This project was important to me as I felt that there was an opportunity here to create a new product for pinball owners to help them protect their playfield from dust and grime when not in use. In early 2020, I started the project to design this waterproof magnetic pinball machine cover, for Stern & Bally machines, which protects the glass playfield but does not cover the front or side cabinet artwork or backboard. It was important to me to do as much as possible myself and try to support Australian manufacturing during the lockdown.

I contacted a manufacturer in regional Victoria who was interested in the project and helped me go through a couple of revisions to get the samples right. The biggest challenge was keeping the price down (since I have chosen the best quality waterproof canvas) and confirming the dimensions were suitable. We have had great feedback on these covers with various Bally, Williams and Stern standard body machines (with glass playfield measuring 63cm x 120cm long) and everyone seems to love them once they realise it's not meant to cover the whole machine. The magnets have been strong enough to hold the cover onto the pinball machines trims, but not too strong to cause problems taking it off. Due to the pandemic, I was not able to visit many people to check the fit on machines myself but received photos and feedback instead. Just in case of variations between machines, I have decided to instead the width by 0.5cm to allow more fabric to wrap the cover around the trims. 

I was able to test the covers on nearly a dozen machines ( Bally, Williams, Stern and Data East) and confirm it met people's expectations. 

The campaign is an important step to help me determine whether there is a viable demand for this product and interest from pinball machine owners.

Our pitch video is: https://youtu.be/oF6VWDPARSw

Thanks to London Pinball for permission to use their Star Trek Pinball Machine video and for their support. 

Once the campaign has finished and all the supporters have received their products in March, I would like to share my knowledge gained from the campaign to help other small businesses locally to run their own crowdfunding campaigns. 

We are looking for a target of $800 to fund our campaign. This equates to the sale of approx 10 covers, out of a batch of 35 covers that we can manufacture in February. We have set the individual reward price to just cover our costs (manufacturing costs, GST, and transaction fees). 

We hope the publicity of this campaign will help us launch our Pincovers brand and grow our business organically. 

Getting some more publicity for our product with pinball enthusiasts/collectors, resellers and related gaming businesses would be great. 

Stretch goals with new rewards will be added once the target is reached.  If the target is not reached before the campaign end, there is no requirement for any pledges to be paid, and therefore no rewards will be shipped.