RE:RE:Just received an exciting email from HITCASE ! Hi Everyone,
Many of you have reached out recently, so I thought I’d provide a quick update on what we’ve been up to.
As you know, we have cut our expenses back, keeping only those required to (a) deliver a full must-have product line to make, (b) continue growing our on-line, sales and (c) win the support of a large U.S. retailer through our Crowd & Co partnership.
We have continued working hard toward these initiatives and are making great progress.
Product Line Update:
Our new Pro for iPhone-7 design is based upon our Hitcase Shield, which is the thinnest waterproof case on the market. We are extremely proud of this new offering and it has been well received by the market – our crowdfunding pre-order launch on Kickstarter in May/June was oversubscribed with $60,000 of orders. In addition, we have gotten some great media hits including respected blog Cult of Mac: "It's the best waterproof case I've tested." (links below). Today, we shipped all of our early bird packages of the New Hitcase Pro from the crowdfunding pre-orders.
We are also excited that we have several new products in the pipeline slated for release this fall that will broaden our product line and make us compelling for large U.S. retailers.
Retail Sales Update:
We continue to work with Crowd and Co on a month to month basis, who as you may recall are a group of founders from the Lifeproof brand that sold to Otterbox in 2013 for U$240M. They are managing our sales for the US and Canada and have done a great job generating interest from large retailers that have potential to bear fruit for this fall season. Given their expertise in the space we are in very good hands – Jess Fessenden is our contract VP of Sales (former Sales Lead for Lifeproof); Dan Koziol (Former Founder and VP Sales at Lifeproof) is providing strategic advisory and is involved in every aspect of the business; and Jonathan Wegner (Former head of Marketing for Lifeproof/Otterbox) and David Oldfield (Former Chief of Creative at Otterbox) are building packaging and advising on product strategy across our range. They have also brought us a new selling representative who up until 6 months ago was as lead purchaser at Best Buy U.S. for mobility products who is now helping us to navigate the sales pitch, on-boarding and program process.
Online Sales Update:
A majority of our current sales are through our website as we cut out most of our retail activity to conserve dollars while we rebooted our product line and designed the Pro for iPhone 7. As part of our new Pro launch, last week we also launched an entirely new ecommerce platform and website, have a look here: https://www.hitcase.com . In calendar Q1, we really only had Shield available for sale, so following our successful crowdfunding campaign and the new e-commerce launch, we now expect to see increasing online sales activity.
Below find links to some of our recent media hits.
Please contact me with any questions at bb@hitcase.com
Brooks
Cult of Mac: "It's the best waterproof case I've tested."
Link: https://www.cultofmac.com/478553/hitcase-pro-2-review-iphone-case/
iPhone Life: "With the Hitcase Shield, you don't have to sacrifice looks and compactness for protection, and vice versa"
Link: https://www.iphonelife.com/content/review-surprisingly-slim-hitcase-shield-offers-waterproof-protection-your-iphone-7
Canadian Geographic: "it offers great protection for adventurers looking to take their phones along for the ride without the bulk of other heavy-duty cases."
Link: https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/article/gear-review-waterproof-hitcase-shield-protects-iphone-without-bulk