Flyte Socks Reached 858% of Their Kickstarter Goal
Flyte Socks ran two Gleam giveaways before their Kickstarter launch, then raised $85,753 against a $10,000 goal. Here is how the partner campaign worked.
Author
Stuart McKeown
Australia
Co-Founder
Products Used
Date of Publication
Flyte Socks ran two Gleam giveaways ahead of a 35-day Kickstarter that closed at 858% of its goal.
Two giveaways, one solo and one with three partner brands, sent about 7,000 Entrants to Flyte Socks before launch.
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Our collaborative giveaway yielded much better results for our Kickstarter campaign, even though we collected fewer email addresses. We were able to leverage off the other companies by having Flyte Socks sent as an email blast to three other user bases.
Jeffrey Trinh
Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
858% of a $10,000 Goal
Flyte Socks ran two Gleam giveaways before their Kickstarter opened on 6 July 2016. By 10 August it had raised $85,753 against a $10,000 goal.
Flyte Socks started marketing four months before launch. Their first giveaway opened on 6 March 2016. Kickstarter opened on 6 July. We cover that approach in not launching to crickets.
Flyte Socks’ Kickstarter funding chart. It closed at $85,753 of a $10,000 goal.
Three Socks in Every Pack
Hung Jean, an undergraduate at the University of Toronto and self-confessed ‘wantrepreneur’, was in a situation we can all relate to: looking for a lost sock. Hung was on his way to a job interview and this sock had brought him a lot of success over the years.
Fifty percent down on luck and frustrated that things weren’t going to plan, Hung decided there needed to be a people’s champion, someone who could make it a mission to ensure nobody had to have their days ruined by an absent sock ever again.
In 2015, Hung and childhood friend Jeffrey Trinh created Flyte Socks. Each pack has three of the same sock, so a missing one never leaves you with a mismatched pair.
Two Giveaways Before Launch
Flyte Socks’ first goal was to find out whether anyone wanted their product, and with limited time, experience and capital all posing barriers, the first and safest option was to trial a Kickstarter campaign.
Jeffrey, the co-founder of Flyte Socks explained that:
Kickstarter is a great platform to get a ton of eyes on your project. It’s a way to market your brand the way you want before launching a store.
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
Flyte Socks ran two giveaways before launch:
An email list built through a viral referral campaign and social media
A collaborative giveaway with three complementary companies that had great success on Kickstarter
Our collaborative giveaway yielded much better results for our Kickstarter campaign, even though we collected fewer email addresses. We were able to leverage off the other companies by having Flyte Socks sent as an email blast to three other user bases.
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
This was extremely beneficial, since we’re able to capture strong, targeted leads (repeat backers on Kickstarter with an interest in footwear and accessories).
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
Jeffrey says Flyte Socks emailed about 50 brands before the first one agreed.
We probably sent over 50 emails to 50 different brands. Initially, we didn’t hear back, and who could blame them? We weren’t established, but we pushed through, expressing the whole time we could do all of the work and cover the costs required to run these campaigns. Once we got the first company on board, it was like a snowball effect. It got to the point where we had to turn away companies approaching us, so that our primary objective wasn’t diluted with unrelated giveaways.
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
Partner giveaways are hard to track across four brands. Flyte Socks ran theirs as one Gleam Competition, with Actions for all four brands in a single widget.
Flyte Socks ran two giveaways focused on acquisition:
The Big 3 Giveaway, a solo giveaway of Flyte Socks products
The Modern Men’s Essentials Giveaway, a weekly-prize giveaway with three partner brands
The Big 3 Giveaway, 3,933 Entrants
Flyte Socks’ first Gleam giveaway used their own socks as prizes: 3 sets for each of 3 winners. It ran from 6 March to 8 April 2016, about three months before Kickstarter opened.
Flyte Socks promoted it on social channels and to the email list its referral program had built.
The Big 3 Giveaway had over 20,000 Impressions and almost 4,000 Entrants, a 19.5% Conversion Rate. Those Entrants completed about 22,000 Actions, 5.6 Actions per Entrant. A typical Gleam campaign converts 26.9% and gets 4.7 Actions per Entrant (Gleam campaign data, 2026).
Four Brands, 2,956 Entrants
The second giveaway added prizes from Ace Marks, Satchel & Page, and Rossling & Co. It ran from 11 to 31 May 2016.
Each week had two winners: one prize from a partner brand and 3 sets of Flyte Socks. Week 1 was a Rossling & Co watch, week 2 Ace Marks leather shoes, week 3 a Satchel & Page mailbag.
The Modern Men’s Essentials Giveaway had about 15,800 Impressions and almost 3,000 Entrants, an 18.7% Conversion Rate. Entrants completed about 18,000 Actions, 6.1 Actions per Entrant, against Gleam’s typical 4.7 (Gleam campaign data, 2026).
Kickstarter opened on 6 July 2016. The funding chart shows the $10,000 goal passed within the first two days.just one day. Far exceeding their expectations.
Even though our e-mail list didn’t convert as well as we liked, it did bring a tremendous amount of traffic to our Kickstarter campaign. We strongly believe Kickstarter takes traffic into account to determine which campaign is out-performing, which indirectly helped us in getting more sales since the traffic made us the most popular fashion campaign on Kickstarter for the entire 35-days duration.
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
Kickstarter closed on 10 August 2016 at $85,753, 858% of the $10,000 goal.
Flyte Socks also ran a smaller Facebook Timeline giveaway during the Kickstarter.
Key Growth Takeaways
Sending Socks to Well-Known People
Flyte Socks also sent socks to well-known people with large Instagram followings.
50 Pitch Emails, 3 Partners
The partner giveaway converted slightly lower than the solo one (18.7% against 19.5%) and got more from each Entrant (6.1 Actions per Entrant against 5.6). Jeffrey says the partner emails put Flyte Socks in front of three other brands’ lists, which gave them “strong, targeted leads”. Read more in our partner campaign guide.
Start Marketing Four Months Out
InDemand Added Pledges After Kickstarter
After Kickstarter closed, Flyte Socks kept taking pledges through Indiegogo’s InDemand.
The Referral Program and Its Loopholes
Flyte Socks set up a referral program early, and referrers earned free sets of socks.
We originally actually collected over 20k+ emails pre-launch from our referral program and giveaways. Midway through our referral program, one referral participant decided to share her referral link to a sweepstakes website (smart move on their part given how our referral program worked, more referrals equals to more products earned), from that point, it spread like wildfire across other sweepstake/giveaway websites and our e-mail list grew exponentially. This created a double-edged sword situation for us, because on one hand were able to capture tens of thousands over a short period of time and I’m sure some of these e-mails were good leads. On the other hand, we captured a lot of bad leads who were only in it for the freebies and prizes.
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
We never posted our referral program or giveaway contests to any Sweepstake sites, our followers did it for us. So there is definitely a lesson to be learned here, it’s not about how many leads one captures, it’s about the quality of the leads.
Jeffrey Trinh, Co-Founder, Flyte Socks
Think through the terms of your referral program and how someone could abuse them.
Run Your Own Crowdfunding Giveaway
Flyte Socks ran both giveaways in Gleam Competitions. Start from a template below.
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