Interview with Erwin: Hustling to the success of The Perfect Sketchbook

In August 2014, I wrote about my friend Erwin's Kickstarter campaign for The Perfect Sketchbook. The campaign was successfully funded eventually. I had my doubts back then on whether it would make it past the finishing line and it was quite exciting to see that it did.

I was interested to find out how he did it, how he managed to market and promote his campaign. So I interviewed him to find out more. This interview below might give you some ideas on how to market your own art-related product in the future.

What sort of marketing did you do to promote The Perfect Sketchbook campaign?

Without a marketing budget, I really had no strategy. I reckon the way I went at it was more like cold calling. I canvassed like crazy and approached just about every related source.

For a start, I gathered inspiration from my travel sketches and emailed everyone I met through my travels and also companies that I travelled with. These included the airlines that I flew with, the travel agent (Drukasia) I engaged, and the schools I graduated from and worked at. I branched out from there and approached interest groups on Facebook, Linkedin, Blogspot etc.

I paid special attention to every suggestion along the way and took an active role in approaching relevant recommendations. One day, someone jokingly suggested that I should approach Singapore’s prime minister about my Kickstarter project. Guess what? I did and it didn’t work.

What were the challenges you face after the campaign was made public?

The major ones included ignoring hate comments that surfaced when I first began.

Honestly, I was quite unprepared for some of the derogatory terms that were fired at me. It took me by surprise and affected me quite a bit at the beginning of the campaign.

I was never a wealthy art student and could never afford artist-grade materials when I was in art school. All my materials were student-grade. So, I seriously empathized whenever people criticize about the price of my artist-grade sketchbook. I felt insecure whenever I received criticism from people who didn’t know about the cost of top quality watercolor paper.

Then there were also the folks who didn’t understand what Kickstarter was and thought that I was selling a retail product. That assumption was that I was trying to make a lot of money and it suspended them from understanding the real motive of the project — that it was really a personal project that lacked economy of scale.

Kickstarter’s commission charges, production cost and fulfillment cost were the main determinants of the published price.

You mentioned about hustling. How did you hustle? Who did you hustle?

I used the term hustle as more of slang. In America, hustle means that you do anything to make money, be it selling cars, drugs, or your body. If you are trying to make fast money, you are hustling.

In the case of The Perfect Sketchbook, I wasn’t really trying to make money - I was trying to do everything I could to get this project funded.

I approached the National Arts Council, ministers, the prime minister, various ministries, prominent entrepreneurs, foundations, interest groups, watercolor societies, celebrities, famous artists, airlines, friends, art schools, magazine publications, newspapers & editors. I searched for targeted email addresses and would send personal emails because a mass mail would probably end up in spam folders. Most of my efforts failed but many did respond.

I also wrote articles about the project for a few blogs and magazines. Parka Blogs was a big contributor and more than 4% of our backers were from here. My friend Emily Cheng, who was working in Facebook, extended her help by donating her employee credit for our Facebook ads. Her colleague Yuzhi did the same. The biggest surprise came in when I realized that my biggest backers actually came from my own social media circle. My followers on Instagram and tumblr contributed the most to The Perfect Sketchbook. Conrado Almada who has more than 53,000 instagram followers did two shout-outs on his social media for us during the last two days of the campaign.

The Perfect Sketchbook also received endorsements from many prominent urbansketchers, watercolorists, illustrators and concept artists. These included James Gurney, Nathan Fowler, Fawn Veerasunthorn, Ryan Green, Juan Jr Ramirez, Teoh Yi Chie, Anthony Francisco, Peter Chan, Chin Ko, Art Foo, Marvin Chew, Dalton Muniz, Don Low, Tia Boon Sim, Paul Wang, Jane Blundell, Madhu Kumar, Liz Steel, Namchai Saensupha and many more. I have so many people to thank for this campaign.

What sort of feedback did you get and what's your response?

There was some negative feedback when I first began.

Many didn’t understand what it meant to initiate or Kickstart something. They were eager to inform me that the sketchbook was not their preferred size, price and etc.

Initially, I felt rather handicapped over the various pieces of negative feedback. However, there was little I could change because I have already considered all these factors prior to the launch, as I have mentioned in my previous article on Parka Blogs. The decisions I made included just about every variable that came in with the feedback.

Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently to run the campaign?

I probably would not have done anything differently because I really maxed out my resources for this project. Knowing what I know now, I am not sure if I would have done this. When the fund was at $28,000, I thought that the campaign would fail. I wrote the most emails at that stage but it did not correlate to the funds’ momentum. It was extremely daunting but I kept going at it and even during the last 4 days, I was more than US$10,000 away from target. I thought it was game over.

Miraculously, the funds came in big during the last 4 days and we eventually managed to surpass the target of US$50,000 and landed at US$53,000. It was not easy and I slept less than 5 hours a day during the 45 days of this campaign.

The Project would have never made it without the support of all my backers. Every contribution along the way fueled my motivation, and my conviction in the success of the project increased with the number of backers and increase in contributed funds. I fought harder, and we eventually made it. My backers were the true drivers of The Perfect Sketchbook, as without them, this project would not have taken off. I am truly grateful.