An Ecosystem of Products Tackles the Ocean’s Plastic Problem

In this episode of Art of the Kickstart, we interviewed Adrian Solgaard, founder and CEO of Solgaard, a design-driven sustainable brand. With six successful Kickstarter campaigns, Solgaard started out by creating luxury gear for on-the-go lifestyles. Now, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is launching at-home devices, like HomeBase Solar Boombox Ecosystem. With sustainability at the core of their mission, Solgaard not only pulls 5 lbs of ocean plastic for every item sold, but their products are also made from recycled ocean plastic. Listen in to learn about Solgaard’s ecosystem of products and how the brand has grown from its first crowdfunding campaign.

Topics Discussed and Key Crowdfunding Takeaways

    • How Adrian found the factories that manufacture Solgaard products
    • Tips for newcomers creating high-tech devices
    • A sneak peek at a new item they’re going to launch next year
    • How Adrian balances backer feedback with his gut feelings for a potential product
    • The importance of calculating in shipping costs, Kickstarter fees and other hidden expenses
    • The considerations he takes into account when vetting marketing agencies

    Links

    Sponsors

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    Transcript

    View this episode's transcript
    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. We have helped startups raise over a hundred million dollars for our clients since 2010. Each week, I’ll interview a crowdfunding success story, an inspirational entrepreneur, or a 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 Gadget Flow. The Gadget Flow is a product discovery platform that helps you discover, save, and buy awesome products. It is the ultimate buyer’s guide for cool, luxury gadgets and creative gifts. Now let’s get on with the show.
    Roy Morejon:
    Welcome to another special edition of Art of the Kickstart. Today, I am talking with the one and only Adrian Solgaard, founder and CEO of Solgaard.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    [crosstalk 00:01:04].
    Roy Morejon:
    Adrian is a six-time creator on Kickstarter. If you haven’t heard from him, you better check yourself because he is very innovative, comes up with amazing products, has built an amazing community. His last campaign just finished the HomeBase solar boom box Ecosystem with over 3,000 backers, over $600,000 raised on this campaign. He’s raised millions of dollars on Kickstarter. Ladies and gentlemen, Adrian Solgaard.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Thank you. Thank you, sir. Hello. How’s it going?
    Roy Morejon:
    It is going, man. It is a pleasure to have you back on the show, tons of feedback and respect from what you’ve been doing and the company you’ve built with the community that’s out there on the Kickstarter side. So, this product is unique, where the company you’ve built has been built around travel products, and obviously with the pandemic that’s going on, that certainly is had to affect overall the industry itself and the ecosystem of people purchasing products like this. So, I’m really interested to hear what inspired you to come up with HomeBase and launch this product which is outside of the normal products that you guys have been launching in the past.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Yeah. So, being born a kid of two different nationalities and spending most of my life traveling around quite a bit, traveling life on-the-go has been this quintessential part of my life. Those are the problems and the frustrations that I’ve had, and I’ve then created solutions to solve those. Then being locked inside of a 425-square foot box with a human being, who I love very much… But being locked inside of a tiny apartment for a little while during the beginning of lockdown started me thinking about, “Okay, what are some of the products that we could create that would be able to lend themselves to this and still being in line with what we’re making?” So, the first product we made was a solar-powered anti-theft backpack called Lifepack. That was really meant to be the mobile office, and this thought of creating some work/life balance and enjoying your life while you travel.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Then I started to use that same line of thinking with this whole living at home, working from home, not leaving the apartment, what is some ways that we could create some separation from work/life there. So, we made a shelf that mounts to the wall that has built in phone chargers for two phones, so you and your significant other can pop your phones down on this little shelf and both the phones can charge. You get a little bit of time away from your screen, which is immensely valuable, especially these days when you’re pretty much always on. So, I think it just ties in together with this work/life balance, work from home, and it’s all made from ocean plastic as well.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. So, Adrian, you really have created a full ecosystem around eco-friendly products. What brought that on, and why was it important to integrate that into this new innovation?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    So, I’ve never wanted to be bound to a single product category. The first product I made was a backpack. Then we started making suitcases, and we made some watches. I’ve wanted to make products that can touch people’s lives who live a life somewhat similar to me and my friends, which is a life that has a lot of travel, and I thought it would make sense to have everything be connected. That first backpack had a solar-powered speaker built into it. So, we wanted to make the HomeBase connect to that speaker in a way. When you put the speaker onto the HomeBase the speaker charges itself and also is further amplified by sitting on that shelf. I think I’m missing the point of your question a little bit here by taking the long winded route to it.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    But I think it makes sense to develop a collection of products that all connect. So, if you buy one product from us, it’s not as much of a leap to buy the next product because it’s connected in some ways, this ecosystem. Having the products connected from a personal-use case level is really important, but then making all the products sustainably is the penultimate, or the ultimate point of the brand is that we’re innovating amongst materials. We’re using ocean bound plastic for the fabric in our bags, and then we’ve also discovered a new technology for recycling ocean plastic to make a harder shell plastic, which we’re able to use for the casing on this shelf and the speakers as well.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    So, the purpose and the reason and why we’re so passionate about doing something good for the planet is we love travel. We love the ocean. When you go to a beautiful beach and it’s polluted and covered in plastic, it’s really sad to see that. That’s where the passion for environment started, but then as we got a little bit further and deeper into it, I realized that actually, hold on, the rainforest provides us with a lot of oxygen. Sure. But the ocean actually provides us with 70% of the oxygen that we breathe. If we’re going to have a chance of keeping this planet livable for humans for the longterm future, we need healthy oceans.
