Our History with Crowdfunding

If you haven’t heard the news already, we recently launched our fourth Kickstarter centered around our Century Jacket. Within just ten minutes, the campaign was fully funded and we raised over $240,000 in just 24 hours.

Suffice it to say we were blown away by the amount of public support we received. We believe in crowdfunding for its ability to connect businesses and people like never before, giving ideas the financial backing necessary to become a reality.

Without crowdfunding, LIVSN certainly wouldn’t look as it does today and quite possibly wouldn’t exist at all. As we continue to expand our apparel line and set new crowdfunding records, let’s take a look at how these campaigns first began and we grew into the brand we are today.

Before we had a full apparel line, a physical store, and retailers in over half the USA, LIVSN was simply an idea for versatile, durable clothing that could stand up to outdoor adventures while still seamlessly blending into city life.

Back in 2018 our founder Andrew Gibbs-Dabney was simply a man with ideas and ample experience in the outdoor clothing industry, which he turned into LIVSN’s first Kickstarter campaign, which featured our signature Flex Canvas Pants and High Wool Fleece. 

Turns out, the public liked the smell of what he was cooking, as over 500 backers helped bring these products to life by pledging over $78,000, doubling the initial goal.

These pants, jackets, and a healthy amount of stickers shipped out around the world to those who took a chance on a new brand looking to break into the outdoor apparel industry.

With hundreds of pants out to the public, it didn’t take long for us to hear from our fans. One of our core brand pillars is to never rest on “good enough” but to continue to tweak our designs and improve them with each iteration.

In 2019, we revised our signature pants based on customer feedback, revising our roll-up leg system, expanding pocket size, and updating the fit to better accommodate most body types. Our supply chain became more transparent than ever to our audience, as we continued to source and ship from the most environmentally friendly factories we could find.

Our messaging resonated and support continued to roll in, as this campaign broke $100,000 to almost 1,000 different backers. The ball was rolling and our company growing, but for our next project, we decided to take things in a slightly different direction.

For our first few years, our products and identity became somewhat synonymous with our proprietary Flex Canvas fabric. Comfortable enough for lounging yet tough enough for workwear, it was and remains one of our most popular materials.

With our third Kickstarter campaign though, we looked to shake things up with something lighter, more water-resistant, and stretchy enough for dynamic movements. We unveiled our Ecotrek Trail Pants, sustainably sourced from discarded ocean buoys, to fill this market need, and the response blew all our expectations out of the water.

We raised over a half million dollars to over 3,500 backers with this product, catapulting our company’s growth and audience reach to new heights. We certainly had our hands full through 2021, but this was the best kind of busyness for a business on the rise.

Fast forward to 2023, and what was once one man and a box of stickers now looked an awful lot like a thriving business. We now have five full-time employees, a small standing army of part-timers and contractors, a flourishing women’s line, and more plates spinning than we can count.

We consistently raked in praise and accolades for our bottom wear, yet one frontier remained elusive to us. LIVSN set out to be a full outdoor outfitter and to do so, we’d need to return to the apparel that lies above the belt.

The Century Jacket has been in the production labs almost as long as its namesake. Our team designed, tested, tweaked, and revised it again and again to a meticulous and almost maddening degree until it looked and felt just right. 

Once we felt this little birdy was ready for flight, we released it into the wild, and it found an audience eager and willing to try out the latest foray. Made from the historically famous Ventile fabric, this piece combines a sleek and timeless aesthetic while being water-proof, abrasion resistant, and backed by free repairs for life should some tragedy occur.

The campaign was funded within ten minutes and currently sits at $378,000+ with two weeks left to push it further still. Later this year, these beauties will be going out around the world and as another successful new chapter in LIVSN’s crowdfunding story. 

Crowdsourcing helps us put products out into the world for which we know there already exists a demand. From our repair program, Lifetime Guarantee, and  aggressively customer-friendly Fair Deal Guarantee policy, we do everything we can to keep our products out of landfills and on people who will use them for years, satisfied and ready for the next adventure.

We even opened our company equity up to the public through Wefunder, allowing individuals to purchase a slice of ownership in LIVSN itself with all kinds of discounts and benefits. We love novel ideas like this that challenge the conventional structure of a business and will continue to look to innovate everywhere we can, from our products to our company equity itself.

Crowdsourcing ventures like this and Kickstarter are at the core of how LIVSN functions, a modern business built on lofty ideals with concrete follow through action.  Into the future, we will continue to work closely with our audience to deliver products we believe in and that they can trust.

Thank you for your trust and support so far. It’s been an unconventional ride thus far, but one we are thoroughly enjoying and hope you are too.