A young team from Velenj, led by Elvis Halilović, won the American Kickstarter with the Ondu Pinhole project. The first edition of Pinhole Cameras in 2013 raised over fifty thousand US dollars in just seven days, which was five times more than the desired funds. Two years later, Slovenian wooden cameras with even more sophisticated "wooden technology" wrote a new success story on Kickstarter.
(Un)expected success, a new success story. Where did the idea come from and what makes the Ondu Pinhole camera so special?
I have been working with photography for a long time, I am also no stranger to industrial design, this is where my two passions came together and Ondu was born. It is about the "camera obscura" or pinholes camera, and the peculiarity of this apparatus is that it does not use a lens to project the image, but a small pinhole about 0.2 millimeters in diameter or more.
Why did you choose the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter? And that twice?
If I had decided to finance using the classic route, such an amount and under such conditions would not have been possible. In general, for example, we pay interest on a credit loan and a thousand other unnecessary matters, which mainly benefit the banks and not the one who really needs the money to start up. So Kickstarter was, more often than not, the only option. The fact that we have already been on Kickstarter twice is not new either. There are successful companies that regularly use this platform, I know individuals who have successfully completed a project seven times through the mentioned platform.
From which countries have you received the most interest? Did you perhaps also find some foreign investors?
Kickstarter originated in the United States, so there are significantly more backers there than anywhere else, and there are individuals from all over the world. The whole purpose of Kickstarter is that you don't need to look for an additional investor, because just the name, so called crowdfunding, says that in fact a multitude of people finance the start-up of a product or company with minimal individual input. Personally, I avoid additional investors and all possible "help".
At first glance, everything on Kickstarter seems so simple. You describe the product, add a video, add photos, set prices... What was the most difficult part of the campaign for you and what did you learn from the first campaign so that you didn't repeat it in the second?
The concept of Kickstarter is simple, but not everything is as it seems. The vast majority of projects fail, I don't remember the percentages, but we can find the data online. The platform is growing day by day and as a result more and more projects are running at the same time. Therefore, just being on Kickstarter is not enough and the project will almost certainly not be successful. There are also exceptions. It is necessary to undertake online advertising and cooperation with large websites, through which people then return to the current Kickstarter page. This year, for example, we carried out the campaign completely by ourselves and managed to prove that it can be done if it is wanted. Therefore, much more work is required, but there is still no need for external contractors who will carry out the campaign for you, of course for a certain percentage of the final value.
You have successfully completed the campaign twice. What's next now? How will your story continue? Will you try a third time?
While we are already working on the delivery of this series, we are already thinking about the next product. Of course, we'll see you again on Kickstarter soon.
Do you have any advice for anyone just starting out?
Unfortunately, I don't have any general advice about the much-vaunted "success". But I can say that every beginning is challenging and that a successful path requires a lot of giving up and accepting compromises. In any case, hard work is still required!_
READ MORE: Slovenians on Kickstarter
INFOMAT
What is Ondu Pinhole?
Pinholes A camera ("camera obscura" or pinhole camera in Slovenian) does not need a lens or an objective to take photos. It works with the help of a small aperture that projects light onto the photographic film. The valve is operated manually. This kind of lighting creates special photos that even the most powerful DSLR cameras cannot create. Examples of this type of camera, manufactured by the Slovenian company Ondu, are of different sizes: the largest of them takes photos 3 x 4 meters in size, while the smallest photos are only a few centimeters in size.
More information:
www.ondupinhole.com