    Roy Morejon:
    Absolutely. So, given that this product is a little bit off of the beaten path, if you will, of what you guys have been developing in the past, were there any challenges or what were those challenges when not only designing the product, but doing the engineering behind it?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Doing the engineering was tough because we weren’t able to be in the same room. This lockdown in New York started, I think… March 17th is when it was a national emergency. I think we developed the product… We had the idea for the product April 1st or 2nd or 3rd sort of thing. So, we were just working over Zoom, over screen-sharing and trying to get designs going with a bunch of different people. That challenge of remote work is, is one of them, but developing the product what’s fortunate for us is we already have factories in our Rolodex that we’re working with for these things. That was pretty easy, sourcing the factory side. But yeah, not being able to travel to Asia to visit the factory to be like, “Okay, let’s look at the prototype. No, change this. Make this change,” is a lot easier to do so much of that stuff in person.
    Roy Morejon:
    Talk about when you… Because again, I think it’s helpful for the folks that need that kick in the butt to bring their product to market. When you were first doing the first product that you launched out there, how did you go about finding the right factories and beginning those negotiations of getting product samples and those sorts of things to make sure that they were delivering the vision that you had initially?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Sure. So, the first product that I did was a bike lock, a bicycle lock, launched it in January, 2013. That one, I ended up going to a trade show and I met somebody. I seeked out this guy who was making a special type of bicycle part, and I knew that he would know the right factory. I befriended him and asked him which some factories were, and he was able to connect me to some factories and good people in Taiwan. I had to restart that process all over again, though, when launching Lifepack in 2016, and with that, actually, it was a bit more modern times than 2012 was as far as the internet goes.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    I went on Alibaba, and I searched five or six different factories making backpacks. I just said, “Hey, these look cool. Can you send me some samples?” I got samples of all of those products, did the same thing for speakers, got three or four different factories to send me samples. Once I had checked them out, I went over to China, and I just visited 10 factories over five or six days and just picked the factory from there. Alibaba is actually a really great source for finding factories.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. No, it certainly is. It’s the LinkedIn of everything that you could possibly make in the world.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Yeah, for sure.
    Roy Morejon:
    So, in terms of developing this tech product, what tips would you have for someone in terms of that similar flow or process to bring their tech innovation to market?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    I think for developing a tech product, it’s important to look at what other people are doing and use shared technologies wherever you can. I think a lot of early inventors or entrepreneurs make the mistake of reinventing the wheel, and I think that’s the kind of thing that can lead to some pretty major challenges especially to technology products, because there are certain things that are already done that will probably be good enough. I think it’s important to look at that. I could give an example that’s not this product, but it’s a future product that we’re working on launching for next year. Do you want me to give that example?
    Roy Morejon:
    I think everyone would love to know what’s coming.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    A little tease. A little tease. Okay. So, three years ago I had this idea for a pair of headphones, and I can’t tell you what the specific idea is. But it’s something that I’m very excited about. We developed and designed and visited some different headphone factories and had to put the project on pause. Now, we’re picking it back up over the last six months, and we’re going to be launching these new headphones next year via Kickstarter. So, Roy, we’ve got to chat about that.
