Kickstarter darling Gramovox announces $650,000 in funding
Gramovox, a Chicago-based consumer-electronics startup that makes a Bluetooth-enabled speaker resembling a 1920s-era gramophone, on Tuesday announced $650,000 in Series A funding from Chicago-based Hard Eight Ventures.
CEO and co-founder Pavan Bapu said the company will use the money to build inventory, boost online marketing and help the company scale up for the holiday season.
“We’ll use it to meet the demand that we know will be out there this holiday season,” CEO and co-founder Pavan Bapu said Tuesday.
1871-based Gramovox burst on the scene over the holidays last year when its Kickstarter campaign, which asked for $100,000, generated more than 850 orders and $240,000. The company then got an invitation to the Grammy Awards, where glowing reviews from celebrities helped spread the word on social media.
Hard Eight Ventures principal Francis Wisniewski said the company’s crowd-funding success made it easier to say yes to its pitch for funding.
“I see a lot of companies with deal-flow projections that I don’t believe,” he said. “When you see (purchase orders) and people putting their credit cards down to buy the thing, it takes a lot of the guess work out of it.”
Hard Eight Ventures is a spinoff of Hard Eight Trading, a group of futures traders based at the Chicago Board of Trade, Wisniewski said.
Bapu said Gramovox’s first production run of 3,000 units is complete and that all pre-orders — about 1,000 units — will be shipped by Sept. 15. The horn is being made in China, the wood base in Cleveland and the audio electronics in Troy, Mich.
The Gramovox sells for $399.99.
