Parke Denim has been in “stealth mode” for the past 6 months developing their website along with a new collection of high quality active denim jeans. To date the company has raised $300,000 in funding. The team now consists of fashion and technology experts with backgrounds from Yahoo, Google, Paige Denim, and True Religion.
Now they are crowdfunding on Kickstarter and have easily breezed by their funding goal of raising $20,000 during the first week of their campaign. As of today they have raised over $30,000 from 257 supporters. Almost every backer – except a single donor – has effectively purchased their jeans in a highly successful example of using crowdfunding for pretail.
Inspired by active wear the line is engineered to provide superior comfort and fit. The “ACTIVE DENIM” technology lies in the jean’s fit design as well as the innovative fabric, which features a patent-pending technology that uses multiple core yarns with high-stretch fibers to provide 360 degrees of comfort.
In January 2013 PARKE ACTIVE DENIM ran a similar crowdfunding campaign, claiming to be the largest crowdfunded campaign for jeans on Kickstarter at the time. The first round raised over $90,000 from 600 backers in 30 countries – on a goal of rasing $50,000. This time around founder Solomon Liou hopes to set a new record.
With a new web site queued up to help channel traffic to Kickstarter, Parke Denim, will combine the campaign as an invitation-only website where membership will be restricted to control for the limited-production run of their launch collection and have access to wholesale prices at 50% less than in a retail store.
Solomon Liou is a self-taught denim designer who launched PARKE through the campaign on Kickstarter. He sold his first line of selvedge stretch jeans as the reward for backing his company.
“From our first Kickstarter campaign, we were able to help revive denim manufacturing here in New York. Although we have the facility setup, we still need funding to cover the materials and the minimum number of units needed for production to start. The funding for the Premium Active Denim campaign on Kickstarter will be used directly to pay for the fabric, materials, and labor costs to get the new line launched.” Liou says.
With over 4 weeks left in this crowdfunding campaign Liou already has another success on his list. Liou has already proven the popularity of his product. The only question now is how high will this professionally structured crowdfunding campaign go.
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