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“For anyone who is looking to crowdfund, I recommend finding a tribe.”
Welcome to Failure Friday, a collection of short stories about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not more.
Today's story features Leeanne Antonio, founder of Bad Day Box, which offers "snail mail self-care." It's a modern care package you can send to a friend. Each box is personally curated with handmade, small-batch gifts from women-owned, BIPOC-owned, LGBTQI-owned, eco-friendly, and charitable businesses.
The idea grew out of heartbreak. When life didn't go as planned, Leeanne channeled her bad days into finding healthy ways to heal, and many people showed up for her. Then she looked around and saw friends dealing with health issues, grief, and heartbreak. There's no shortage of bad days that need brightening. Flowers, plants, and edible arrangements can feel generic. She saw a need.
She soft-launched in late 2019 and planned a Kickstarter campaign for International Women's Day in March 2020. When the pandemic hit, it didn't feel like a good time to ask for money, so she paused. In 2021, she tried again, with the same International Women's Day target. She took many days off from her day job to create branded assets, drawing on 15 years of marketing experience. She submitted the project to Kickstarter for review a week before launch.
Less than 48 hours before her launch date, Kickstarter rejected it. The reason: a resale component. Curating products from various small businesses still counts as resale under their rules. A basket of homemade pastries is fine; a basket of muffins from a grocery store is not. Leeanne disagreed, since the boxes wouldn't exist without her theming, selecting, and naming them. Kickstarter said it would reconsider if she changed the rewards, but she didn't want to rework everything for a platform that might still say no.
She could host the campaign on her own website, but that would take more time and reach fewer people, and she'd miss International Women's Day. Then she remembered a Facebook group she belonged to for women in ecommerce. She searched it for "crowdfunding" and found iFundWomen. She submitted everything she'd already created. They approved it overnight, and she launched within 24 hours of International Women's Day.
Could she have prevented this? She says 100 percent. But entrepreneurs wear all the hats, move fast, and often juggle a full-time job too. In the end, the stars aligned. The iFundWomen community is smaller and personally invested in women-owned businesses. They guided her through the campaign, included Bad Day Box in a lot of promotion, and even gave her a grant for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Her advice for anyone looking to crowdfund: find a tribe, even if you're only a fly on the wall in a Facebook group. You'll likely find someone who crowdfunded successfully, someone who learned lessons along the way, and someone who will validate everything you're feeling.
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. Check out BadDayBox.co or follow on Instagram at @baddayboxco.
