“We always had that hope…every morning would just be waking up and checking Kickstarter. Some days, it would bump up just a bit, but some days we would lose backers – that was the discouraging part”
With local projects like Quiver and the Smartegg receiving plenty of success on Kickstarter, crowdfunding may seem like the next easy strategy to gain entrepreneurial success.
However, Dawn Lim and Ian Tay, co-founders of local startup Xiao Xiao Media (XXM), will tell you otherwise. In fact, they learnt this lesson the hard way when they made a loss of SGD$20,000 from their first venture on Kickstarter.
Speaking to YP SG, Ian said: “The ideas are plenty, but the dollars are limited.”
The 36 year-old web developer added:
“You must understand that (on Kickstarter) you are competing with other creators, and at the same time, you are trying to attract the Kickstarter community.
You must understand what the community likes, what the first movers are, and who your competition is…If your idea isn’t awesome enough, you won’t get funded.”
With Sad Piggies – a quirky but unique interactive action card game where you help pigs to commit suicide – the pair tried to break into the board games industry by raising $7000 on Kickstarter to launch their concept.
Screenshot from Kickstarter
Despite receiving some support internationally and locally, the project was only able to obtain 144 backers and raise about half of the amount needed with only two weeks left to go.
Lessons In Marketing
Describing it as a “factual” decision that was “not emotional”, they realised that it was impossible to continue. In May, they thus pulled out of the platform and embarked on an ambitious rebranding campaign.
As a result, due to costs in marketing, manpower and resources, the duo lost around SGD$20,000.
Dawn, a 22 year-old UX/UI designer, explained that a misalignment in marketing was one key factor:
“We always had that hope…every morning would just be waking up and checking Kickstarter. Some days, it would bump up just a bit, but some days we would lose backers – that was the discouraging part.
Our main setback was underestimating certain aspects of introducing the product to the market…You really have to think of the marketing, and not just associate it with spending money (on boosting Facebook ads and listings).
It’s really all about being creative, and thinking about what the customers want.”
While this big loss would be enough to ruin partnerships, the two were surprisingly optimistic when talking about their rebranding efforts.
When we spoke to them in their small but cozy working space in Ang Mo Kio, the two had a working chemistry that was hard to miss, and this was evident in their response to the loss:
“When we make decisions, it is a collective mistake. It is not like, oh you were in charge of marketing, oh you were in charge of designing…It’s about being a team and acknowledging that this is a mistake that we all fell short of.”
Dawn added:
“We really believe in our product, and we are avid board gamers. We believe that this game will hit somewhere (eventually).”
Ready Player One
With iconic titles like Munchkin and Exploding Kittens lying on their shelf, it is easy to see where their passion for board games derives from.
Arguably the less serious of the two, Ian admits that he grew up idolising Chinese comedian Stephen Chow. With that context, it is easy to understand how the game’s concept came to be.
The two had first met each other while working at a tech startup in their previous job, and the idea came to life after a “bleak day at work”, as Ian explained:
“Me and Dawn were working together, and I remarked to her – hey, it seems like we’re just being lead to the slaughter.
All of us felt that working in this place was very stifling, and that we were just waiting for our ‘execution’.”
As the Chinese say, 要死，死漂亮一点 (If you want to die, die pretty). So, instead of dying, we started our own company (laughs).”
With that, Dawn and Ian opened Xiao Xiao Media at the beginning of this year, and began working on the concept of Sad Piggies.
Once the first prototype was out, the two tested it regularly at a KFC outlet in Serangoon, before heading down to large conventions to test it out among Singaporean gamers.
Ian shared:
“We tested the prototype with over a hundred people – random strangers, not friends. We went down to conventions, and approached people who were waiting (in queues). We got good feedback from there, and we realised that this was something worth our time (sic).
It really gave us the conviction.”
In fact, the card game received plenty of attention in America, as it got featured on websites like crowdfunding.pr, n3rdabl3, gadgetflow, and even a local publication in Kentucky.
They even received invites to attend gaming conventions in America, but were unable to do so due to scheduling conflicts – and they admitted that this lack of presence hampered their chances of success.
Nonetheless, they launched their project on Kickstarter, and the rest is history.
Bringing In New Colour
When YP SG met up with them last week (19 July), the duo was knee deep in their rebranding campaign.
Realising that one of their key mistakes was marketing the product, they immediately set about bringing major improvements in that department.
For one, in order to enhance the game’s marketability, their crew has since tripled to become a group of 6. With an average age of 21, they have assembled a young team of people who come from visual communications, user experience, web development and marketing backgrounds.
Looking at their latest prototype, the improvements can easily be seen.
Dawn explained:
“As our card game has a story, we highlighted the character’s backstory through illustrations in a more ‘nicer’ manner.
Visually, we redesigned the entire thing to add in not just colours, but a story.”
Ian also elaborated on the importance of visuals by using Tesla Cars as an example:
“If Elon Musk created a Tesla car, but it was shaped like a weird egg thing, people will look at it and say no, ‘I’m not going to drive in that’, even though it has all the cool features.
It’s not ‘sexy’ or desirable enough.”
Also, they have also shifted their strategy to focus on a more local market, as Ian explains:
“Even though we kept saying that the major market was in the US, but not being in the US was a big problem, even with the internet.
Not being there locally was a huge challenge. So, we decided to do something more local, so that expectations are lowered.”
With their new strategy, the team at Xiao Xiao Media seems to be moving at full steam ahead.
While they will try to relaunch their campaign on Kickstarter soon, they admit that the platform will be just a “touch point”. Regardless of its success online, they will release the game locally.
In addition, they are exploring other multimedia projects, such as Banana Leadership, a webcomic aimed at featuring the startup culture.
At the end of the day, it’s all about ensuring that their effort pays off:
“We (all) knew that there was something there. People had played the game and enjoyed it.
The team has been putting a lot of effort into this, and that’s why we really want to bring it out and to show the whole team that through everyone’s effort, magic can happen.”
Hopefully, we can see some of that magic in late August, when XXM plans to release Sad Piggies at local board games store Battle Bunker .
