Creating Popular Products that People Love with John Fiorentino – AOTK 243

Roy Morejon:                    Welcome to Art of the Kickstart, your source for crowdfunding campaign success. I’m your host Roy Morejon, President of Enventys Partners, the top full service turnkey product development and crowdfunding marketing agency in the world.

Roy Morejon:                    We have helped startups raise over $100 million for our clients since 2010. Each week I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story and inspirational entrepreneur, ora business expert in order to help you take your startup to the next level with crowdfunding. Art of the Kickstart is honored to be sponsored by BackerKit and the Gadget Flow.

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Roy Morejon:                    Welcome to another edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today I’m really excited to be joined with John Florentine, the creator of Gravity Blanket and Moon Pod. John, thank you so much for being on the show today.

John Fiorentino:               Hey man, thanks for having me. I’m excited to chat.

Roy Morejon:                    So John, you may be the only person I’ve had on this podcast that’s done two separate million dollar campaigns on Kickstarter. And I know that you’ve spent your entire career focusing on bringing products to the marketplace. More recently, specifically on Kickstarter, from things like pillows or fragrances, handbags, and now the Weighted Blanket, which was a massive success with 23,000 backers, $4.7 million, and now we have Moon Pod, this amazing zero gravity bean bag that’s done, you know, $1.2 million to date. Let’s talk about where all of this starter for you. You know, what was the inspiration, you know, to be able to start having or growing your amazing talent to be this awesome product creator.

John Fiorentino:               Yeah, I don’t really know when it started. But I guess, you know, I, for my whole life I’ve always been thinking about, you know, brand product. I’ve always been obsessed with getting the newest gadget. I think when I was like eleven I got my hands on my first MP3 player, the Rio. And that sort of sent me down a rabbit hole of product obsession. Watching guys build companies that I’ve been fascinated with. It’s always come down to the commonality between those companies, are people that have crafted really incredible products. And so then I just started thinking about how to make things that people really love and are receptive to and will help people and yeah, I started stumbling across a few ideas. And then on, you know, my fourth or fifth little project I came up with the Weighted Blanket, and that has sort of sent me down a pretty awesome rabbit hole of this Kickstarter world. It’s been pretty exciting.

Roy Morejon:                    So let’s talk about that ideation phase that you potentially go through, and you know, yeah, this was your fourth or fifth idea and Gravity Blanket, which was obviously a massive hit into the world, and you know, you’ve sold tens of thousands of units by now. What does that process look like? You know, how did you go about deciding what features to include, designs, all of those elements into that product?

John Fiorentino:               Yeah, so that one actually started with a pillow. I was crafting a new kind of pillow that I still sort of had in the lab. It was a pretty exciting design and I was working with scientists on the design. In a conversation with one of the sleep scientists they mentioned sleeping with ten percent of your body weight. And that sort of caught me by surprise. And I was like, “Well, what do you mean by that? Can you go into the science behind that?” And she started describing this thing called Deep Pressure Stimulation, and she explained that if you sleep with ten percent of your body weight on top of you, you have this like really incredible anti-anxiety calming effect. Which was sort of mind-blowing for me that I’ve never seen it.

John Fiorentino:               Then when I started to try to find one that I could buy, there really was almost nothing out there. I didn’t really understand why these things didn’t exist and why people weren’t talking about them at a scale that was familiar to people. And so that sort of just sent me down this new rabbit hole, where I started designing my own weighted blanket. There wasn’t really anything out there that I liked. But I loved the idea of a twenty-five pound blanket. And so yeah, I made a few prototypes and then launched and yeah, it was pretty shocking to, you know. And I think in twenty minutes we hit the goal and I was kind of like, “Oh, I don’t think that this is normal.” But everyone said that there was going to be a spike in the first couple of days. And then on like, day one we hit like 400k and I was like, “oh my god, this is going to be pretty insane.”

John Fiorentino:               And then it just never stopped, which was exciting, but also pretty daunting. Thirty days of watching a number rise and freaking out about, “oh my god, how am I going to make?” I thought I was going to have to make, like, five hundred. I was like, “how am I going to make like, thirty thousand at this point.” But yeah, it was pretty nuts seeing how, like, a little conversation with a sleep specialist led to, you know, in a couple months an idea being published that just really had this incredible moment where everyone sort of dove in and was sort of fascinated by this idea of a heavy blanket.

