TikTok+LunaTik Wins 2012 Edison Award!

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Last night the Edison Awards celebrated its 25th year and TikTok+LunaTik by Scott Wilson & MNML were honored with a silver award for Best New Product! The sold-out black-tie event held in NYC included hundreds of design industry executives from some of the world’s most recognizable companies including honoring TED Curator Chris Anderson with a 2012 Edison Achievement Award.

Thomas Stat, 2012 Edison Awards Steering Committee Chairman, presented Wilson & MNML with the award, complementing them as “innovators who make our future.” In an era of ever-quickening technological advances and increased competition, TikTok+LunaTik fully  reflect Edison’s definition of innovation as critiqued through themes of concept, value, impact and delivery.

TikTok+LunaTIk burst onto the scene in November, 2010 when the designs launched on crowd funding platform Kickstarter.com.  The game-changing products not only raised nearly $1M in 30 days and found their place on Apple retail shelves, but continue to inspire designers and entrepreneurs all over the world as a symbol for what can be achieved thru pure design vision and open-source social commerce.

In addition to the awards gala, the annual Edison Awards program encompassed multiple events over a two-day period including the Meet the Innovators Forum, in which TikTok creator Scott Wilson participated in a panel discussion on design innovation moderated by USA Today Tech Columnist Ed Baig along with NEST CEO Tony Fadell, OnStar VP Nick Pudar and CSRWare President Karen Alonardo.

For the full list of winners, click here. 

The History of #1

Kickstarter continues to soar to unprecedented heights. Today, founder Yancey Strickler chronicled the highest grossing projects; twelve have held the title for all-time most funded projects, including TikTok+LunaTik! 

TikTok+LunaTik changed the game for entrepreneurs and even Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickler says the success of our project shocked him. Raising funds just shy of 1 million-from a goal of $15K -TikTok and LunaTik wore the crown for well over a year. 

Check out who else makes the list on Kickstarter's blog.

 

LUNATIK Touch Pen at New iPad Release!

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Last Friday, a few excited LUNATIK'S from our team couldn't miss the the opportunity to be at the launch of Apple's new iPad, so we descended upon Chicago's Michigan Avenue and Lincoln Park Apple stores with a couple of first-look Touch Pen prototypes.  We got an amazing response, interacting with iPad users and our Touch Pen while customers waited in line, and gave away some LUNATIK branded screen cleaning cloths. Lots of excited LUNATIK fans were eager to get a glimpse of the Touch Pen prototypes in action. We also got some nice TV coverage from NBC 5 Chicago (which we hope to post soon if we can get our hands on the footage) and thought we would put together a short video of our good times.  Take a look!

 

 

Touch Pen in Metropolis Magazine

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Metropolis Magazine shows our LUNATIK Touch Pen some love in the March Issue, out now!

Scott Wilson has had a long and varied design career—formerly a global creative director of Nike, he now runs his own studio, Minimal, in Chicago—but since late 2010 he has become best known for his Kickstarter story. Wilson went to the popular crowd-funding site with the goal of raising $15,000 for a watch design. After 30 days, he had nearly one million dollars. He still seems slightly surprised. “The watch had this magical, almost impossible-to-replicate trajectory,” Wilson says. Even so, he is now attempting to repeat the experience with the dual-purpose LunaTik Touch Pen, which can function as either an ink pen or a digital stylus. Wilson’s Kickstarter goal was $75,000; as of press time, he had collected more than $280,000. Not surprisingly, he is bullish about crowd funding’s ability to not only raise money for new product designs, but also provide instant market feedback. “It’s a validation of whether you should do a product or not,” Wilson says. “It’s much better than a focus group.”--Mason Currey

To view the article via web, go here.

LUNATIK in Entrepreneur Magazine

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The March issue of Entrepreneur Magazine takes an in-depth look at how crowd funding has quickly become an incredibly viable way to raise some serious captial for product ideas and start-ups.  Being at the forefront of this successful movement using Kickstarter to help launch TikTok + LunaTik, Scott Wilson was interviewed for his phenomenal success with crowd funding that helped launch LUNATIK into a global brand overnight. Here is an excerpt:

"Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo attract hobbyists and wannabes, but they can also net real cash for those who use them strategically. With savvy profiles and targeted campaigns, some aspiring entrepreneurs are even raising amounts in the five or six figures. Here's how they do it....

The poster boy for successful crowdfunding is Scott Wilson, who worked on his LunaTik watch design as a pet project while running his Chicago-based design consultancy, Minimal. Wilson, a former creative director for Nike Watches, conceived a wristband that would hold an iPod Nano so the device could function as a watch."

For the full article, go here.

 

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Worn & Wound reviews the Lynk and AnTik analog watch module

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Our new favorite watch blog, Worn & Wound, has posted a detailed review of the Blackout Lynk paired with our new AnTik analog watch module. Because they are accustomed to looking at analog watches, Worn & Wound's review provides a unique perspective for those interested in the Lynk primarily as a timepiece.  Plus, the author has a background in product design and takes us through some of the most important, but under-the-radar, design aspects of the Lynk.

Here's a nice excerpt on the band's construction:

The construction of the LYNK is very innovative and unlike anything I’ve personally seen in a bracelet. The links themselves are not solid blocks, but rather U-shaped pieces, still a few mills thick, that are joined together by silicone connectors. The end result really isn’t a metal bracelet, it is a hybrid of rubber and metal that offers benefits of both strap types. First, the rubber and aluminum, as I said, combine to weigh next to nothing. Yet, the construction isn’t lacking in quality, it’s just the alchemy of these two materials. The end result wears easier than any other metal bracelet I have tried.  

And an insight into one of the driving forces to design the AnTik in the first place: 

This brings to mind perhaps the most obvious question about the LunaTik line of Nano accessories, which is simply, what do you do when the Nano inevitably changes? Apple is notorious for planned obsolescence, heck, it’s part of their business plan. So, any Apple accessory has the potential to become a useless piece of metal or plastic, destined for a recycling (hopefully) plant. Enter the AnTik quartz-watch module. 

Read the whole review here, and don't miss the special Worn & Wound promo code at the end of the article, for 20% off the AnTik module. 

 

The Year in Kickstarter 2011

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We're loving The Year in Kickstarter, a summary assembled by the KS team highlighting the biggest developments for the growing company over the past year. 

According to the report, the biggest trend on the site was "Dreaming Big" (when someone said it couldn't be done, someone else said Kickstarter), followed by "DIY Manufacturing" (from idea to assembly line). Check out all the stats, favorite projects, best videos, and defining moments here. 

And, of course, we're excited that TikTok hitting the Apple stores last May, Scott Wilson + MNML's LunaTik Touch Pen, and our NBC Rock Center appearance with Kickstarter founders Perry Chen and Yancey Stirckler were chosen as some of their most memorable moments of 2011. 

We're proud to have contributed to the success of the KS platorm with our TikTok + LunaTik project at the end of 2010. In addition to being an astounding success for us, we hope it paved the way for others in 2011, because ultimately, as Kickstarter eloquently puts it, "the backers and creators of these projects didn't just respond to the news of the day. They helped create it."

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