Scott Wilson, founder and principal of design studio Minimal, says the company is working on an app that will pay fans to promote and sell its products.
Wilson, who was formerly global creative director at Nike, used Kickstarter in 2010 to raise nearly $ 1 million for TikTok and LunaTik, which turn an iPod Nano into a watch. 13,512 people backed the project to create what Wilson describes as “conversation-starting products.” The watchbands are now sold in Apple Stores.
In large part, though, sales have spread through word of mouth. “We’ve heard through the community how people are actually selling our product on the street or in bars,” Wilson told GigaOM staff writer Ki Mae Heussner at GigaOM Roadmap. Some fans have even printed business cards with the correct spelling of LunaTik to pass out to other people. “I’ve been thinking for the last year, how do I pay these people to become the largest sales force out there?”
Minimal is launching an app to “mobilize” people and pay them cash to sell the TikTok and LunaTik. The company is submitting the app to the iTunes Store this week. “Figuring out how to distribute cash instead of rewards or points” took awhile, Wilson said, but eventually the company plans to expand the technology to other brands.
Check out the rest of our RoadMap 2012 live coverage here, and a video recording of the session follows below:
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