Roy Morejon:                    What were some of the challenges that you encountered when you were designing that product?

John Fiorentino:               The design was interesting. So, I didn’t invent weighted blanket, like, they existed. But they were mostly for medical use cases for like, kids with Autism and sensory disorders. So everything out there I could find had these, like, child prints. It was like a blanket covered with elephants or, you know, something that would appeal to children, and there wasn’t anything that looked really sleek that, like, an adult would be attracted to. So for me the design process sort of started with the aesthetic. How to make this thing with a real appeal to someone like myself who I’m interested in this, you know, we’re all living in this like, Tesla obsessed, tech-forward environment right now. So I sort of started to design a blanket of like, what if Tesla were to make a weighted blanket, as stupid as that sounds.

John Fiorentino:               But yeah, that was sort of the design problem that I was up against was, you know, how do you make this kid medical product appeal to a larger, more approachable market.

Roy Morejon:                    Let’s talk about the preparation on the marketing side for your first crowdfunding campaign. What did that look like?

John Fiorentino:               So I did a few different things. I actually ran around with a selfie stick for about six months and I did this whole vlog about me finding appealing products. And that was to build up an initial e-mail list of people that were interested in what I was doing in order to find and review and create the right product. So I kind of looked like an insane person for six months and ran around with a selfie stick and started documenting, sort of, my discovery process to get a following, an initial following, that I thought if I came out with something they would be respective and back it.

John Fiorentino:               So over six months I sort of grew that to about twenty-seven thousand likes on Facebook, which wasn’t huge but it was a decent audience. And you know, I started seeding it out to that audience. Like, “hey guys, I’m making something. Get ready. Get ready. Get ready.” And then I actually partnered with a friend who was running a media company, to come in and sort of help with the press aspect of it. And so I had those two like, initial e-mail lists of people who were following me around, talking about products. Then this media company that came in and then said that they were going to help. A nice solid press push. So I figured that both of those things, you know, about three or four months out from launch date were, was going to set me up for at least moderate success.

Roy Morejon:                    So how did the preparations change from Gravity compared to Moon Pod? What did you learn, you know, between the two, and what have you done differently on this campaign?

John Fiorentino:               I didn’t really do that much different on this one, you know. We…doing the Gravity push was really nice because we had a bunch of press on Gravity. So from a press perspective it was really just reaching out to everyone who wrote about it and was like, “hey, the creator is coming out with a new product that goes along nicely with it.” And people were receptive to that story, and you know, I don’t really…to be honest, I don’t really spend that much time thinking about like, marketing or like media or press. I really spend probably ninety-five percent of the time designing, researching, crafting, and thinking about product.

Roy Morejon:                    So what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned through the whole process of launching two million dollar campaigns on Kickstarter?

John Fiorentino:               The biggest thing I’ve learned is that, for me, I think it’s like, if you can find and create a product that people actually love, that is the best thing to do. It will return on whatever investment you make ten fold if you make a great product and you don’t try to spend all of your time trying to find some path or you know, hire the right PR person or you know, get some famous person to tweet about it. You really make something that people authentically love, and then everything else sort of comes naturally. And I think before I had Gravity happen, as a big success, I like didn’t believe that. I like thought that…you know, I thought I needed some massive celebrity to tweet about it. Or I thought I needed to like, partnering with someone that had some like, crazy press hack. And get like that New York Times article. But it really wasn’t the case. It was really just, if you make a great product people will come.

John Fiorentino:               And I think that with the second campaign it was even more evident. I wanted to really test that thesis and I basically haven’t spent any money on marketing the Moon Pod. And, you know, that was a little different with Gravity. We spent some money on advertising, a lot of money on advertising for Gravity. But Moon Pod I really wanted to see if it was…my learning, my theory taken away from Gravity was accurate. That if you make something great it’s gonna grow and people are gonna talk about it because they’re going to want it regardless of your marketing strategy.

Roy Morejon:                    So what’s been the biggest surprise of this most recent Kickstarter campaign?

John Fiorentino:               I was really worried about this one because of the nature of the product. It’s really…I was really worried that a lot of people weren’t going to be receptive of it and, or, ready to give it a chance without trying it first. I’ve really been surprised that people have understood how comfortable that this thing is without trying it. That’s sort of been the big surprise. You know like, you hear Gravity and you’re like, “what’s Gravity?” It’s a twenty-five pound blanket. You kind of have an idea of what that feels like. But with this one I was a little worried that, Moon Pod, it’s a zero gravity bean bag like, “well, what does that feel like?” But people have really kind of, kind of been receptive and been just, almost just as, excited as they were the first product, which I wasn’t really expecting. But it’s been a pleasant surprise.

