Investors

Problem

We created FUZE for everyone because now, more than ever, people want to customize their belongings and own their style. However, we didn’t jump into the deep end without first validating our research. Using a brand matrix, we placed companies like custom ink and types of customization such as embroidery and monograms to find our ideal market in this competitive field. Fuze ended with a personalized direct-to-consumer product that offers affordable, personalizable customization.

Marketplace

We believe a great product should be easy to use and have unique features such as customization(like fuze has). After talking with customers we found a low barrier to entry on price would attract customers and lead people to make quick decisions if they want to buy the product, and while our promotion and placement wasn’t traditional/external, personal sources were able to fuel our first batch. We are unique from our competitors such as custom ink because of our low price point.

Our Ask

Our ask was $120. We asked $120 to purchase materials, packaging, and to fund our trial and error phase. We also needed funding for marketing and generating brand exposure. We are asking for the money as well as business advice in our first venture. We are selling each unit at $5 with cost of goods at $0.314, therefore we are making $4.69 profit per unit. Our first batch made around $300, and at scale (100x) we project net profits of over $24,000.

For our next funding round, we are seeking to raise $25,000 to fund our next round of production.

Getting Here

We are proud of our high number of sales and 93.72% gross margin with our first batch, but we see ways to improve FUZE. With improving our marketing, we will get more customers but there would be more people on the team or longer hours for our current team in regards for printing more designs and consulting on fancier designs. Throughout this process we identified our constraint was complex designs. We had to work with the consumer a lot and took more time to take off the sheet and more time for the consumer to apply. We ultimately decided to charge more for for customization bc that usually means a complex design to account for increased labor costs. So the cheaper version is to just choose from a preset library of designs.

Financial Data

Please feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] with any questions or inquiries.