    Roy Morejon:
    All right.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Keep a listening read. Initially we were talking to different factories, and one of them was going to create everything from scratch, the speaker drivers, the ear cups, every single component of the headphone band from scratch. That was going to be a significant cost and tooling, but more so there was going to be a 9- or 12-month lag on just making sure everything fits and everything works. Then, I was talking to a friend who lives in Japan, has developed some different tech products and audio products before, and he said, “That’s the best way to kill your project is to go brand new for everything. Find somewhere where you can just use an existing ear cup. You’re not trying to innovate on the squishy part that sits against your ear. That’s not your innovation part. So, just use that from somebody else, save some costs on tooling there. Use existing speakers that sound great, if that’s not your advantage and going from there.”
    Adrian Solgaard:
    And he told me this, “Hey, there’s more headphones startups that have failed in the world than you know.” I said, “Really?” So, I looked, and there are four or five multimillion dollar Kickstarter campaigns for headphones, all of which have not delivered their products, and the ones that have delivered their products are three or four years behind schedule and are facing significant challenges in having some pretty upset consumers because they’ve chosen the overly complicated route. I think that the best hack you can do is, it’s the easier way, is use existing technologies where and when you can and then just focus on what that one piece is that makes your DNA specific or special and go from there.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. No, I think those are really good insights, Adrian. I think, the reinventing of the wheel and just the way the world is, I don’t think we need more plastics or products out there. If we’re creating the stuff, we’ve got to get this stuff out of the system, but use what’s already created. Evolve it from there, and then the beautiful thing about Kickstarter and crowdfunding is then getting advice from the crowd itself in terms of making it better, faster, sleeker, better designed, or adding additional features after the fact, in terms of V1 when you ship.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Yeah, and that’s what I love about launching your product via Kickstarter is you launch, if you want, on Kickstarter. You get feedback from thousands of people, and then you come out. The first product that people actually receive in their hands is version 1.5 or version two, because you’ve made some of those iterative changes that would have taken a cycle or two to make. Kickstarter is amazing for that purpose of fast forwarding a year of development, both in market, interest, sales… You get an answer way faster.
    Roy Morejon:
    So, let’s talk about the Kickstarter campaign itself for HomeBase. Since it was a little bit different, did you make any changes in terms of preparation work in leading up to the campaign before launch?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    So, I am famously running last minute on everything. Some of our campaigns we’ve done zero prelaunch marketing for which has been a bit of a mistake. This one we did a little bit of prelaunch for, which was great because we were able to A/B test some ad sets and see which images people were resonating with so that would help us. Just some basic things like running a $20 A/B test against five different images as an ad to see what has a higher click through rate and using that as our cover image on Kickstarter, some stuff like that, as far as the prelaunch. Are you talking about the actual campaign build out side, are you talking about the product side?
    Roy Morejon:
    Well, first, that was a great nugget that you just dropped for everyone in terms of testing imagery and seeing what actually converts best in terms of stopping people’s thumbs. But, no, in terms of the overall marketing side, in terms of the technology itself, was there anything different, whether it be pre-campaign, lead-gen, or image testing and those sorts of things that was different from what you had done before towards more of a traveler, if you will?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    No, not particularly because I still assume… We haven’t got total details back yet, but from who our backers are on this. But I still assume we’re selling to the same person. This is for their home rather than for their travel life. We’re still able to leverage our existing community and our email lists and our Instagram, Facebook people
    Roy Morejon:
    So, in terms of engaging your backers in the community that you’ve built over the years from the first product to this one, how did you go about managing any of their feedback while the campaign was active, given that it sounds like the community didn’t necessarily create this product for you guys based out of their feedback initially?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Can you ask that question in a slightly different way?
