Hero Project in search of some crowd support

A REAL HERO: Wayne Losey is a partner in Dynamo Development Labs Partners, a company looking to fund a new line of traditional action figures. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN
A REAL HERO: Wayne Losey is a partner in Dynamo Development Labs Partners, a company looking to fund a new line of traditional action figures. / PBN PHOTO/FRANK MULLIN

Two local toy consultants have put together a plan to develop and market a new line of action figures based not on sports stars or the latest movie, but the world’s greatest heroes in folklore. It’s called The Hero Project, a new generation of action figures based on traditional heroes. Their first figure is based on the Indian hero Rama.
The idea was developed by Go Go Dynamo, a subdivision of Dynamo Development Labs Partners of Pawtucket. “These are so many heroes in the world that really don’t get much attention. Kids don’t even know about them anymore,” said Wayne A. Losey, a partner with the company. He and Tucker Johnson were both experienced designers at Hasbro Inc. and have teamed up on several ventures.
In addition to Rama, the two have hinted at creating the Egyptian god Ra, and American folklore hero John Henry might be next in the series, among others. “We wanted to get the word out in appreciation of these great stories,” said Losey, “and nobody owns them.”
But funding such projects in the early stages is difficult to accomplish. That’s why the company first turned to “crowd funding” Web site Kickstarter.com of New York, in order to judge the public’s interest in the product and attract financial “backers.”
Crowd funding has gained popularity over the last four years. Individuals network and pool their resources, usually by the Internet, to support efforts by other people. It is also used to fund a company by selling small amounts of presale items to many backers.
The company determines how much they need to raise and how long to accept backing, either 30 or 60 days. Each backer – any member of the general public – submits a monetary amount and in turn pre-purchases the product, or a special exclusive gift created specifically for paying backers. It is not a donation nor is it a piece of the company.
Its one fault is that it’s an all-or-nothing venture. If the company achieves its total, the pledges are immediately charged to the backer’s credit cards and the money is used to finance the endeavor. If you fall short, no one is charged and the matter is closed. Funded projects are charged a 5 percent fee for use of the service; those that are unsuccessful are not.
“We have completely operational prototypes – the next stop is manufacturing,” Losey said. “The best thing about Kickstarter is that eventually it’s a way to do presales,” he said. Justin Kazmark, of Kickstarter’s communications team, said many of the projects in the Kickstarter system are either film documentaries or music. “People realize that this is a way to bring your project off the ground and bring it to life,” he said.
According to Kuzmark, 10 percent of the films at this year’s Sundance Film Festival in Colorado were funded through Kickstarter, including Academy Award nominee for short documentary “Incident in New Baghdad” by James Spione.
“Every project creator is crafting a compelling economy around their work. It’s a lot different from traditional retail experience where you buy something and walk out. On Kickstarter you’re a bigger part of the process in bringing your idea to life,” said Kazmark.
Kickstarter was founded in 2008 by Perry Chen, and as of Aug.1, they had reached a total of $300 million in pledged funds for all its projects. They estimate that of the 65,000 individual products it has aided, about 44 percent have been successful.
South Kingstown resident Brian C. Jepson has used Kickstarter every year for the last three years in order to help sponsor the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire that was scheduled for Aug. 11. A maker faire is an event created by Make magazine to celebrate science projects, art projects and the do-it-yourself attitude.
“Each year the [Maker] project has been successful and has received funding,” Jepson said. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” he said. “It’s not only a good way to raise money, it’s a great way to get the community engaged and feel like they own part of it,” he said.
Jepson’s project is substantially smaller than Losey’s, requiring a total pledge of $2,000, as opposed to $125,000. “He has sizeable costs because he is including manufacturing, which can be expensive,” he said.
Unfortunately for Losey, his project was dropped, at least for now, by Kickstarter last week because it fell far short of the ambitious goal of $125,000. But all is not lost for The Hero Project.
“We just sent out a survey through the website’s ‘update’ function in order to judge people’s interest in the project if we try to retool the idea, changing some of the details,” said Losey. “We wanted to see if people were still interested … and we are already getting a lot of interest. … Some people have called about possibly working together and possible investors are calling.” •

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