Dive Brief:
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Amazon Launchpad, an offshoot of the online marketplace created to showcase startups, announced on Wednesday it will feature more than 300 Kickstarter products.
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Consumers can scroll through categories such as Electronics, Wireless Accessories, Home & Kitchen, Books, Movies & TV, and Toys & Games, as well as themes such as STEM Products, Always Be Learning, Exquisite Objects, Inventing The Future and Public Benefit.
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Quirkier items include computer kits from Piper, portable “smart” guitars from Zivix, photo cases from Prynt and bacteria-fueled battery packs from MudWatt.
Dive Insight:
Kickstarter has ignited a new way to conduct e-commerce, and retailers have taken notice. Last year Etsy began piloting a crowdfunding feature to help its sellers raise money to expand their businesses and Amazon itself has included a crowdfunding feature as part of its Exclusives storefront.
Like Amazon’s answer to Etsy, Amazon Homemade, the Launchpad effort displays the e-retail giant’s propensity to add to its merchandise mix with specialized “store-within-store” product pages that could capture another swath of consumers. Amazon created Launchpad a year ago while working with more than 100 venture capital firms, startup accelerators, and crowdfunding platforms to help more than 1,000 startups launch products in the U.S., Europe and China.
Amazon Vice President Jim Adkins said in a statement that he hopes working with Kickstarter will allow Amazon and innovators to hear directly from customers about what products they like. "Our goal is to enable [entrepreneurs] 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,” Adkins said.
The curation approach makes it easy to find the new products developed by entrepreneurs and creatives that have crowdfunded their inventions. And it provides them a way to sell their goods after the crowdfunding phase of their ventures is over.