Roy Morejon:                    SO let’s talk a little bit about your experience with your backers so far. I mean you’ve built this massive community. I know you’ve gotten a lot of feedback, but how have you gone about managing that feedback with, you know, doing the promotion and then, you know, all of you focus on getting this product ready to ship.

John Fiorentino:               Yeah, I mean to us the backers are like the keystone here. That’s like the most important part of it. So, with Gravity it really took off at an unbelievable rate, but you know. Admittedly there was some lag in our customer support. We didn’t really know how to handle an inbound of twenty-five thousand people all at once. And, you know, we just learned a ton about being really communicative with these people and that, you know, just giving very simple transparent updates goes a really long way.

John Fiorentino:               Like I didn’t really think people cared about tiny little changes or insights that I was going through. But when we would update it and be like, “hey, you know, we’re thinking about this with the product.” Or you know, “I just went to China and visited our factories and they look incredible and everything’s going great.” Like that really paid off. And there was a little bit of a learning curve to that. I just didn’t think people really wanted to hear from me that much. So I was kind of staying in the background. But, with this next one, with Moon Pod, we ramped up customer service, we have a full staff of about ten people full time working on the relationship with the backers and trying to be creative.

John Fiorentino:               I think, like, it’s a little tough because Kickstarter really tries to play, be very democratic, and you know, they try not to really take a side here. SO you can’t really get away from the ten or fifteen people who are just going to be really angry no matter what you do. I think I’ve answered the same question probably at this point three hundred or four hundred times. Still people come back and ask it again and again and again. So, you know, there are some battles that you can’t win, but if you’re imaginative and you are transparent, and you know, you’re just there to answer these questions, people are receptive to it and they sort of understand, and they’re supportive.

Roy Morejon:                    So you mentioned earlier some of the challenges of over funding, especially with Gravity Blanket. You know, how have you changed in terms of product development and scale of the new product, Moon Pod, that you’re creating now, in terms of the over funding of the campaign.

John Fiorentino:               Yeah, totally. So like I said, I purposely didn’t, I actually didn’t want to take this one past like two million. I was really crossing my fingers that it didn’t, which is another reason why we didn’t really spend money on marketing this one. And the reason is that because, you know, with supply chain stuff, it’s all of this is so fragile. With Gravity I had two supply chains set up and within the first week they both broke.

John Fiorentino:               They both, you know, my manufacturers called me and they were like, “sorry, we can’t handle scale at this volume and this time frame.” And that was like the most stressful call I’ve probably ever gotten in my life. And it happened twice. And so for this one we found the manufacturing partners up front that can handle whatever scale that this got to. But, you know, learning a healthier linear growth was beneficial in a longer term, rather than optimizing for this massive scale moment that might look cool, and it might be really great, but it doesn’t really call for the smoothest customer experience, and the operations within the company.

John Fiorentino:               It was probably the best learning experience I could have ever had with Gravity and I’m glad that I was able to figure out, they were able to deliver somewhat on time. I think we were about, the first delivery was about two weeks late. And then we ended up being about like a month or so late on a few other ones. But, you know, those are the learning curves and now because we sort of accounted for those hiccups that we saw with Gravity, we made some conscious decisions where we are optimizing for more of a steady flow rather than that massive step function growth that could be a little scary.

Roy Morejon:                    Totally. So what, if anything, would you have done differently for either campaigns?

John Fiorentino:               I don’t know. I don’t really know how to answer that. Like, if I had a crystal ball and knew that Gravity was going to be four million obviously I would have invested in a full support team of customer service that could handle that. But like, I don’t know. You never know. I think what I would have done differently is probably, yeah I really don’t know. I kind of feel like I’ve gone a hundred percent on both of these. I’ve really tried my hardest to cover every angle that I could. I don’t really think I could have been…More customer support on Gravity is the thing I would have done.

Roy Morejon:                    Maybe you could have hired us on your first campaign as well. I don’t know.

John Fiorentino:               Exactly.

Roy Morejon:                    I mean you’ve been working…

John Fiorentino:               You guys would have brought it to like eight million. No, I would have killed myself.

