Case Study
How MVMT’s Indiegogo Campaign Turned into a $100 Million Acquisition
MVMT has broken records ever since launching their Indiegogo campaign. Their latest record? Being acquired for $100 million. Learn more about Indiegogo and how you can become the next crowdfunding success story.
Learn More About Crowdfunding
Company
MVMT makes affordable, fashionable watches for people around the world
https://mvmtwatches.comHeadquarters
Los Angeles, California
Industry
Fashion
Founders
Jake Kassan, Kramer LaPlante
If there’s no time like the present, MVMT is making full use of every second. As one of the watch industry’s hottest new brands, MVMT is changing what it means to make timepieces, proving that with a good idea and a strong following on Indiegogo you can build an empire, and be acquired for $100 million, in no time at all.
By the Numbers: MVMT's Journey to $100 Million
$300k
3,000
$80M
$100M
Jake Kassan
Co-Founder, MVMT
Six years ago, MVMT started as a simple idea in Jake Kassan’s mind. He believed that owning a high-quality, good-looking watch shouldn’t have to break the bank. And as Kassan looked around, he observed that few of his fellow millennials wore watches, largely because they lacked affordable, sophisticated options.
When Kassan and his friend Kramer LaPlante began to research the market, they realized that by cutting out the traditional middlemen of retail and distributing watches primarily online, they could sell stylish, well-made watches for under $100, or about half the price of other entry-level watches.
So Kassan and LaPlante formed MVMT, the first company to offer high-quality, fashion-forward watches at an affordable price point.
But a major obstacle stood between the MVMT team and their vision of a more accessible watch market. Banks were unwilling to loan them the money they needed to get the business off the ground.
“We knew we were onto something, but banks don’t typically just take your word for it, especially when you’re 23,” Kassan says. “For us, crowdfunding just made sense.”
Jake Kassan
Co-Founder, MVMT
That’s when the MVMT team turned to Indiegogo. Crowdfunding offered a perfect platform to obtain an initial stream of capital, directly from the consumers they’d be selling to, in order to launch their business.
Before their campaign launched, MVMT put together a growth hack marketing approach to drum up excitement. “We told everyone we’d ever met to support the campaign,” Kassan says. “We even went to college fraternities to get them to support us on day one. We told literally everyone.”
And it worked. Within two weeks, they raised over $15,000, and the momentum caught the eye of Indiegogo’s audience of millions of early adopters, who contributed to the campaign en masse. After two months, MVMT had $300,000 in their company coffers.
The injection of cash gave MVMT the runway they needed to take their idea from an interesting prototype to a fully fledged business. With the funds raised on Indiegogo, the MVMT team perfected their designs, found suppliers for their watch movements, and built their website — all which allowed them to sell their first units and start bringing in revenue. And perhaps best of all, they already had 3,000 backers from their Indiegogo campaign to serve as their initial customer base.
Ever since, Kassan’s hunch about high-quality, well-priced watches has proved wildly correct, and MVMT has become a rocketship. After just two years, Forbes named MVMT “the world’s fastest-growing watch company,” and today MVMT brings in over $80 million in revenue annually.
MVMT was so successful, in fact, that incumbent watch companies began clamoring for a piece of the action. In 2018, Movado Group, producer of Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, and Lacoste watches, acquired MVMT for $100 million.
“We didn’t realize it at the time, but getting rejected by venture capital firms was a blessing in disguise,” Kassan says. “Crowdfunding allowed us to retain 100% independence and build the company we wanted, without being beholden to people who might not share the same vision. Indiegogo made it all possible.”
Thanks to their campaign’s success on Indiegogo, Kassan and LaPlante are shaking the watch market to its very foundations, and have made a pretty penny doing it. Going directly to their consumers for backing, they proved their detractors wrong and have reshaped the way people think about watches.
“With crowdfunding, there’s nothing stopping you from turning your ideas into something big,” Kassan says. “Almost every day, I see people walking down the street wearing products we built from nothing. It’s completely unreal, and it’s the most fulfilling thing in the world.”