22-year-old entrepreneur raises S$12,000 in Singapore’s first live crowdfunding

Mandy Chan, who co-founded the start-up Bow, designed a multi-purpose bag called Quiver X. On Friday, November 23, Chan held a live crowdfunding event at Singapore Management University’s Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium, where she was able to raise S$12,000 in two and a half hours from around 150 funders.

In less than half a day, Chan completed her goal of raising S$15,000 on Kickstarter.
The Quiver X is a bag designed specifically for traveling or the gym, with several compartments of various sizes. It has one for your shoes, a secret one for your passport, an RFID-protected slot for credit cards, a compartment for laptops and other work-related things, among other features.

According to Business Insider, the response to Quiver x took Chan by surprise , “It was really shocking! I didn’t even see the funding as I was managing the event until someone told me that we were more than halfway to our funding goal.”

Chan says that this is the first live crowdfunding in the country.

The bag is continuing to do well on crowdfunding site Kickstarter, where almost S $20,000 has been raised by November 27, several weeks before the end of the campaign.
On the campaign page, the bag is described this way: “Quiver X is the Ultimate 3-in-1 Everyday Carry. Designed for the daily commuter, active gym-goer and frequent traveller in mind, its intuitive organization keeps your gym shoes, laptop and essentials just a zip away.

Quiver X enables you can move seamlessly from place to place, from indoor to out, from work to play in just one pack. Carrying just a single bag for your life’s activities has been our promise since our first Kickstarter campaign. We are committed to meeting that every single time. Always have, always will.”

Chan’s foray into crowdfunding for bags started last year when she launched Quiver and raised more than S$60,000 from around 600 backers. She said that 10,000 pieces of the first bag have been sold.

According to Bow’s co-founder Koh Choon Kiat, Quiver X, the original’s upgraded version, gets its inspiration from the different lifestyles people have these days. “We found that Quiver had so much potential that was yet to be explored.”

Read related: Crowdfunding: A Great Alternative to Traditional Investing?