A kitchen accident requiring emergency room stitches led Sam Shipp and his wife Jen to invent the Knife Glider, a tool designed to prevent injuries while using a sharp knife. To raise money to develop and fine tune their kitchen accessory, Sam Shipp, who has an MBA, turned to non-traditional resources: crowd funding and venture capital funds.
Shipp choose Indiegogo, an international crowd funding platform, to solicit $10,000 in contributions online. “It took me about a month of intensive preparation to prepare the video. We shot it ourselves, so I had to learn video software and editing.” The Shipps had to take time to determine the best perks, the incentives, to reward the different levels of support.
“I actually made quite a few mistakes during the campaign,” admitted Shipp, who knew no one who had used crowd funding. “We started our 30-day campaign and then started to build awareness. We found out that most successful campaigns build up anticipation first and then launch.”
Indiegogo gives campaign developers the option of receiving the funds only if the goal is reached and then paying Indiegogo a 4% fee, or the option of receiving whatever funds are collected without reaching the goal, with an Indiegogo fee of 10%. The credit card intermediary takes 3% as well.
“I was so confident that I said we’re going for all or nothing. That sure put the pressure on us. I was thinking about it 24/7,” Shipp said. Knife Glider reached and then exceeded its campaign funding goal two days before the deadline. “We are very, very grateful to everyone who contributed and made it possible.”
The next step is using the funding to improve the functionality and attractiveness of the prototype, work up a CAD design, and have it professionally produced. (The first Knife Glider was made in the Shipps’ back yard.)
Shipp left the corporate world in 2007 and started Brilliant Elegance LLC, a window-washing company as a one-person operation. With the help of Mission EDC’s Ruby Red Ventures funding, that business has expanded to two crews that also fulfill contracts for commercial janitorial and building maintenance, such as duct cleaning and parking lot repair. That initial grant enabled Shipp to spend time bringing in new business, rather than always being on the worksite himself.
The concept of gliding food off a knife blade came up in 2010, the year he established Brilliant Inventors LLC. The Shipps were among the 50 innovators chosen to participate in Invent Help, which exposed them to potential distributors. Told that the Knife Glider needed a ‘wow’ factor so people would buy it, Shipp came up with attachments for chopping, peeling, and grating along with a case that doubles as a cutting board. He has continued to tweak the original Plexiglas product to make it more efficient and more packable, while BPA-free and dishwasher safe. The product has sparked interest in potentially lucrative markets. “Buyers from QVC told me, ‘Get the inventory and then come see us.’ They need 7,000 to 10,000 units. If it sells well, they ask you to come back again and again.”