Hiral Sanghavi needed $20,000 on Kickstarter to fund his BauBax travel jacket. He smashed that target and raised a whopping $9 million.
The crowdfunding campaign for the jacket with 15 built-in features was launched on July 7. Sanghavi had 58 days to meet the aim, but got there in just five hours.
The jacket quickly evolved into the most-funded clothing campaign “not just on Kickstarter but in the history of crowdfunding,” said Sanghavi.
It wasn’t only the most-funded clothing campaign.
The BauBax jacket drive, which ended Thursday, also evolved into Kickstarter’s fourth-most funded campaign ever after the two Pebble Smart Watches and the multi-purpose Coolest Cooler box.
Related: This jacket does 15 things
“I knew we had a memorable idea, that we’d maybe get a million or two, but never $9 million,” said Sanghavi.
The travel jacket comes in four styles and is designed with multiple concealed functions to make commuting more comfortable and hands-free.
Those include a neck pillow that inflates in two seconds, an insulated cupholder pocket and gloves concealed in each sleeve.
Above quote from CNN Money
The road from Kickstarter campaign launch to ordering the first 80,000 jackets has been nothing short of a sprint for Sanghavi and his team. But the inspiration to keep ahead from one challenge to the next has come in unexpected places.
“We have gotten so many emails on LinkedIn and direct mail from our customers and readers around the industry who say, ‘Your story has inspired me and my wife to start into entrepreneurship and start something of our own.’ And that is so, so humbling. And feels great,” says Sanghavi. “We were just doing our thing. We were living our dream. Our dream was to launch this product and in that course we ended up inspiring so many people. That feels really nice. That is the moment of success for me. Money is fine, but the fact that we can inspire someone through our work, that is exciting and humbling.”
From 2018: Our latest Travel Jacket 2.0 launches and drives over $3 Million.
StartMotionMEDIA is happy to announce that Baubax, our video & strategy project now is the 4th most funded project in Kickstarter history. Our film & strategy team worked hard to create a determined commercial-style story depicting the multi uses of their product, and sure enough, we pulled it off! BAUBAX received over $9 Million worth of pre-orders when their campaign ended.We helped create an amazing video inside an airplane at Air Hollywood, and it ultimately generated over 232,000 views on youtube, not counting their viewers on kickstarter, and they followed exactly our grassroots branding strategies that helped get all their friends and family involved from the start.
Ecommerce Case Study: BauBax
Hailed by Business Insider as the most highly funded piece of clothing in crowdfunding history, Baubax is the 6th most successful kickstarter ever. Baubax’s multi-have travel jackets attracted over 55,000 backers in total and raised over $11.5 million before even launching. Husband and wife team, Hiral Sanghavi and Yoganshi Shah, noticed a gap in the market for economical and productivity- improvedly designed travel jackets, and strove to create a product that addresses the many inconveniences that travelers face.