    Roy Morejon:
    I can. Again, I’m making the assumption here. The community didn’t say, “Hey, Adrian, we want a HomeBase.” Right? So, how did you go about managing the community different than you would for creating the backpack and the other travel products that you had done before, and more of that feedback may have come out of the community itself?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    We haven’t yet made a product that was community driven like, “Hey, we want this thing.” It’s all been we’ve heard grumblings from people like, “Oh, it’d be nice to have a backpack with this feature, or it’d be nice to have a backpack with that feature.” And we’ve used those few bits and pieces to piece together. We’ve never gotten such a clear request as like, “Make this whatever product.” So, what I actually did as we started developing this… So the whole concept for the product. We were going to make a new version of our solar powered speaker, and we had found this new technology for using recycled plastic to do so. We were going to launch that on Kickstarter, but realizing that the speaker sounds really, really good. It’s a really nice sounding speaker, but it’s not mind blowing in terms of the technology there. It’s a convenient speaker because it’s got a solar charger on it, so it charges it up. It’s made from ocean plastic, and it sounds really good. That’s not a formula for a Kickstarter slayer of a product.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    It’s like, “Okay. Yeah, that’ll be a nice little campaign.” So, I was thinking, “What can we do to beef this speaker up and make it something more?” So I started thinking about a clip for the wall to make it have better acoustic amplification, and then I realized like, “Oh. Well, we could actually make it so it charges the device, too, while amplifying it. Oh, and then we could make it look really cool, and then it actually fits into your home and it becomes this home decor piece. Oh, and adding wireless charging for your phones.” Then it was built in and of itself. Then we had this really weird idea for a product that nobody had asked for.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Then what I did was I ended up actually called this guy, Richie Plunkett. He’s a backer of the original bike lock that we launched 2013, and he’s backed several of our projects. We’re friends on Instagram. He’s a YouTube reviewer. I called him up, had a FaceTime chat with him, was like, “Hey, so here’s this product. It’s weird, but do you think that the community is going to like this?” He’s like, “Yeah, I think that’s pretty cool. That’s not a problem that I’ve ever thought I had, but I think that’s pretty cool.” Then I did a gut check with a few other people before we pulled the trigger on the full prototypes and all that stuff. It was a very gut-driven decision more than it was a data-driven decision of a thousand people said, “Yes, do this.” It was like, “Okay, two or three people think it’s a good idea. And we do. Okay, let’s go for it.”
    Roy Morejon:
    No, that’s really insightful, Adrian, because, just going back to the Henry Ford quote, “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would’ve said faster horses.” In this case you’ve got a good feel for overall products and product development and design and creating a product that potentially now has thousands of customers on it that hopefully will be a continued nice line of business for you guys.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I hope that we can continue to do is find products for people’s problems they don’t know that they have.
    Roy Morejon:
    Exactly.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    And creating new things. That’s what’s exciting. Right? I got into a Twitter debate with somebody two days ago, and I used that Henry Ford quote, actually. It was someone saying like, “The worst thing in business is to solve a problem that people don’t know they have.” Well, that’s where all innovation comes from. What I love about Kickstarter and other creators on Kickstarter is that we’re making new stuff. We’re making cool stuff. Whereas, if you look at any random D2C brand… I’ll pick on Warby Parker. I’m wearing Warby Parker glasses right now. They’re nice glasses, but they’re boring. They’re just like, “Okay. These are glasses. You can look at the computer with them. Great.”
    Adrian Solgaard:
    They’re nothing exciting. If you want to make a boring, direct-to-consumer business that just does the same old thing that everybody else has done but you have pretty branding and you go from there, cool. Sure, you could probably make some money doing that, but that’s not going to leave a mark on the world. That’s what I love about Kickstarter and the creator community. It’s like we’re making stuff that could potentially have a pretty big impact on people’s lives.
    Roy Morejon:
    Indeed. Well, I’m wearing my Nectar Blue Light glasses, and they definitely help out so I can sleep better at night.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Nice. Nice.
