John reads Business Insider pretty regularly, and I must say it alerts him to some great ideas for this blog. Here is a story about innovative beekeepers by Simon Thomsen at Business Insider Australia.
“Two Australian inventors are changing the way honey is harvested and the world can’t get enough of it. Father and son Stuart and Cedar Anderson spent a decade creating a revolutionary system that allows beekeepers to harvest honey on tap, without disturbing the hive.
“After a decade of research and development, the Andersons launched their idea on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo [Feb. 23]. Within two hours, they’d sold $830,000 (£420,000) worth of beehives. Their initial target was $70,000 (£35,500). Within three hours they’d sold more than $1 million (£507,000) of products.
“The first 500 top-of-the-line beehives, costing $600 (£390), sold out within an hour. They’ve now released a further 1000 hives, along with a range of cheaper options.
“The Andersons has some idea how how intense interest was when they posted a video of their invention on YouTube and it attracted nearly 1 million viewers within two days. This morning they had interest from 80,000 people before the launch, and were forced to switch from Kickstarter to Indiegogo as the crowdfunding platform at the last minute realising that they needed to cater for the US market, find an American manufacturer and charge in USD (which Kickstarter doesn’t allow) to overcome exchange rate fluctuations.” More here.
What a great story: build a better beehive and the world will beat a path to your door. Now if someone would just donate a few to the beekeepers in Sudan we wrote about recently …
Photo: Facebook
Beekepers Cedar and Stuart Anderson
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