Indiegogo will help bring tech products to market with Arrow Electronics alliance

Indiegogo is partnering with Arrow Electronics in a move to expedite product development from crowdfunding through to market launch.

Founded in 1935, Arrow is a global provider of electronics components and related services. Now, in addition to serving as a key supply-chain company for thousands of manufacturers, it will also serve as the default support and engineering assistant for entrepreneurs seeking an easier path to market.

Aimed squarely at technology and Internet of Things (IoT) crowdfunders, the new strategic alliance will see Arrow integrate its design and production platform directly into Indiegogo’s crowdfunding engine, giving users a direct channel to a myriad of design tools, prototyping wares, experts, and supply chain management. Not everyone will qualify, however; Arrow gets the final say on which campaigns it feels are suitable from a technical and manufacturing perspective.

“This is a completely new model of social funding, innovation, and production in the technology and IoT space,” said Matt Anderson, Arrow’s chief digital officer. “Crowdfunding has never before been integrated into a fully scaled innovation platform like this — that spans collaborative online design, prototype support, production, and supply chain management. The Arrow-Indiegogo collaboration will enable successfully crowdfunded companies to scale faster than ever before to bring their products to market.”

Today’s news comes five months after Indiegogo announced that cofounder Slava Rubin was stepping aside as CEO to be replaced by David Mandelbrot, the company’s former chief operating officer. This move was then followed by a round of layoffs. “We restructured teams to focus on areas of investment for 2016, including our marketplace business, enterprise crowdfunding, China, and other areas focused on empowering entrepreneurs,” the company told VentureBeat at the time. “Adjusting teams is something that we have done periodically to free up resources for new initiatives and to invest in growth.”

Indiegogo has launched a number of new initiatives of late, all designed to create key differentiators between itself and high-profile crowdfunding rival Kickstarter. Back in January, it launched a new enterprise crowdfunding program, which landed shortly after the rollout of a new standalone platform for nonprofits and social causes. And, in March, it partnered with Dell and Girls in Tech to support female entrepreneurs.

The latest partnership will provide discounts to Indiegogo creators on materials and design software, as well as access to engineers through Arrow’s live-video platform. Indiegogo says that the alliance came about after the company noticed Indiegogo creators were increasingly using Arrow’s services. “We’ve seen an incredible amount of growth among tech and IoT projects on Indiegogo, due, in part, because our team is constantly developing new ways to help entrepreneurs with support beyond funding,” said Mandelbrot.