Damien is one of 3 co-founders for Backers. Based in Hong Kong, Backers is a retail showroom that sells crowdfunded products.

One of the biggest challenges facing product designers is consumer knowledge. What do people really want? What works? What doesn’t work? Most designers don’t have the time, know-how or resources to source that insight “in the wild”. Most fly by intuition and their limited echo-chambers of personal networks. That makes producing any new product a high-risk endeavor.

Backers aims to help designers in that journey by taking products even from their pre-crowdfunding stage and placing them instore so real people can interact with them in the real world. This information helps designers significantly derisk the process and create a better experience for their customers.