Crowdfunding is not "just for startups" as you suppose. If you go study the space for a while and you'll realize that there are many reasons to crowdfund. Starting up a business is one such reason, but there are many others and they are all valid.
Perhaps the most important angle to consider is the big picture of, "Where does the money come from?"
In this day and age, as a young company (< ~5yo) that wants to design & manufacture a product for sale, you really have three options (unless you're independently wealthy and feel like staking vast sums of your own money):
1. Take out a loan (incurring massive debt and interest payments) to fund the development of a product that you hope, but are not certain, people will buy.
2. Get angel or other capital investors to front massive stake in your company because they believe in your vision... but you give them large portions of your company in return.
3. Tell the customer what you're planning on doing and offer a pre-sale of the items (now via a crowdfunding site, but before such things, you just offered a "pre-order" in your online or physical store).
If you don't want to saddle your company with debt up to its eyeballs (#1) and you don't want to give partial ownership of your company to third parties (#2), there's only one viable option left.
This is why so many companies that start out crowdfunding and make successful products will often keep crowdfunding. It's not that they couldn't try to pay for R&D themselves once their first product is selling, but that it makes good business sense. You don't have to guess at customer demand. You don't have to wait to find out what they like and don't like about your product. You get a constant dialog with them about what they want and why, and you get them to put their money where their mouth is up front. Yes, they wait a long time (something they're not used to because most people have zero idea how long it takes to research, develop, produce, and test a marketable product), they lose patience, and they will grouse when you're late for the third, sixth, and twelfth time... but if you do your job well the quality of your offering will more than make up for it and they will come back for more because you make quality products. Their friends who didn't join them in the crowdfund will then wish they had because, "Oh wow, you got that $xxxx thing that I'm entranced by for half price (or less)?! That's amazing!" kicks in soon after the product hits the street.
Why would you, as a company, want to jump out of Option 3 Land when you've seen how great it is? Option 2 sucks unless you find the perfect partner(s), and the "hoping customers will like it" risk from Option 1 is where you end up whether or not you take Option 2 or just go for the bank loan. *Everybody* is at risk in Options 1 and 2.
Truth be told, the margins on the vast majority of crowdfunding efforts are scant -- people rightly expect to get their perks for pennies because they're taking a risk on you and they expect some reward for that, so you're stuck more or less "giving away" your goods for very close to the actual cost of parts, design, & production (in some cases less, some cases a tad more, but it's NOT really a profit center).
I can't tell you how many crowdfunders fail to deliver because they don't account for the hidden costs and then have to send out letters that say, "Well, we really wanted to send you all the poster and the t-shirt in addition to our widget, but the money just isn't there. Oh, btw, the company is now down to just one person, me, and i'm broke. enjoy the widgets. Sorry about the rest...&quo
t; This is very common in the video and tabletop game spaces. It's always a sad day for me (I wanted that t-shirt!) and for them (they wanted their dream to become reality).
My big lament is that I run a retail operation. Crowdfunding is largely for product producers, not product resellers. I'd *love* to crowdfund my operation (get other people to help me build a storefront, offer them "perks" for doing so), but I can't find a way to do it that makes any sense from a customer perspective, so I'm stuck in the realm of Option 1 or Option 2. Both suck.
