[drewbix]

Hey thanks for the reply, these are definitely some of the things we've struggled with the most. We have a message that is challenging to communicate clearly and succinctly. This is something we will continue to iterate on and test in the early stages.

We think the returns are excellent, "on an APR basis" as you said, which is another thing we need to communicate better. A 10% return in 6 months is kind of the same as a 5% return in 3 months, both of which are 20% in a year which is great. We don't think APR really captures this idea correctly though and may want to instead come up with some similar metric that will allow you to better compare the offerings.

We also need to better communicate the backers' responsibilities in that promoting isn't exactly optional. This is a similar transaction as buying goods on Ali Baba then putting them up for sale on Amazon and Ebay. If you do that but don't do any marketing, you can't have an expectation of profit. Some goods may sell naturally, and especially with the help of the other backers, but you should do your part to help with the marketing.

[notahacker]

To clarify my earlier comment, the APR is the upside but you also could benefit from some metric which more clearly indicates the risk factor. If ACME Fashion needs to shift $6k worth of stock [representing half the consignment] in the next six months to repay their backers, is that substantially less, about the same or substantially more than the amount of stock they managed to shift over the last six months?

For example with Allegory Handcrafted Goods I can see they made $183,500 in sales last year, so sticking a couple of hundred bucks towards buying them $12k worth of stock to shift doesn't seem too risky; probably you could highlight that figure more... With some of the other products though, I'm left with numbers of social followers in lieu of any indication of whether they've actually sold comparable quantities of stock before.

And frankly, I'd want rather more than 10% to front up cash if these vendors' recognition was so low the actually needed my contribution to their social marketing campaigns.

I doubt I'm your target audience for this anyway :-)