Success stories: Lindo's crowdfunding campaign

Lindo is the project of startup Giacal Ltd. to provide professional home cleaning services related mainly to sofas, mattresses, armchairs, carpets and fabrics in general. The idea is simple: cleaning these types of objects is challenging and difficult to perform independently with really deep results, yet they are furnishings that are used daily and in which dirt and bacteria easily take root, even when unseen.

Combine this with the fact that the market for home services has been expanding for years and that the Covid-19 pandemic has increased concern for sanitizing environments, here emerges the need that Lindo aims to meet. The "Lindo Method" combines the use of biocidal detergents for total cleaning and sanitization of textiles, with an innovative 5-step washing system using injection-extraction technology that takes no more than 2 hours to complete.

The analysis of the home cleaning services market commissioned by founder Roberto Bonifacio showed that very few companies specialize in home textile washing and sanitizing-the space, then, was there.

Beginning with the registration of the brand in 2017, Lindo began to occupy that space by creating a commercial affiliate network that would allow it to offer the service in as many Italian locations as possible: it arrived at 13 operating points. This is where the crowdfunding campaign comes in: in October 2022, Lindo launches a campaign on Crowdinvest Italia to raise capital to extend the affiliate network to cover the entire peninsula evenly, before aiming for expansion abroad.

Before the campaign: strengths and weaknesses

The situation before the launch of the campaign saw a young and relatively unknown company, albeit appreciated, within a rapidly growing market, so strong as to challenge Lindo's still immature structure and fuel the appearance of competitors.

Strengths:

• business scalability
• high demand
• innovative service
• good contact database
• already developed marketing strategies
• use of lead generation software
• knowledge of the target market.

Weaknesses:

• poor brand awareness
• limited geographical extent
• insufficient internal structure
• low budget.

Lindo's crowdfunding: critical issues

The support of Turbo Crowd for Lindo's crowdfunding campaign was aimed at streamlining marketing activities to reach as many potential investors as possible and create a recognizable brand with a network of contacts to be leveraged over time, both as customers and collaborators.

The main critical issues that need to be addressed to complete these goals can be summarized in three points:

- low budget available to invest in activities

- a brand yet to be built

- an area that is itself unattractive and difficult to communicate in an appealing way.

Turbo Crowd x Lindo: solutions

Turbo Crowd professionals and Lindo's team took advantage of the business's unique "network" structure to target marketing activities at two types of targets: customers or potential customers on the one hand, and employees or potential employees on the other.

In fact, to become a widespread service on the ground, Lindo needed affiliate business partners capable of replicating the Lindo Method wherever it is required. These partners have a vested interest in Lindo's business thriving and growing, so they are also good potential investors: we talk about work for equity, a very useful strategy for crowdfunding campaigns that may have a B2B component.

So here are the main solutions put in place to solve the initial critical issues and achieve the goal:

• ads optimization on Facebook and LinkedIn;
• Creating newsletters for Lindo's contact database;
• setting of rewards for clients differentiated by investment cut with service discounts, gift cards, share discounts, calls with the team;
• affiliate and referral program;
• Work-for-equity proposals for collaborators and partners.

Lindo's Equity Crowdfunding: results

Thanks to the operations put in place with the joint work of Lindo and Turbo Crowd, the crowdfunding campaign closed successfully in just two months.

Campaign start: November 2022

Campaign end: January 2023

Minimum goal: €25.000

Raise: €28.600

The good number of interested parties was divided between potential clients and potential contributors, and this led Lindo to obtain, in addition to capital, a renewed network of contacts useful for business growth and to close valuable new partnerships for service expansion. An achievement that underscores how the benefits of equity crowdfunding extend far beyond the campaign itself and the capital raised, to leave the company with significant intangible assets such as newly acquired skills, brand awareness built, and valuable business and professional contacts.