The first rule of Fiber Club is to always talk about Fiber Club!
As you can see, we’ve chosen a name! After a lot of great suggestions and checking websites and social media to see what was available, we’ve gone with Fiber Club. We hope you like the name as much as we do! Not only is it inclusive of all fiber arts, but it also indicates that it is a social platform. We have really big plans and wanted a name that could maintain our essence throughout all of the changes and updates we intend to make. (We know it might be confused with a subscription yarn/fiber club so we will make it clear on the app and website what we do.)
Wow! It took less than 24 hours to reach and exceed our GoFundMe goal of $1,500! Thank you so much for contributing and sharing the word! The amount of support has been incredible and we are really appreciative of all of you. We will leave the fundraiser up for a few days so we can pay others to contribute professionally to this project with the additional donated funds. So far we’ve spent about $650 on the domain name, app template and software. We would like to find an illustrator in the near future if we’re able to afford one. (If you have any recommendations please let us know!)
Thank you to everyone who has filled out a survey! Your responses are greatly appreciated and will be immensely helpful for matching skill-sets with platform needs.
In regards to the actual platform, I wanted to outline our plans.
- Rommel and I are approaching this project with mobile first in mind. Mobile First means that the focus on functionality will be on a mobile application which we will then scale to a website. We will have both eventually but our first focus will be releasing a mobile app that you can download and use directly on your phone on both iOS and Android.
- Our goal release date will be in around 3 months for the mobile app and an additional 2-3 months for the website release. This is a rough timeline and we hope to be able to speed up some of this process with the funds you so graciously donated.
- The first release will focus on buying and selling patterns. We want to ensure that designers are able to upload their patterns and for their users to buy them directly from the platform. You will be able to search, apply filters, and view your download history. This is our minimum viable product and we hope to release it as quickly as possible.
- After the first release we will continually add features and functionality to build out the platform. This will come over a series of months, most likely years, to fully build out. We want to make sure that we are intentional with what we create and that we are building it correctly and with accessibility in mind.
The next steps include:
- Sorting out logo and branding hopefully with the help of an illustrator
- Figuring out an email marketing situation
- Reaching out to designers regarding their needs for the platform
If you have any recommendations or advice regarding the above points, please let me know!
Thank you again for all of your support. We are so grateful and motivated to get this work done. I’ve listed links below to continue to share and spread the word.
- Fill out the survey here: https://forms.gle/RXKpHURXbPB78K3q9
- Sign up for emails here: https://fiber.club/
- Support through GoFundMe here: gf.me/u/ycggwx or Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/lizamakes
- Follow on IG here: https://www.instagram.com/lizamakesthings/
Originally posted on June 28, 2020