I recently spoke with Loriano Pagni about his successful X500 Plus Kickstarter campaign and his experiences with the platform.
* Hi, thank you for taking your time to answer my questions.
Hi. 
* First I’d like to congratulate you on leading first Amiga related hardware project successfully crowd funded on Kickstarter.
Thank you.
A lot of its success is due to the dedication of some members of the Amiga community; especially members of amigaworld.net and amiganews.it, some of them have worked really hard, spreading the word about it and my thanks goes to them. 
*Many personal projects in the Amiga community are promoted and distributed through Amiga websites and forums. What convinced you to choose Kickstarter instead?
Originally I thought to keep the project within the Amiga community, like I did with the Minimig and the 1541Utlimate cases (within the C64 community). I knew that there were some people, like me who like wedge shaped cases. Of course such design has little sense in the 21st century where expendable, cheap, detached keyboards are the norm but many, and I’m one of them, love the shape, the object. They like looking at it, they like tinkering and modding it if necessary, see how much they can fit inside, changing it and improving it. It’s not just a box thrown out of the way, hidden under a desk. I thought the community alone would have been enough to finance it but it didn’t turn out that way, mainly because of the high production costs for such a niche product and the continuous alterations and prototyping. People nowadays like small, flat things… so at this point I decided that Kickstarter was the way to go.
* After 7 years, the X500 Plus case is your longest design in the making. Kickstarter may be over, but there is still hard work ahead of you?
Oh yes, we’ve only just started…
It’s nearly fourteen days and Kickstarter are still working hard collecting all the pledges, I’ve not seen a cent yet…
Unfortunately a few people haven’t paid what they pledged so this is going to slow the process down a bit, I’ll probably have to go back and cut down some features to make do with the money we have.
Working on and off on this case it’s been a mixture of fun and hardship for many reasons; you hit so many obstacles during the process. I redesigned the case so many times I don’t actually remember its original shape anymore. What I’ve shown on my webpage, Amiga sites and youtube is only a fraction of the complete work.
Seven years ago this was just an idea. I remember looking inside my A1200 with the BlizzardPPC 060 60Mhz and PPC 266MHz, 256 MB Ram and BVision and thinking it was a great machine but I wanted more so it went inside a Power Tower with a Mediator, Voodoo cards, Ethernet card, Soundblaster, you name it. But I’ll never forget a few months later looking at the 1200 shell next to my A500 Plus…
One thing that kept pushing it back was trying to include features people were asking and trying to make it compatible with as many motherboards as possible (the SAM boards for AmigaOS4, some x86 boards for AROS/Linux/Windows, offering the expansion slot etc…etc…) every time I added something a new prototype had to be made…so I’m now glad the design is set. The case has gone through so many changes it would take a day to list them all. 
* Since you decided to crowdfund the X500, how long it took to prepare a presentation for the Kickstarter page and accepting pledges?
I’d say a week to set up the page, maybe two with adjustments, but you’re always adding, modifying, writing descriptions, thinking about rewards etc… I’m not sure I can calculate the time spent on it, whenever I wasn’t working (my day job) or spending time with the family I would work on it, sometimes every night until late, during holidays. You get totally absorbed.
* While preparing the campaign have you been concerned to what was the main factor to determine fundraising goal?
The production costs are your main concern, you want to make sure you get enough funding to pay the people who do work for you, in my case the aluminium and steel factory, the plastic factory and then add all the parts you need to purchase; screws, nuts, bolts, rubber feet, fans, glue, keyboards, LEDs etc…etc…that is the minimum, then add the Kickstarter fees, the VAT and the amazon payments fees and then listen to what Kickstarter say which is “ask for the minimum required”.
Also adding your time and money to the project is something that you have to write off unfortunately.
Another concern was the rewards; for a project like this it’s difficult to come up with rewards. As you can see the majority of the pledges came from people who REALLY wanted the case. For other projects it’s easier to come up with rewards, for example with a music CD you can give a track away, a download, the CD case, the artwork etc…etc…
* You mentioned that the Kickstarter campaign was meant only to cover parts and production costs. If you knew earlier X500 Plus will be crowd sourced, would you have made different design choices?
That is a difficult one to answer. Crowd funding was never in the plans. At one point I remember having to decide between stopping development (as it had already sucked up a great amount of money and time), disappoint those who really wanted it or carry on regardless, I decided to go for the second option.
It was always going to be a homebrew project so I never really thought about crowd funding until the very last moments, if I had known from the beginning I would probably have changed a few things or stuck to the original (non-cost saving version). Initially the case was going to be even more expensive but it didn’t go down well with the community so I went back to it and cut design features and things which make it “cheaper”, but I’m happy the way it turned out considering my limited resources..
* Despite X500 being a one-man project, you engaged the community from the beginning. Have you tried reaching outside before Kickstarter? Any results?
Not really, it was always going to be a project with me and some members of the community as the targets.
I’m glad to have mentioned websites and Amiga related companies in my Kickstarter campaign, I saw this as a great opportunity to publicise our community and refresh people’s memory, showing that we’re very much alive.
At one point I was worried that it wouldn’t get funded and it would have made our community look absent…but it turned out well.
Free publicity is always good especially for our “small” community. I like to think that the X500 Plus and Evo have, if only for 40 days, put the Amiga name in the spotlight.
Naming ACube, Hyperion, AROS, MOS, amigakit, A-Eon, amigaworld, amiganews.it, Relec, Vesalia etc…etc…several times on the project page was, of course, intentional…it was my small contribution towards these companies and group of people who have given and still give so much.
* After an initial surge of supporters, around 31st backer, there was quite a long stretch of time when it just stopped. Did you have any contingency plan?
Apparently that is something that happens often, especially with “niche” products but I have to admit that I became worried when it stalled.
That is when I decided to make the Evo (the case with a mechanical keyboard, laser etched keys, Amiga keys etc…). This was a good and a bad move. Good as it invited more people to pledge bad because it costs a lot more to make. I never accounted for the Evo initially; it was always going to be the Plus. With a couple of weeks to go I decided to make the Evo for those who love mechanical keyboards and requested one. The Evo version meant spending more money and time and producing two different cases so it’s easy to see that not even the full Kickstarter funding will be enough and I’ll have to absorb the high cost of making the Evo with time.
* AmigaWorld.net with amiganews.it account for little over a third of pledges. Did you expect so many backers from outside the community?
The Amiga related sites did a great job but to be honest I wasn’t expecting so many people outside the community to support the project. People from the C64 and Atari community, some people who had never heard of these types of computers before and were interested in creating their own “retro looking” case with modern hardware inside. I’ve had people saying that there wasn’t enough publicity and only heard about it after the event. I’m just glad I’ll be able to build them for those few who were longing for one.
* Do you think it would be possible to reach to so many backers without Kickstarter?
Honestly? I always thought that the community alone would have been enough. My only advice? Make sure you ARE going to make some money because otherwise it becomes a very expensive hobby.
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has supported this project. In a sense you’ve become part of it and made it happen either by donating or just mentioning it to someone else. I’d also like to thank ACube for their support, Trevor of A-Eon, Hyperion, the Aros guys and everyone at amiganews.it and amigaworld.net. You’ve been great!
* Thanks again for taking your time!
You’re welcome.
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