A new footwear product has gained quite the following on Kickstarter, raising more than $654,000 during its less-than-two-month crowdfunding campaign.
The product almost 10,000 backers scrambled for: a shoe-sock fusion called Skinners. They’re made to be ultra-portable, protective and worn everywhere from the office to the running trails.
“People are telling us, ‘I use them for riding, for fitness, when I’m walking with my dog,’ and that’s great, because that’s the purpose of Skinners,” said Petr Prochazka, founder of Skinners Technologies. “It’s not a (shoe), it’s not a sock. We like to call it Skinners.”
The product, which slips on and looks like a chunky sock, is constructed from a mix of natural and artificial fibers, including yarns with silver to stop bacteria, and rayon to help keep feet cool, Prochazka said.
They roll up for easy transportation and claim to be quite durable — GIFs on the Kickstarter page show people in Skinners jumping around on piles of Legos and broken glass.
Skinners launched its Kickstarter campaign June 7, doubling its $10,000 goal in a day. The campaign closed July 21.
Prochazka, who is from the Czech Republic, was spending the summer in Norway when he created the first Skinners prototype. His friend hurt his foot, preventing him from wearing shoes. He could wear socks, but they weren’t very protective.
So Prochazka started thinking.
“Why is there nothing between the shoe and the sock?” he said. “I started looking, ‘Is there something like this on the market, because there must be.’ But I couldn’t find anything.”
He cobbled together the first prototype using scrap materials from a nearby construction site.
Prochazka and his co-founder are overseeing production near the Czech Republic-Germany border. The two of them planned to make the first 1,500 pairs themselves, then train more people to make the Skinners by hand, Prochazka said in June. He was not available to comment after the campaign closed.
Skinners Technologies has a team of three in Europe, plus 15 people in manufacturing. Two people are based in Chicago, the company’s U.S. headquarters.
The company is set to start shipping those first 1,500 pairs this month, according to the Kickstarter page. The following waves of products are expected to ship by December. Skinners Technologies is already taking pre-orders, and wants to offer online sales by 2017.
Sadie Monroe, CEO of Fibre Athletics, a Chicago-based athletic apparel company that ran an Indiegogo campaign last year, said tapping into the right audience is key in the populated world of sports apparel. It seems like Skinners succeeded there, she said.
“In the apparel business, or even specifically sportswear, it’s a bit more of a niche thing to try to nail down through those campaigns because people most often support gadgets or things or inventions rather than clothing,” she said. “They’re coming up with something new, so that’s exciting.”
Now they just have to make sure the manufacturing is in place and be able to meet the towering demand for the product, Monroe said.
It is not unusual for crowdfunded products to disappoint backers. The often-fledgling entrepreneurs who take to crowdfunding sites hit unforeseen glitches in production, and don’t meet the deadlines they set for themselves. Chicago-based Baubax, one of the top crowdfunding projects of all time, shipped its travel jackets months late, leaving dozens of backers angry.
Prochazka said early in the campaign that Skinners Technologies is ready for production.
“We have enough money, now it’s more about the name. It’s about getting into people’s minds and the recognition,” he said. “It’s up to us to show the world that Skinners are here and find the people who want them.”
