Amazon now has a shop window dedicated to Kickstarter products

Alan Martin July 28, 2016

Once the excitement of a successful Kickstarter campaign dies down, who knows anything about your product? The crowdfunding platform is very good at inspiring donations from enthusiasts, but terrible at making a product go mainstream. Once the funding period is over, you’re on your own, kid.

Amazon now has a shop window dedicated to Kickstarter products

Perhaps not for much longer, though. Amazon has announced it is opening up a dedicated section of its website specifically for Kickstarter success stories. It’s live right now, though currently only in the United States – no word yet on whether the UK will get a similar shop window.

It’s a good move for Kickstarter, and not a bad one for Amazon which gets to sell innovative new products that have a proven market, without passing on the inherent risk of crowdfunding. Or, as Jim Adkins, vice president at Amazon, put it: “Working with Kickstarter is a great way for us to hear directly from customers what products they care about, since they truly hold the power to bring these products to life.” amazon_kickstarter_shop_window

“We created the Amazon Launchpad program a year ago to serve creators, inventors, and startups. Our goal is to enable them to reach Amazon’s hundreds of millions of customers and to overcome one of the biggest challenges any startup faces – bringing their product to market successfully.”

There are more than 300 Kickstarter products now featured in the section, although some crowdfunded products have gone on to bloom without assistance: the Pebble smartwatch, for example, or Cards Against Humanity, which has the stamp of “#1 Best Seller” on the site.

Still, not everything can flourish outside of crowdfunding under its own steam, and this is another opportunity for great ideas to break through. Amazon shoppers can now purchase genuinely innovative products, without the risks inherent in crowdfunding, while potentially huge products get a second bite at the marketing cherry. Seems like a win-win to me.

Image: Xabier Cid used under Creative Commons