Roy Morejon:                    Yeah, that’s it man. I know you’ve been working with us for quite some time now, at least a few weeks on this campaign, so it’s been great to be able to work with you, obviously on this one. So, if you were able to give one tip out there for raising a million dollars on Kickstarter, what would it be?

John Fiorentino:               People are going to hate it, and you know, everyone asks me that question and I always give the same answer. Like, I’ve heard people say this before, and I just didn’t believe it, but you have to make a product that people truly love. But that’s really the only tip. And if you do that, people will want to talk about it. The press will want to write about it. People are going to want to take out their wallet and buy it. And that will solve like ninety-five percent of your problems. There won’t, you won’t need a tip or a trick if you just make something that people love.

Roy Morejon:                    All right, so next up on that though. How do you know it’s going to be a product that people love?

John Fiorentino:               I don’t really know, right? I mean that’s the big gamble.

Roy Morejon:                    Yeah.

John Fiorentino:               That’s the terrifying part. You know, like, I don’t think I slept for like a week before Gravity, just freaking out. Then Moon Pod I think it was three days I was just like freaking out, you know, like “are people going to love this?” But the thing that made me relax a little bit, other than the product being relaxing products, was that I loved them. The first time I used Gravity Blanket, I literally passed out in ten minutes. And I knew that if that happened with me, then it would happen with someone else. And with Moon Pod, it’s literally like I can say without question, it is literally the most comfortable thing I’ve ever sat in. And I don’t sit in anything else anymore. Like if I’m watching a TV show, if I’m working, if I’m on a phone call, like I am right now, I’m sitting in the Moon Pod. And I like, that is real. And if that’s real for me, it’s going to be real for someone else. And I think that’s probably the best way to gauge if you have something people really love. Because if you find yourself truly unbiasedly loving it on your own.

Roy Morejon:                    That’s good. I mean, I really love the recent video you put out there in terms of taking the Moon Pod to Central Park and just having people sit in it and get that experience, right?

John Fiorentino:              Yeah, totally. I think that’s another thing. I think if you don’t trust yourself, or you know, I don’t trust myself a lot. I think I’m pretty biased about my own creations. I definitely was with my first couple ones. For the first few things that I made were pretty horrible, but I fell in love with them. But you know, I think that’s the best thing, out of question of whether or not this is something people are going to love, literally take it outside, sit in a park, and walk up to as many people as you can and see how they react. And when I did that with Moon Pod, like we didn’t cut that video. We didn’t cut everyone that sat in it that hated it out. There was literally no one that didn’t sit down in it and have this overwhelmingly huge smile on. And so, I mean I had…So just, yeah. Just make something that people love and if you don’t know if people are going to love it, literally go outside and put it in front of as many people’s faces as possible and just watch the reaction.

Roy Morejon:                    So where are you headed next John?

John Fiorentino:              Where am I headed next? I don’t know. I don’t know. I think…Yeah, I mean I really love making products. There is a few things I’m really excited about that I’m going to come out for the Moon Pod. There’s like…I’m thinking about like getting a very specific children’s line for it. And a few other partnerships that I’ve been talking to that would be really exciting. So I’m going to be on, you know, checking in with Gravity and checking in with Moon Pod for the foreseeable future, but where I’m going next is after this one wraps up and I put another team in place to do this full time, I’m back to the ground. I’m back in the dirt searching for my next little thing that I fall in love with. I don’t know what that’s going to be, but I’m pretty excited that, I hope that I can find it within the next couple years or so.

Roy Morejon:                    It seems like you’ve built a repeatable methodology to find these products, so I’m excited to see what’s next man.

John Fiorentino:              Yes. Yes. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.

Roy Morejon:                    All right John, this gets us into the launch round, where I’m going to rapid fire a couple questions at you. You good to go?

John Fiorentino:              I’m ready to launch.

Roy Morejon:                    There we go. So what inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

John Fiorentino:              I have no idea. I think what inspired me…I don’t think I had like a moment of inspiration. I think I just like was first incapable of working for anyone else, and I always was just making my own stuff. Lemonade stands, baseball cards, Pokemon cards, anything that I could sort of get my hands on, and be responsible for, I was doing it. And then I think, I don’t know, my first and only job. My first and only real job was in the middle of college I went to, you know, work for Scooter Braun. Do you know who that is?

Roy Morejon:                    Yeah.

