MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / April 27, 2018 / "A goal without a plan is just a wish," said Jonathan Kinas, the Co-Founder for AquaVault. The three inventors of AquaVault- a Portable Travel Safe- secured a deal with Daymond John after appearing on Shark Tank in March of 2015. Inking a deal with the FUBU founder allowed these guys to catapult AquaVault's valuation roughly 6,500% in under three years. They have attracted celebrity fans as well as secured features in dozens of media outlets including The Today Show, Good Morning America, The View, Fox News and many more. The founders were recently featured in an Update on Shark Tank where we saw them increase their sales from $87,000 to now doing millions with a recent valuation of nearly $20 million dollars.
A Few Secrets to Their Success:
The AquaVault team mentions a great saying they once heard which is, "Work while they party, save while they spend, learn while they sleep and live like they dream." It is clear that these guys are doing something different which has allowed them to make a name for themselves. Avin Samtani, who is one of the three Co-Founders, says that he and his partners' still cold call, cold walk and engage in a significant amount of face to face interaction as opposed to doing everything digitally which is a modern mindset that many entrepreneurs have adopted. He mentions that their old school mentality of walking into businesses and cold calling buyers appears to be very effective because very few people are still doing that. "People are so used to communicating via email that when they hear a voice or see a person, it instantly separates you from the rest and captures their attention," said Samtani.
Aside from the straightforward sales approach, the guys at Aquavault are relentless when it comes to networking and meeting as many people as they can. Whether it be trade shows, seminars, dinners, parties or on the golf course, these guys are always prospecting and looking for people to work with to expand their business. Rather than solely hiding behind a keyboard, they'd rather split up their time and interact face to face because they are not only selling their product but they are selling themselves. By meeting with as many people as they do, it allows them to develop stronger relationships that most likely would not have happened if they were sitting at the office typing away. They acknowledge that prospecting digitally is imperative because of the sheer volume of outreach, but they also believe that it's beneficial to allocate a portion of your time to physically meeting people and forming personal relationships. Another common approach that the AquaVault guys use is to call whoever they are targeting and then follow up with an immediate email. They first want to personally introduce themselves to break the ice and then they send over all the details via email. This approach allows them to make that personal connection which isolates them from the countless emails that inundate many inboxes on a daily basis. "We don't want to get lost in the shuffle, so if we send an email to someone, we want to maximize our chance that it will not go unread," said Robert Peck who is the third Co-founder. He mentions that they, of course, do not call everyone before they email them but if it's an important contact, they will do as much due diligence as needed to contact that person before sending an email.
Kinas explains how his partners were determined to succeed and were simply not concerned with the paralyzing fear of failure or fear of the unknown. "We've always expected the unexpected and prepared as best as we could for the inevitable series of temporary defeats" He explains how rejection is never easy but it comes with the territory. "You have to be okay with calling an editor or a buyer and having them brush you off or even worse, hang up on you." Having thick skin is a necessity because if you take every rejection personally, it's unlikely that you will survive the emotional roller coaster of being an entrepreneur. He mentions that it's all a numbers game and the more shots you take, the better your odds of success become.
AquaVault went on Shark Tank with their first invention which was a pill-shaped portable safe that attaches to lounge chairs to lock up your valuables when going for a swim. They have since expanded into several new products along with launching their newest invention to the crowdfunding world on Indiegogo.com. After generating over half a million dollars on their last crowdfunding campaign and landing in the top 1% of companies that generate over $250,000 on crowdfunding, they decided to launch their second campaign for the FlexSafe which is being released in colors. Samtani mentions that there is an art to running a successful crowdfunding campaign and it does not come down to just luck.
"We've learned from our mistakes, isolated our weaknesses and tweaked our formula to maximize results this time around," said Jonathan Kinas. He mentioned that it is critical to dedicate significant time towards reaching out to bloggers, editors and all types of media to get as much coverage as possible. "We probably spend about 60% of our day targeting the media during our eight-week pre-launch phase, and then during the actual campaign, that probably shifts closer to 40% for the remainder of the campaign," said Robert Peck. Relentlessly reaching out to the media to get coverage and allocating a reasonable marketing budget is the most effective way to run a successful campaign. Of course, you have to determine in advance that the market is accepting of your product. An effective way to do this is through measuring the conversion rates of targeted ads via social media. Kinas mentions the biggest mistake they see people make is spending too much money on creating their campaign video and not enough on actually marketing their target audience. "As good as your video is, if you cannot drive anyone to your page to watch it, it doesn't matter how good your video is."
The FlexSafe Official Campaign Page
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SOURCE: AquaVault