Fitmark, a leading bag company for fitness and sports enthusiasts, expands their e-commerce website and digital bag creation capabilities by creating new crowdfunding platform, The Playing Field. This new and creative way of utilizing the power of crowd funding takes the power of creating custom, high-quality gym bags to a whole new level.
The Playing Field will give customers the option to review and pre-order from a number of different bag designs offered each month. If enough customers pre-order a specific bag design, the bag will go into production and ships within 90 days. The first 200 people to pre-order will receive 50 percent off. However, if 200 pre-orders are not met, all customers who “cast their monetary vote” receive their money back.
Fitmark founder, Mark Samuel stated, “Crowdfunding is a phenomenal way to get feedback from our growing customer base. We’ve always taken feedback from our customers very seriously and designed based on their needs. What better way to go into ‘the field’ to find out what real fitness enthusiasts are looking for and deliver without guessing? I believe this will be hugely successful for us and more importantly, deliver something special to our customers.”
During a recent interview with Crowdfund Insider, Samuel discussed what inspired him to launch a platform for gym bags and what inspired its unique name. “The Playing Field is a great opportunity for us to really get a sense of what fitness and sport enthusiasts are looking for when it comes to their bags. This is one aspect of our business and one that we think will help us tap into the minds of our consumers before spending money and resources putting bags into production that they may not want. Our mission is to get a Fitmark bag in the hand of every fitness enthusiast around the world and we believe this will help get us one step closer to that!”
“The story behind the name is simple: it just came to me. As soon as I came up with it, I knew it was the one. It, of course, is very sport and fitness inspired. When I think of a playing field of any type, I think sport. Knowing we wanted to play around with different sport and fitness bag design ideas and really get our consumers involved, the name made perfect sense, as it inspires both the literal playing field as well as the literal idea of playing with ideas and designs. I like how they come together with the name.”
In regards to if the platform plans to expand and add more items besides gym bags, Samuel added, “We’re a fitness bag company so that’s our entire focus. You will only see sport and fitness bag ideas coming through this platform, and we’re super excited about it.”
Fitmark has a presence in 25+ countries and proudly boasts its low overhead of only four full-time employees. With an efficiently running team and high quality products, Fitmark continues to be a model of success for non-tech related companies in the Silicon Valley and the world.
The company recently closed a deal with 24 Hour Fitness, which will make their bags available in most gyms and health clubs, including Equinox, Life Time Fitness, and Western Athletic Clubs, in addition to hundreds of other retailers through the US. The company will release its 2015 line of backpacks, totes, duffels and meal management bags in early January.