Truth be told, I saw so many annoucements of "This person has signed up to add recipes" or "This group will be adding their recipe," I just assumed Yooper had as well.
I have to agree, not very professional to use someone's recipe and identity as an example without actually asking first. Given what I've seen of Yooper, my guess is she would have been more than happy to give permission and while the information is publicly available, permission still should have been requested.
There was nothing stopping you from making your own recipe on HBT and using that as an example.
Given the reward structure (I think I saw $80 reward for the Pale Ale kit?) .. is that what we can expect to see for pricing? Ultimately the reason the KS will fail is because the reward levels are poorly priced. Generally you should be pricing your rewards in an effort to cover the cost of the reward, and still provide a decent level of funding. Even with shipping included, I can't imagine the Pale Ale kit has a cost to you over $15-20 (and even that is probably a bit on the high side -- I priced the recipe out at my LHBS and it came in around $35 at retail)..
This tells me with the assumed high side costs of $20 per reward, your actual needs are around $33,000 and not $45,000 and the extra $12,000 is to cover your reward costs. This means you need 562 backers. While the number seems daunting, I think you would have had much better with a $50 reward tier and looking for approximately 1000-1100 backers, which only puts the rewards slightly over over MSRP, and since you had been providing some digital rewards as well it would have helped to counter the difference.
Looking at the $250 reward, I know you value one of the recipes at $80.. a growler can be bought for say $20-25 on the very high side, do you really believe an online group brew session is valued at $150? Clearly only one person felt that it was worth that much. For the $250 reward, you could have included 3-4 recipes, the growler, the shirt, and the digital badge. This would have put you at around $100 mfg cost and still netted you $150 per pledge. While your reward costs are higher, I think it's fair to assume you would have had a lot more backers at that level, which would have given you much more financial return than the single backer.
Looks like you did a lot of marketing. Did a great job spreading the word and also a fantastic job setting up the story and video for the project.
The killer here was your reward structure. Kickstarter is no longer the "Here, take my money. I want to feel good for helping you with your dream." It has become the "Here is my money.. give me something very worth it.. anything less and I will leave." Sucks, but it's true. Check the board game section. You will see most are priced about the same someone would expect to pay in a store. Many do a Cost x 400% which will put them right around MSRP. People won't back if they don't see the value and most people won't pay 3x MSRP just to help you out.
Perhaps food for thought if you regroup and relaunch. Just my two cents, and it's free. I don't need a reward.
We're hoping that brewers can use it to fund grain purchases, gear buys, etc.
