Amazon on Wednesday announced Build It, a program similar to Kickstarter that allows you to pre-order potential products that the company will only create if it receives enough support in 30 days. Three days later, the first product has already reached its goal: the Smart Sticky Note printer will start shipping somewhere between July and September.
Built It pre-orders guarantee a special price that will only be charged if and when the product is shipped. If the pre-order goal is not reached, the product will not be manufactured and no one will be charged. It is a low-risk way for Amazon to try out potential new products without incurring the total costs of market research and user testing normally required to prove demand. Given the success of Kickstarter and Indiegogo, Amazon may well try the model for its own hardware development process.
The three Build It products available for pre-order are all devices with Alexa technology. Amazon’s approach of throwing Alexa products on the wall to see which toothpicks can be expensive. All three Build It products are a “first day edition concept” – Amazon has applied this label before to two products it considered producing based on feedback from early users: the Echo Frames smart glasses that received the green light and the smart ring Loop that doesn’t.
The first Build It gadget allows you to print notes with Alexa (it needs to be paired with a compatible Echo device). As a thermal printer, you never need ink or toner. Although the starting price of $ 90 includes a roll of yellow adhesive paper, you will need to refill it with yellow, blue, pink or white paper when the first roll runs out. Now that the target has been reached, the price will rise at 8:59 am in the Pacific on March 19, although Amazon has not specified how much.
The other two products, Smart Nutrition Scale ($ 35) and Smart Cuckoo Clock ($ 80), have 42% and 37% of their goals, respectively. Unlike Kickstarter and Indiegogo, which display a total dollar amount or the total number of orders as their goals, Build It campaigns show only a percentage progress bar.
Still, given the one-month goal window, the first Build It products appear to be winners. Three days later, Amazon’s bet on hitchhiking in the crowdfunding campaign hype seems to be working.
We asked Amazon when exactly the thermal sticky note printer achieved its goal and how many products the company hopes to build. We will update this article if we receive a response.