In less than a month, Slimbox raised €99,900 in record time. Thanks to 69 motivated investors, this company will be able to fund its project and move forward with its product. Because of the fascinating public interest for this campaign, we decided to sit down with Filip Roose, CEO and co-founder of Fit Things to gather his feelings on his MyMicroInvest adventure.
Together with his father Rik and brother Kristof, Filip Roose built Slimbox, a machine that cuts perfectly fitted boxes out of flat sheets of corrugated cardboard. For them, it was already at a very early stage that they came in contact with crowdfunding and MyMicroInvest in particular. “The MyMicroInvest team is very active when it comes to getting new projects on board. But as things were going very fast for us, and still being a small company, it took us a while to pinch the right moment to actually go for that crowdfunding and to fulfill all the necessary steps to get things right. But we’re glad we finally did!” – Filip Roose.
An element that Filip wished to highlight is the fact that even though fundraising is a complex step, there is a team that guides you in the best way possible and “even though we understood from the beginning how serious this was, we didn’t really comprehend the depth of it, until we actually did it. And we don’t regret it at all.” – Filip Roose.
When asked about why the fundraising campaign had such a huge success, Filip believes that it’s because they offer a great product that truly responds to a need, a product that people can relate to, but also it’s because MyMicroInvest works hard to make it look very professional by organising events to showcase the campaign or by writing articles about the product and the company. This even helped expand their fan base. “We are very sure that people only heard about us for the first time thanks to this campaign and that was part of the whole setup. Hence, mission accomplished.” – Filip Roose.
But what’s next for Slimbox? First of all, they wish to expand their dealer base. According to Slimbox’s CEO, thanks to those dealers, they can actually sell their machines and make sure that the best service is delivered. Secondly, adding new and extra features to the machine is also in the works. “The great thing about it, is that all these extras come for free to all owners of a machine. And trust me, we still have some cool features up our sleeves.” – Filip Roose. The next step will be the creation of another model: Slimbox-pro (working title). Not to go too much into details but the plan was always to take the current technology and put it in an even more advanced product.
And what advice would Slimbox give to the next start-ups wishing to raise funds on MyMicroInvest? “Take sufficient time to do this and get yourself informed. This should also be the case for anything that you do.” – Filip Roose.