Funding Friday: The Ollie Chair

The Gotham Gal is an investor and Board member of Rock Paper Robot, which designs and manufactures furniture for modern living environments. Their newest design, The Ollie Chair, is coming to market this year and they are running a Kickstarter campaign to pay for the manufacturing of the chair. It launched this week and has already passed it’s initial goal of $80k, but I know that they would like to raise more than that, and they already have. It’s an awesome chair and an awesome company. If you want to get an Ollie Chair and/or support this campaign, the Kickstarter is here.

Here’s the video. It’s great and well worth the 3mins.

#art#crowdfunding

Comments (Archived):

    1. fredwilson

      We have a dog named Ollie.

      1. JimHirshfield

        And a cat named Stanley?

        1. jason wright

          i had a budgie called Jimmy Carter.

        2. JamesHRH

          Shouldn’t it be a big heavy cat named Ollie and a long, thin Daschund named Stanley?

      2. Vendita Auto

        mines called Oye

  2. LE

    My comment about ollie chair repeated from gothamgal.com a few days ago:What caught my eye immediately was multiple chairs on a wall (as art). And then actual art limited editions on the chairs (further down the page). I think there is great and unique potential on that angle alone.

  3. Rob Underwood

    Huge fan of Jessica and Rock Paper Robot. This is fantastic to see. The chair has come so far. Awesome.

  4. Vendita Auto

    Sorry but do not like the lines / style it looks uncomfortable before I sit on it IMO Ikea options have more style. Please do not shoot the messenger.

    1. LE

      What’s great about kickstarter is that it’s the ultimate market research tool. [1][1] Just like the voting booth is to polls.

  5. William Mougayar

    Very creative. I like their Float Table too.

    1. Jessica Banks

      (blushing) Thank you!

  6. jason wright

    is it legal to have your own chair on the subway?

  7. creative group

    CONTRIBUTORS:The idea of placing unwanted items to others who would find a need is already a business model in use and pays you when they are sold. Not really the model Charlie Crystle is describing (Bartering) but rewarding to the bank account and opening up space.Offerup BonanzaSwappaAmazonCraigslistBut there should be room for Charlie’s idea.The days of creating a business plan funding the initial product or service is an old model. Now you get your customers to pay before you make it. Ingenious….We do like this chair. All our current watches are Kickstarter or fund it before it is manufactured. We enjoy having high quality Sapphire crystal without the $15,000 price for the complications and chronograph.Thank Jo Ann on our behalf. She appears to think and support out of the box projects.

  8. JamesHRH

    How many investments has the GG made to date?She must be one of the most prolific Angels on the East Coast.

  10. Dave Pinsen

    This makes me wonder if Kickstarter is basically just an advertising channel now. Do they really need to raise money? They have the product built. Seems they could just pay for manufacturing out of sales.

    1. Jessica Banks

      Hi Dave, This is a great question. The answer is…yes, we do. There are a ton of expenses that go into the manufacturing – things that are difficult to amortize over the life of the product before it’s fully in the market. Tooling to make our chairs is close to 100k if we want to keep the unit prices down. And, though perhaps other companies aren’t so stringent, I want to make sure that we are offering high quality product that is exactly what we claim it to be. This means that we need to go through the sourcing, sampling, tooling process before we start to sell and marketing. The time and resources that go into this process are also costly.As for KS being advertising – well, “hell yes, thankfully it’s that too”! Imagine we had an minimum order of 1000 chairs from our manufacturer that we had to pay for before we sold anything (in addition to all the tooling costs). That is a huge expenditure for a start up. KS let’s us get pre-orders so we have the cash to make the purchase. It’s also a very consolidated and highly visible marketing tool….and it allows us to build a strong global community and reach buyers that a far more expensive marketing strategy may not have accessed.I’d love to hear your hardware manufacturing stories to better understand a part of the landscape I may be missing!

  11. LE

    I’ve got 4 things now that I really liked in concept and never, ever useThis speaks to the emotion created by the project. Selling the sizzle rather than the steak. While everyone is susceptible to this I wonder if certain types of people are more so than others. I have my theories on this.Years ago I came up with a good way to rid hoarders of their possessions. Assuming a family member has enough money they find a way to sell the possessions and turn them into cash. Anyone who has things hanging around (as you do) knows that in order to not feel stupid you need to avoid simply disposing of something you paid money for or think you might need in the future. My Achilles heal is old business records….https://www.youtube.com/wat…