John Fiorentino:              So I went to go work for Justin Bieber’s manager. That was actually where I kind of started thinking a lot about how to take advantage of audiences in the right way and make something for them that they were responsive to. And you know, after a couple months he sort of pulled me aside and was like, “what are you doing? Why are you trying to work for me? Why are you trying to work for anyone?” He was like, “You’re not meant to work for someone. Go and start your own thing.” And that was sort of the slap in the face where it was like, “Yeah, what am I trying to do? Why am I trying to go…Why am I trying to work for someone? I need to go making my own stuff. Like carving out my own path.” And that sort of little push out of the bird’s nest from someone that I really really admired and looked up to. Kind of the moment where I was like, “All right, I gotta complete this role.” That sort of sent me down the rabbit hole of starting a business.

Roy Morejon:                    Nice. So, if you could share a Moon Pod with any entrepreneur throughout history, who would it be?

John Fiorentino:              Oh wow. Entrepreneur throughout history. Living or dead?

Roy Morejon:                    Yep.

John Fiorentino:              I’m going to go with Ben Franklin.

Roy Morejon:                    Nice. What would have been your first question for Sir Franklin?

John Fiorentino:              Is he an entrepreneur? He is.

Roy Morejon:                    Sure.

John Fiorentino:              I would just…Yeah. I would put him on it and I wouldn’t ask him anything about the product and I would just ask him about [inaudible 00:23:07]. I want to learn from the master.

Roy Morejon:                    Separate bolt of lightning, right?

John Fiorentino:              Yeah, exactly. And I’d ask him how it compares the discovery of electricity.

Roy Morejon:                    Nice. What book are you reading right now? Or what book would you recommend to our listeners?

John Fiorentino:              What book am I reading right now? Right now I just bought this book called Elephant in the Brain. I’m probably like ten pages into it, it’s by a guy who has a great blog called Melting Asphalt. Like, really really awesome blog that I read every time he comes out with a new little essay. And then he just came out with this book called Elephant in the Brain. It’s pretty interesting. And then I just finished up the Leonardo Da Vinci biography. Which, for anyone that’s creating anything, it’s the best book of all time.

Roy Morejon:                    All right John, last question. What does the future of crowdfunding look like?

John Fiorentino:              I think it moves off of the aggregative platform. I think a lot of people are going to start realizing the benefits of crowdfunding and I think that the customers are going to start being more receptive to it. And you know, anyone can, you know, you can make a deal with anyone but hey, you get this initial run of product off you can pay half price, and you’ll just have to wait. I think the customer is going to start getting a lot more receptive to that. Sort of like social deal and I think a lot of these crowdfunding projects that you see on these massive platforms are, I think you’re going to see that same thing on people’s owned and operated sites more. I think it’s less platform and more direct relationship with the creator to their own audience, and asking them to help them out with crowdfunding.

Roy Morejon:                    Absolutely. John, this has been awesome. This is your opportunity to give our audience your pitch. Tell them what you’re all about, where people should go, and why they should check you out.

John Fiorentino:              What I’m all about. I’m all about making products that are better for the world and that make people feel great. You can check me out, follow me on probably Instagram is the best route to stay in touch. At John Hunt Fiorentino. And then, follow me there. Keep an eye out for my next creation. GracityBlankets.com. MoonPod.co. Follow my personal journey and I’m sure I’ll have something in the pipe that’s going to be exciting at some point.

Roy Morejon:                    Stoked to see that, man. Audience thanks again for tuning in. Make sure to visit artofthekickstart.com for all the notes, the transcript, links to everything we talked about today. And of course thank you to our crowdfunding podcast sponsors: the Gadget Flow and BackerKit. And if you loved this episode as much as I do, make sure to leave us a review on iTunes. John, thank you so much for joining us today on Art of the Kickstart.

John Fiorentino:              Thanks man. Thanks everyone for listening.

Roy Morejon:                    Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Art of the Kickstart. The show about building a business, world, and life with crowdfunding. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, awesome. Make sure to visit artofthekickstart.com and tell us all about it. There you’ll find additional information about past episodes, our Kickstarter guide to crushing it, and of course if you loved this episode a lot, leave us a review at artofthekickstart.com/iTunes. It helps more inventors, entrepreneurs, and startups find this show, and helps us get better guests to help you build a better business. If you need more hands on crowdfunding strategy advice, please feel free to request a quote on EnventysPartners.com. Thanks again for tuning in, and we’ll see you again next week.