Analytics: Kickstarter January 2014

With the increased interest in crowd-funded playing card projects particularly on Kickstarter, we are publishing a monthly tracking report as part of our popular Analytics series. The goal is to give an analytical insight into the month-on-month performance of projects and how these numbers are tracking cumulatively year-to-date.

The first month of 2014 started with a bang with the launching of 2 our most anticipated decks this year. Carrying the momentum from the end of last year, the number of funded projects have expectedly surpassed those from the same time last year. The chart below describes how this year is tracking against the numbers from 2013 as benchmark.

Playing Card Projects 

Month-on-month, 2014 opened relatively flat with the number of successful projects in January just one above that of December.

Here is what the month looked like in numbers:

With the holiday hangover over, 58% of the projects was launched in the mid-January.

Meanwhile, a here is how projects performed over the month. Notice the large % of live projects this month:

Funding

A total of $725k was raised by all projects in January. This is 10% more than the prior month.

As expected the Blue Fontaine ($67k), Seven Seas ($67k) and One Million ($75k) gained momentum over the month and managed to finish above the $60k mark.

Here is a look at the top 5 most funded playing cards:

The top 5 successful playing cards projects for the month contributed 82% to the overall funding of successful projects! Incredible!

The average funding goal of successful project this month is $18.6k. We expect the average to come down slightly (to around the $15k mark) as the year progresses. In comparison, the average funding goal for 2013 is $9.6k.

Backers 

Approximately 17.1k backers were recorded across all projects in January. This is 119% above the 2013 average of 7.8k.

Backers continue to spend big with average pledge per backer at $51.45. This is 26% higher than 2013 average. The above average $/backer is mostly driven by Carbon Fiber - $118/backer, Real Metal - $90/backer and Blue Fontaines - $65/backer.

The following is a month-on-month comparison for 2014 with the 2013 curve used as benchmark.

Top 5 funded Projects by backer numbers below:

Launched Projects 

Here are the top 10 most funded projects launched in January:

At the moment, Teach by Magic's Different Deck is the most funded this month with Requiem and Origins not far behind. The surprising thing for me this month is the slow up-take of Origins. No doubt the project will hit its funding goal but I am hoping it will hit some of the stretched goals as well.

Overall, a great start to 2014 with the strong momentum carried over from last year. If the 26 projects launched this month is any indication how the year is going to go, it will be a busy one.


Data provider: