Trail blazer: ‘Swiss army knife of travel jackets’ raises record US$9m on Kickstarter

Long-distance love has paid off for the designers of a travel jacket that has now attracted a record US$9 million from would-be buyers on crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

Hiral Sanghavi, designer of the BauBax jacket, conceived the jacket as a means of solving the dilemma of long-distance travelling while carrying a swag of electronic equipment. He had originally hoped to raise US$20,000.

Two weeks into the campaign in July, the jacket became the most funded clothing item in crowdfunding history after raising US$1.25 million, surpassing the “10-year Hoodie”, which raised $1.05 million on Kickstarter in 2013 . Last week, the jacket surpassed $6.4 million and became the most sixth-most funded Kickstarter of all time.

By Thursday morning - with less than an hour left for funders - more than 44,000 people from 81 countries had put money up to see the jacket made.

While the BauBax jacket was put in Kickstarter’s “product design” category, and not its “fashion” category, a Kickstarter spokesperson said the jacket is the most funded apparel project.

Hiral Sanghavi, co-founder of BauBax, a Chicago startup that focuses on developing creative lifestyle products and manufactures the jacket, travels weekly from Chicago, where he is finishing his master’s at the Kellogg School of Management, to San Francisco to see his wife, Yoganshi Shah.