Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo and the like have opened up the means of production to an entire generation of innovators by skipping the need for giant financial institutions to offer loans, by bringing ideas directly to the people. One site in Singapore is taking a completely different approach. Haystakt has been a marketplace for independent “makers” as the site calls them. Its new Project feature doesn’t make it a crowdfunding site, it makes it a crowdpricing site.
One of the hardest decisions a new business makes is finding that sweet spot of pricing and production. The lower the cost of your product, the more people order it and the more you save money using the economy of scale. However, if you price it too low and not enough people buy your product, your profit margin could be destroyed or you could end up with a bunch of unsold inventory.
Haystakt helps solve this problem. Customers who see a product they want, commit to buy it. The more people who commit to buy it, the lower the price goes. Every product has a price curve that Haystakt helps the companies create based off of their production costs and goals. As more people commit to buying a product, the lower the price goes for everyone, even those that had committed at a higher price.
Now, I know what you are thinking, what stops you from waiting until the last moment and committing to a product after the community has driven down the price? Well, nothing really, but that isn’t the way to get the cheapest prices on Haystakt.
Haystakt rewards early adopters, if you commit to buy a product at a high price when the campaign is new, not only will you get the discounted price as more people hop on the product, but each product also has an early adopter bonus. As Haystakt explains it:
For example, a project might have an early adopter bonus of $0.20 per person. If you order today, and the project eventually closes with 30 people after you, your final price gets reduced by $0.20 x 30 = $6.
So not only will you get the discount from the economy of scale, but you are rewarded for being one of the first to take the plunge on a company.
As Haystakt is based in Singapore, most of the projects don’t ship to the United States (although, I was able to find a few that do). Hopefully that will change as the site grows in size and popularity. In the meantime, it is a very novel take on the crowdfunding model.
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