I‘m working on an outdoor gear management system and would love your advice.
I'm an engineer and also a hiking enthusiast. The biggest headache for me when it comes to outdoor activities is gear planning and inventory. I've already built a lightweight prototype that can quickly plan and pack gear using AI — by the way, here in Shenzhen, China, you can get a circuit designed for as little as $300 USD, and industrial design mockups done within a week for the same price. It's crazy, I know 😅
I really believe this is a real pain point. I recently started promoting it, mainly targeting the US market via a Kickstarter waitlist (the device price is a bit high for Chinese users). I currently work for a US company, but since I'm not a native English speaker and don't know the US market that well, I'm running into a lot of challenges. I'd love your advice on promotion channels. Here are a few options — which one do you think I should focus more on?
Reach out to US-based YouTubers (sent DMs to 10 of them, one with 100k subs replied)
AI suggested doing community building on Reddit — the "build in public" vibe here is strong and people could help test the product. But hiking-related subs are super sensitive to promotion — even sharing my real experience got me banned.
Run ads on Facebook — this is totally new to me. I'm worried that users might not fully understand the product just from ads.
Would really appreciate any advice. Also, if anyone here does operations/marketing and is interested in this project, let's connect and chat. Thanks!