By Leo Kasim
The Brunei Times, Bandar Seri Begawan / Asia News Network
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Production is underway for the kickstarter backed portable camping bed invented by Lucy Bartlett and James Clark. The self-inflating mattress comes with a duvet, a pillow and jersey machine washable cotton fitted sheets. Comfy camping via Brunei? Who knew?
The Brunei Times, Bandar Seri Begawan / Asia News Network
Production for the Kickstarter-funded Bundle Beds began earlier this week as the founders of the project raced to meet orders placed by backers.
The portable camping bed was conceived by two British entrepreneurs residing in Brunei, Lucy Bartlett and James Clark, who used the popular online crowd-funding service to fund the development of the project.
The couple has commissioned Brunei-based textile company Famous Textiles Sdn Bhd to manufacture the beds.
These beds will carry a ‘Made in Brunei’ tag.
Bartlett said that she has placed an order for 700 units of Bundle Beds with 500 adult beds and 200 children beds.
“We are hoping that these will be made and ready to ship by July 1 which is approximately one month after when we would have liked them to be shipped,” Bartlett said in an email interview.
The beds would then be shipped to various backers from around the world.
Bartlett said that the material needed to make the beds was delivered to the factory on June 1 after which production began.
However, she said, high shipping costs and long delivery time for the materials resulted in slight delays in production.
“Shipping was one of our biggest costs but we overcame this issue by combining all of the items into one container. But the container could only leave when all of the materials were sent through.
“We had planned to send them piece by piece to allow production of different sections to start earlier, but we weighed this up against the excess cost and decided to delay and save the money,” she said.
Bartlett said that Bundle Beds had a total of 362 backers out of which 272 of them bought beds which come in different sizes.
She also said that Bundle Beds has signed up with BackerKit, a company that facilitates the collection of data after a Kickstarter project, to allow preorders for the beds even after the funding campaign is over.
She added that the beds are currently on a 20 per cent sale until June 19 through BackerKit.
The funding campaign began on February 22, 2016 with a target to reach 25,000 pounds (US$36,000) within 30 days.
The campaign reached its funding target within 65 hours but more funding continued to pour in due to the large amount of interest.
When the campaign ended, the funding pot amounted to 66,785 pounds from 362 backers which is over twice the amount that was initially targeted.
Famous Textile owner Stephen So previously said that the project will help put Brunei on the map.
