"Marketing is key. With the right marketing, you’re even able to sell bottled air." -Moons

Introduce us to your business, how you got the idea, and how you sourced any materials.

Moonshades are a limited edition, premium eyewear manufactory. Our first product is a series of cork-composite sunglasses. Our aim is not only to create an – ideally – successful product, but also a brand; an eye-wear laboratory that, in close collaboration with the brand’s consumers, seeks to find innovative and unconventional solutions to real problems.

At the inception of Moonshades, we were seeking out the perfect material for sunglasses. We were looking for a material that fits the following criteria: comfortable, aesthetical, durable and eco-friendly.

As our team leads an active lifestyle, we wanted to create sunglasses that are not accessories that we have to take care of and look out for, but are actually companions in our exploits.

That’s how we arrived at cork. We’ve come up with a special, trademarked cork-composite that is light, durable and easy to work with.

How did you go about manufacturing your product, as that is a major obstacle for many entrepreneurs?

We figured out a modular way of production for our product, which is pretty ingenious. We can increase inventory and production capacity to a certain extent with fairly low investment.

How do you handle the logistics and inventory management of a crowd funding campaign, not knowing how much product you will end up needing?

We have logistics figured out already, by the time we launched our crowdfunding campaign everything was ready for production. Our main goal with the campaign was to raise capital in order to be able to make as many glasses as possible, to grow our inventory. Not all parts are created equal – there are more expensive components to our sunglasses and the purchase of those happen in line with when we receive an order for a new pair of shades.

Tell us about the backend of your business and if there is any online tools or apps you use to stay organized?

Our team consists of 5 people: a designer, a graphic designer, a photographer, a marketer and a project manager. Besides the usual social media channels, we use Trello to organize ourselves.

How have you been able to get the word out about your product? Any direct or online marketing tips?

We did the outreach ourselves, which is unfortunately the weakness of our campaign. We’ve received much publicity in places where crowdfunding isn’t that popular. Now we are understanding that getting featured on websites takes a lot of time – you should have these features ready to go by the time you launch your campaign, so outreach should start months in advance.

What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

It’s important to get in touch with the support team of the crowdfunding platform, they will give you a lot of help and guidance!

What tips do you have for crowd funders and entrepreneurs, from making a crowd funding video to making a website and selling product?

Marketing is key. With the right marketing, you’re even able to sell bottled air, but even the perfect product won’t succeed unless there’s sufficient marketing behind it. Everyone should keep this in mind before launching a crowdfunding campaign.

Lastly, what should consumers know about your product that is different from what is already on the market?

Moonshades are the world’s first cork sunglasses, which means they’re the next generation of the popular wooden frames, or in other words, wooden frames 2.0.