In 2011, Peter Dering, an engineer and photographer who found camera straps cumbersome during physical activities like mountain climbing, came up with an alternative: the Capture Camera Clip. With it, cameras can be clipped to belts, handlebars, shoulder straps, and countless other items.

Dering quit his engineering job to form Peak Design and bring the device to life.

“All I had was an idea that I thought was the bee’s knees,” Dering told Retail Brew.

But while he’d bootstrapped funding to make 1,000 units, he lacked a plan to sell them or a funding mechanism to produce more.

So Dering turned to Kickstarter and launched a campaign where backers could pre-order from that second run of yet-to-be manufactured clips for $50 (or buy one of the 1,000 he’d produced for $100 and get it sooner.) He made his pitch in a 3-minute video.

• The campaign aimed to raise $10,000 in 75 days.
• It surpassed that total in just two days, ultimately raising $364,698 from 5,258 backers.

It was textbook Kickstarter: A bright-eyed innovator with a big idea and a tiny bank account makes an earnest pitch video and money falls from the sky, with consumers paying for products to be produced long before they’re in their early-adopter paws.

And it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship (fundship?) between Peak Design and Kickstarter.

Keep reading here.—AAN

The future of work is all about flexibility, but making it work for your team can be tricky. Whether you clock in from the store, at home, or on the go, Cisco’s solutions empower retail pros to thrive in any work environment.

Cisco has the networking, security, and collaboration tools to deliver frictionless user experiences so you can give your supply chain and entire business the agility needed to delight your customers. With their hybrid work solutions, you can ensure your employees maintain access to necessary applications without compromising security.

Ready to offer your team the freedom to work efficiently from anywhere? Chat with an expert from Cisco to find the right solutions tailored for your hybrid work environment.

Book your consultation with a specialist.

JPMorgan just launched a new payment platform for merchant clients that could help scale the availability of contactless payments at US retailers.

The platform, called Tap to Pay, allows merchants without card readers such as Square or Clover to accept payments via iPhone.

“Enhancing the ability for consumers to pay with their preferred method of payment is part of our broader, customer-centric approach to simplify omnichannel payment acceptance for our merchant clients,” Takis Georgakopoulos, global head of payments for JPMorgan, said in a statement.

Chris Uriarte, a payments expert and partner at consulting firm Glenbrook, told Retail Brew that contactless payment technology is “enabling merchants to accept payments at the point of sale without any proprietary hardware whatsoever.”

This ability is apparently what appealed to Sephora, which is now rolling out Tap to Pay across all its freestanding US stores.

Keep reading here.—AV

On Wednesdays, we wear pink spotlight Retail Brew’s readers. Want to be featured in an upcoming edition? Click here to introduce yourself.

Térence Delahaye is co-founder and COO of Shipup, a SaaS company working to improve the post-purchase experience for online retailers across Europe and North America.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? At Shipup, we are working to improve online business’s post-purchase customer experience. This could include shipment tracking, notifications, returns, and more. We offer a comprehensive, automated approach to personalizing delivery interactions with proactive communication and rapid incident resolution.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? While LinkedIn displays that I’ve been the COO for seven years, it doesn’t fully capture the multifaceted nature of my involvement in various departments and functions. I’ve launched many departments and teams like business development representatives, account executives, customer success managers, revenue operations, data analysts...On LinkedIn, you only have “COO at Shipup” and haven’t been promoted for seven years.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? My favorite project at Shipup is our partnership with [French customer success service] Kared and its CEO Jeoffrey Jouannet. To give you more context, Jeoffrey is a former customer, who became an advanced user, then a brand evangelist, and later an investor.

Keep reading here.—EC

Today’s top retail reads.

Cost of beauty: A look at ultra-luxury makeup, from a Dior lipstick that’s over $500 to a $205 Valentino setting powder. (Business of Fashion)

AI of the beholder: Fashion brands like Revolve are turning to AI-generated images for ads and editorial to cut down on time and their carbon footprint. (WWD)

Dairy to dream: Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya shares seven keys to success for entrepreneurs that he learned as he grew the yogurt giant. (Inc.)

Flexible work FTW: Embrace hybrid work with all the right tools. Cisco’s solutions empower you to stay connected effortlessly and efficiently with your team—no matter where they are. Connect with an expert.*

^{*A message from our sponsor.}