, a convertible piece of cloth ingeniously engineered with the aid of buttons and drawstrings to be transformed with sleight-of-hand wizardry into a dress, shirt, scarf, purse — in fact, a total of over 20 different functionalities.

For financing, the partners turned to Kickstarter, the online fund-raising site for creative projects.

The money poured in, blasting past their $20,000 goal to eventually reach $64,246 in the women’s self-designated 35-day offering. The 796 backers contributed anywhere from $5 for which they received a thank you video, to $500, scoring four Versalettes, a poster and a T-shirt. The sweet spot was $75, the threshold price at which the backers secured a Versalette. “It was ridiculous,” said Ms. Whitehead, 26. “I was refreshing 60 times a day probably.”