How Jennifer Zhang Grew from a Successful Kickstarter Launch to a $300k Company in One Year

Have you ever had an idea so good that complete strangers gave you almost $100,000 to start it?

Most people only dream about it. But in Fall 2019, Jennifer Zhang funded her Kickstarter for Rotate Watches to 600% of her original goal.

Rotate Watches offers novice engineers all-in-one kits to build their own mechanical watch. A lifelong tinkerer, Jennifer first became intrigued by mechanical watches in college.

"It fascinated me how something so small could work so precisely without any batteries. Naturally, I decided to build one myself to best understand mechanical watches!"

But building a DIY mechanical watch was more difficult than she expected.

Not only could Jennifer not find an all-in-one kit, she had to order parts from all over the world, which took months, with no instructions on how to assemble them. Some pieces even arrived broken!

A natural entrepreneur whose tinkering had included trying prior startups, Jennifer saw a business opportunity. If she had this problem, she probably wasn't the only one.

It was November 2017, and Jennifer happened to be starting an entrepreneurship class at the time, one where students were asked to grow a theoretical business using what they learned in the classes. She decided to turn her watchmaking kit concept into her project, but to genuinely execute everything she learned.

Over the course of the class, she created a concept for a DIY watchmaking kit, available via mail order. That concept was the start of Rotate Watches.

With the help of a classmate (who ended up going to Harvard Architecture School), Jennifer created three versatile, wearable designs for watches, all of which she still uses today.

She reached out to many hobbyists, watch enthusiasts, and experts in the watch and watch repair industry to validate her idea, both in terms of feasibility and likelihood of sales.

Finally, she set up conceptual workflows for her backend, using her prior startup experience and $1,000 of her own savings to make it work.

Everything was in place, ready for whenever Jennifer wanted to actually start ordering and making Rotate happen... but that's where she paused.

She still had college to finish, and immediately after graduation she went to work for a tech startup.

It wasn't that she didn't believe in Rotate. It was that she didn't feel like she had the money to launch it the way she wanted, and she didn't want to bet her whole life on one idea.

Instead, she worked hard at her day job, and kept looking for a sign.

Ah yes. The sign. Every founder (or wannabe founder) knows about it. The magical sign from the universe that's there to tell you it's time to make a leap of faith, quit your job, and go all-in on your idea.

But, like most founders who were waiting for a sign, after about six months at her job, she realized one wasn't coming. It never would. Jennifer just had to trust herself.

In October 2019, with just two months of entry-level salary savings, Jennifer quit her job. She planned to launch in October, in time for the holidays. The only prepwork she did was preparing to live as cheaply as possible.

She knew she couldn't execute the plans she'd made in college with the funds she had. Banking on the idea validation she had from other watch enthusiasts, she turned to Kickstarter.

Her launch was on October 15th, 2019, and lasted for 30 days. Her target was $15,000. Instead, she met her hopes in less than two days, and by the end of the month she'd raised $91,000, 600% of her goal. The project was chosen as a Kickstarter Staff Pick, which helped with visibility. (She talks a lot more about the launch in this Indie Hackers forum post.)

Armed with the funds she needed, Jennifer was able to take more time to make the product even better. She spent the next eight months trying out a wide range of suppliers, repairing the fractured supply chain to get everything a watchmaker needed in one box.

"We finalized over a dozen different suppliers from all over the world, including Asia, the US, and Europe."

She also took time to improve her user buying experience. She'd minored in Web Development in college, but was now able to hire a professional to build and maintain the site.

During this time, she took online pre-orders, switching to live sales in 2020.

Her revenue comes purely from product sales, through Stripe, PayPal, and Klarna. And while the bulk of sales are from Jennifer's website, she also has partnerships with 40 retail locations in the US, plus distributors in Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. A small remainder of sales come from partnerships with men's fashion sites such as Touch of Modern.

Those partnerships also help with marketing, though paid ads work better, and word of mouth works best of all. Jennifer notes that working with a marketing agency has been very helpful for growing her revenue.

Now that she's successfully launched, Jennifer's goal is to keep growing and become a household name, likely by spreading into retail locations and experimenting with licensing, as well as offering new styles.

"It's all very exciting and moving so fast. Entrepreneurship really is the best job in the world, and it's so amazing to see your creation grow."

We asked Jennifer what advice she had for other indie hackers, especially those in eCommerce, and she had plenty:

• Always set up and sign NDAs and partnership contracts, even if you think it won't be necessary
• Outsource design work to designers, web work to web developers, advertisements to agencies, and easy or small tasks to interns
• You'll probably lose a lot of money before you gain it; investment is normal and necessary and an entrepreneur needs to fight risk-averse behavior and learn to love risk
• Don't be afraid of criticism, take it in and improve
• Don't lose sight of retail locations, you may make higher margins on your website sales, but retail locations are how you'll get all over the country and become a household name
• Do weekly and monthly check-ins where you reflect on your company, the status it's in, and any improvements that can be done because, sometimes, things are moving so fast that you don't have this time to reflect, and it's necessary to keep your company constantly improving and have a sight of the big picture
• Don't be afraid to work with pro agencies if you're not sue what you're doing. It's lower risk and often less expensive than hiring in-house.
• Look for constant ways to improve and update your UX and UI

"My top piece of advice is that it's not as hard as you think. Sure, the big picture may seem daunting, but each individual step is very doable, and you can get there."

"One thing that I'd recommend is listening to the (sometimes potential) customer has always been an extremely important point for me. If someone ever suggests an improvement to your product or bring up how you can improve, always understand that the customer is right. They feel that way for a reason, and you can make a change to avoid this in the future."

If you'd like to learn more, check out rotatewatches.com, or follow them on social media (where their handle is always the same):

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter

You can also get in touch with Jennifer at hello@rotatewatches.com.