    Roy Morejon:
    This show sponsored by Nectar and Warby Parker. No, but I mean, give some insight here, Adrian, because you’ve run six crowdfunding campaigns. You’ve got a ton of insight over the years of what’s changed. What one or two things in terms of learnings on this campaign has changed over the years of running multiple campaigns, now?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    So, in 2013, I don’t know if we ran any paid ads. I don’t even know what Facebook’s paid ads set up was like back then. I think that was pretty much all organic, and it was posting to forums of Reddit and that kind of thing. Then the campaigns nowadays are way more advertising-driven as the way to reach the community, so you need to have, whether it’s deep pockets to set it up or a credit card that you’re comfortable maxing out in the process. But you need to have some room to run some ads if you want to have a six-figure campaign. So, I think that’s been the biggest change that I’ve seen, the biggest shift that I’ve seen. Yeah. What about you? What changes have you seen over the years? You’re even way more in touch with the community than I am.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. I mean, it’s been interesting in terms of, one, the innovation side. I think startups, entrepreneurs, companies now are much more polished than they used to be, where they would launch a sloppy prototype up there, and people would be like, “Yeah. Cool. I get it.” But now you’ve got to have your stuff together, and you’ve got to have this thing working in pretty much done as well as shipping as soon as possible. I don’t think you can get away with shipping a product in a year and expecting to have a multimillion dollar campaign unless your technology is truly groundbreaking. So, I think I’m seeing a lot more companies truly do a lot more homework and pre-campaign prototyping and building than they’ve ever done before in the past.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Yeah, I think that’s true for sure. I have the backpack that I used for the Kickstarter campaign, which that one raised $613,917 from 3,063 backers. It’s funny how you remember these numbers. And it was… Sorry. 3,705 backers. It looks like a piece of garbage, this prototype. The 3D-printed zipper ties and the sewing job that was done by a local seamstress in Spain, it’s not a great looking bag, but we were able to run a very successful campaign with it. I don’t think we could run a campaign with that level of product on Kickstarter anymore. And I think I agree with you on the timescale thing. So, the headphones that we’re working on, they’ve been in development for three years where we’ve paid deposits to the factory about two months ago. We’re probably going to launch it in March or April of next year, but we’ll be launching when they’re two months away from shipping rather than [crosstalk 00:22:02].
    Roy Morejon:
    Launching it right now, and then three years ago when you had the idea. Right?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Exactly. Exactly.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. I think a lot of companies are starting to shift towards that. Right? They’re putting all the effort and energy in, even though they do need the cash obviously to write those checks to the factory. But it behooves them to wait until that thing is as close to ready as possible and can ship very quickly. Yeah. I mean, I’m sitting here in my office, Adrian. I’ve got all of your backpacks. I’ve got my Lifepack here. I’ve got my Hustle bag. I’ve got my new Upcycled Backpack, the day pack from the ocean plastics. I’m looking good over here. I’m ready to go.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Awesome.
    Roy Morejon:
    So, were there any surprises on this campaign for you?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Well, I think the one thing that someone who hasn’t created a campaign before needs to be aware of is a friend of mine was using the phrase, “death by a thousand cuts” that can happen with a Kickstarter campaign with like, “Okay, so this campaign just raised $601,000. Great.” The amount of money that gets, that gets bled out in terms of advertising, in terms of the fees to the Kickstarter platform, credit card fees, and then shipping fees are always what tend to bite people, especially first time creators. I’m far less excited about a $600,000 campaign now than I was back then, because I know that it’s like, “Okay, we’re going to need pretty much every penny of this to manage and handle fulfillment and get things out to everybody.” So, I think that’s the one piece there, the one word of wisdom that I think you can’t say enough.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. No, absolutely. It definitely comes up with other interviews and talking with founders in terms of that shipping costs definitely biting you and eating into any and all margins that you have, but also figuring out where do you really need to ship this thing to. You don’t need to send it to every country because likely you may have, if it’s a great campaign, between 40 to 80 different countries potentially pre-purchasing the product. Well, any challenges from over-funding the campaign by so much? Was it to your expectation in terms of funding goal, or did it supersede what you guys had hoped?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    It was in the realm of what I had hoped for. Our funding goal was $20,000, which it’s great to set a funding goal that is achievable. It was $150 or $200K is the point where it would make sense for the product we’d be like, “Okay. Yeah this works without killing us, kind of thing.” So, I think reaching that that $600K mark is a really nice confidence boost in this product for what it’s going to do in the real world, in the mass market.
    Roy Morejon:
    Absolutely.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    I don’t think there’s any challenges with that because we’re set up for scale. We understand how to make thousands of products, and these products are designed to be mass produced in the point that with the tooling and the molds and everything that’s opened, we’re going to have a 5,000 unit minimum order quantity anyway. So, having these numbers just helps use up a lot of that first batch. So that’s great.
    Roy Morejon:
    Awesome. Well, it’s time for my shameless plug of, you worked with my agency Enventys Partners. You’ve been working with us since, since the beginning.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Seven years, Roy.
