Designers, Makers, and Educators Preorders Total More than $21 Million
SEATTLE — (BUSINESS WIRE) — October 23, 2015 — Glowforge the 3D laser printer has set a record for the mostfunded one month crowdfunding campaign in history with more than $21,000,000 in preorders. The previous record was held by Pebble Time, which raised $20,338,986 on Kickstarter in one month. The Glowforge crowdfunding campaign is still ongoing until Friday, October 23 at 6 pm PST.
Glowforge debuted to the public for the first time at September 24th at World Maker Faire New York. At the event, Glowforge was awarded three Make Editor’s Choice Awards and made more than 150 prints in a single day. Even though most prints take less than five minutes, lines stretched around the booth and wait times exceeded two hours.
“We are blown away. We needed to raise $100,000 to place our factory order. I was optimistic that this might even be a milliondollar campaign,” said Glowforge CEO and cofounder, Dan Shapiro. “We hit that in the first day. We’re now getting preorders for a Glowforge every minute. We hoped that our vision of a simple device that could print anything from furniture to handbags to sushi would get people excited. We had no idea people would be this excited. Now, with the campaign just about over, the only thing that matters to us is delighting our customers with a product that’s even better than they were expecting, as quickly as we can."
With a team of just 14 (but growing quickly), the company went overnight from a stealthy startup to frontpage news with unprecedented attention from a community of makers, designers, educators, and artisans. Customers from more than 70 countries have preordered Glowforges for use in their homes, schools, nonprofits, and makerspaces for uses ranging from woodworking to chocolatiering. As word got out, fans started arriving unannounced at Glowforge headquarters, driving from as far away as Canada and Portland to ask for a peek at the printers. An open house had lines down the block, printing everything from an octopus to a marriage proposal (he said yes). The event was attended by more than 100 people who came to see Glowforge inperson for the first time, in addition to several hundred who attended virtually via livestream.
Also putting the machine through its paces were skeptical journalists from around the country. "We knocked on Glowforge's Seattle office doors, fully intending to squint, furrow, and cast doubt upon this sales pitch. Instead, we left the office seeing something that actually exists—and salivating at what the Glowforge can already do,” said Ars Technica editor Sam Machkonech, in a recent article.
Glowforge plans to ship preordered units in the first half of 2016. International shipping is available to more than 100 countries and preorders can be placed at http://glowforge.com. Glowforge previously raised $9 million in funding from Foundry Group, True Ventures, and executives from Google and MakerBot.
About Glowforge
Glowforge is a Seattlebased startup that makes a 3D laser printer. Glowforge's wireless desktop laser makes it simple for designers and engineers to take products directly from digital design to reality. Unlike 3D printers that build objects out of plastic, Glowforge uses lasers to print products out of durable and beautiful materials like wood, leather, acrylic, paper and fabric. Leveraging advanced software stored in the cloud instead of expensive hardware, Glowforge is both affordable and easy to use. For more information, please visit http://glowforge.com/.
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