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Excerpt from original article by Carlye Adler:
"Ivan Wong struggled with his camera strap. It would whip through the air when he turned his lens, occasionally flapping into the frame and destroying the composition. It’s a common issue, but for Wong it was more than an annoyance—as a professional sports photographer, he depended on his ability to capture the perfect moment. A wayward strap could kill an entire assignment. Wong talked to some fellow photographers—his brother, Ben, and his friend Anne Bui, a product developer at Fox Racing. They agreed it was a problem. So they did what any modern maker would: They designed their own solution. The idea was to connect the strap to one point on the bottom of the camera—the threaded tripod mount—instead of two points on the top. That should keep the strap out of the shot and reduce tangling. They grabbed some nuts and bolts from a local workshop and hit Ivan and Ben’s parents’ garage. Their prototype wasn’t pretty, but it worked. They called it the C-Loop and began to think it might have commercial potential.
The team had some manufacturing experience, but they had no idea how to bring a product to market. And money? They didn’t have that either, and it would cost $15,000 to produce a minimum run of 500 C-Loops. They considered pooling their savings (including Ben’s college money) and taking out a loan, but nobody relished that idea.
Then they found Kickstarter, a website where people post descriptions of their projects and anyone can chip in to help fund them. Ben had discovered the site after hearing about a couple of guys who wanted to manufacture a tripod mount for the iPhone 4. Ivan pledged $20—in effect preordering one of the gizmos. “I thought, that could be us,” Ivan says. Using Kickstarter was an appealingly offbeat approach, and there was no risk. Even if they couldn’t raise the full amount, they’d build a following and win some free publicity...."
Read the excellent long article on Wired.com
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