    Roy Morejon:
    I know. You obviously have your choice of working with any and all agencies or marketing help out there, but you obviously chose to come back to us and work with us for this whole campaign. So, what things and considerations do you now look at when looking to partner with an agency to bring your next innovation to market?
    Adrian Solgaard:
    So, I think, and without blowing your ego up too much. You guys get the full picture of what it means from cross promos to advertising to what’s being done on the page, what’s being done with the video. A naive creator might think that there’s one silver bullet, that all you need is the perfect video, and then you’re set. Or all you need is the perfect campaign rewards, whatever, and then you’re set. The thing is, there’s no silver bullet to this. You need expertise across a wide range of things, and I don’t think that there’s anybody in the business of crowdfunding that knows all those areas as well as you guys do.
    Roy Morejon:
    We’ll, thank you, sir. It’s always been a pleasure. Since we’ve done so many launch rounds before I won’t entertain that, but I will ask you to now give me any deeper insight that you have in terms of what the future of crowdfunding looks like.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    I think crowdfunding for the future is definitely here to stay, and I think that there’s so many interesting avenues of what you can look at. The product crowdfunding via Kickstarter is awesome. I think it’s such a great way for people to bring out a product to market, but we talked about with by the time you’ve done shipping and fulfillment and everything, your Kickstarter campaign is basically pre-marketing and it’s market validation. Or, sorry, it’s assessing product market fit. You’re unlikely to have a meaningful amount of revenue leftover to work with to continue running the company onwards after that. So, I think we’re currently looking into the idea of equity crowdfunding, because we have 13 or 14 or 15,000 backers across all these different campaigns that we’ve done. Backers are not customers. There are people putting their hard, earned money into your idea, and they’re willing to wait for it very patiently for six, nine months, whatever it might be.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    It’s very different from just a typical consumer purchase habit. Because we have this community of backers, we’re considering doing equity crowdfunding, where it’s like, okay, they’ll put in money that stays in the company for two or three years, and then they’ll earn a dividend off of that. Then there’s options on the line. We’re looking at that because I think that harnessing the power of the crowd is super interesting because I think if you have the ability to communicate what your goals are, I think the future of crowdfunding is just going to be more and more matured from where it is now. I think it’s going to become more and more normalized, slowly, because there’s not a lot of people that are willing to put money into a product and wait six months for it. Most people want everything right now, but I think that for a select group of people, it’s definitely here to stay, and I think it’s only going to get stronger.
    Roy Morejon:
    Yeah. No, I agree, and I think going down the route of equity crowdfunding for you, given your consumer base and community that you built, is a perfect match because what better thing to deliver amazing products to them and also have them have an opportunity to be an owner in a very cool startup that they own the product on. Not many opportunities are out there especially for a well-built company like yours. Well, Adrian, this is always amazing to have you on the show. This is, again, your opportunity to give our audience your pitch, tell people what you’re all about, where they should go and why they should check you out.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Sure. Yeah. So, Solgaard we make gear for global citizens. We see a global citizen as someone who loves to experience the world and all that it has to offer, but also cares for it and wants to take care of it. We make suitcases, backpacks, and now home goods and products for you enhancing and enjoying your life on the go or on the stay. Everything we do we make sustainably, so we use ocean plastic to make the fabrics for all of our products. We use as much recycled content in the polycarbonate suitcases that we make, which are lightweight and have a built in shelving system that helps you stay organized on the go, which was recognized by TIME magazine as 2018 world’s Best Inventions.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    You can check us out at solgaard.co, or you can find us on Instagram at Solgaard, S-O-L-G-A-A-R-D. Solgaard means sun farm in Norwegian, and it’s actually the name of where my grandfather was born on a little farm in the south of Norway.
    Roy Morejon:
    Killer. Adrian, this has been amazing. Audience, thanks for tuning in. Make sure to visit artofthekickstart.com for the notes, the transcript, links to all of Adrian’s amazing products. And, of course, thank you to our crowdfunding podcast sponsors The Gadget Flow and Product Type. Adrian, thank you so much for coming back on the show and congrats on all of your success, sir.
    Adrian Solgaard:
    Thanks so much, Roy. Have a great day.
    Roy Morejon:
    Thanks for tuning into 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.
Hosted by
Roy Morejon

Roy Morejon is the President of Enventys Partners, a leading product development, crowdfunding and ecommerce marketing agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, in charge of digital marketing strategy, client services, and agency growth.

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