A Daily Mail Article Fully Funded His Kickstarter Almost Overnight

Who: Michael Chou (Midnight Kitchen Tools)
What: Midnight Scoop, an ice cream scoop designed to cut through hard-frozen ice cream without bending or softening it first
Format: Physical product · Worldwide – English
Started: 2014
Audience: ~15,000 email subscribers, ~12,000 social media followers
Payers: ~30,000 unique customers (lifetime)
Promotion budget: more than $100/month
Income: main income
Status: active and growing
Channels: Marketplaces, Text social media, DMs & cold email, Collabs & shoutouts, Your own newsletter, Video platforms, Offline & word of mouth

What worked: One newspaper article, then Amazon ads once the press wave faded
The result: Kickstarter raised $168K from 3,000+ backers; Amazon now drives 65% of sales
The catch: When the media coverage stopped, so did the orders – it took about a year of ad spend to prove Amazon could replace it

Michael Chou is an aerospace engineer who got tired of standard ice cream scoops hurting his hand and wrist on hard-frozen ice cream. He didn't want to microwave or heat the ice cream to soften it either – he wanted a way to scoop it cold and hard. Convinced there had to be a better way, he designed the Midnight Scoop, built to push straight into hard ice cream.

Michael launched a Kickstarter campaign for the Midnight Scoop in 2014. It sat unfunded until the Daily Mail ran an article on it – after that, the campaign went from unfunded to fully funded almost immediately. Fox 2's “The Nine” picked up the story shortly after, piggybacking on the Daily Mail coverage, and other outlets followed in a domino effect. By the time it closed, the campaign had raised $168,000 from more than 3,000 backers.

As long as the media coverage kept coming, so did the orders. But once outlets stopped picking up the story, orders slowed with them, and Michael had to find a channel that didn't depend on press. That channel turned out to be Amazon: kitchen products are the kind of thing people shop for there first, and with some ad spend to get the product in front of people, Amazon became the Midnight Scoop's main engine. Today, Amazon accounts for 65% of sales, Michael's own website 15%, and B2B deals 20%. On the website itself, traffic splits roughly 40% Google search, 30% Facebook and Instagram, and 30% TikTok.

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After the Kickstarter and the media wave ended, Michael assumed word of mouth would keep the momentum going on its own. It didn't. Orders dropped off, and he had to essentially start marketing over again from a standstill, rebuilding through Amazon and his own site rather than counting on the product to keep selling itself.

It took about a year after the Kickstarter for Amazon to prove itself as a real channel. At first there were only a handful of organic sales there, not enough to know whether it would work. Putting ad spend behind the Amazon listing got more people to notice and look the product up, and once orders started coming in consistently from Amazon, Michael knew the business would hold up without relying on press coverage.

Michael's customers are people who care about product quality and are willing to pay for it – the Midnight Scoop is likely the most expensive ice cream scoop on the market. It comes with a lifetime guarantee, so buyers aren't replacing a cheap scoop every year, and it doubles as a gift people pass down.

Michael and his team are developing a new product they expect to perform as well as the Midnight Scoop, aiming to double sales once it launches. He's keeping the details under wraps for now.

It took an aerospace engineer to think outside the box to solve everyday kitchen product problems.