NZ, Wellington based FTN Motion has closed its investment round of NZD $500,000, oversubscribed by at least $60K.
FTN Motion is a New-Zealand based start-up we recently covered. FTN announced launching their FTN electric moped class motorcycle. A full retro bike, with 30L storage, and 60 miles (100km) range. Now they announce the successful completion of their required 500K, with excess of 60K over the target!
The company was founded by Luke Sinclair, Kendall Bristow and co-founder Saskia Thornton. Together they spent years designing, refining and testing until feeling they achieved the desired fully functioning production prototype.
The company has set to bring the Kiwi lifestyle and needs to their design, which led to using all the vacant space for storage and the retro lookingn cafe-racer design. The FTN motorcycle is a great traditional look, with a faux tank, providing the great functionality and usability in the storage space.
This capital will be used for R&D to bring the existing “Streetdog” prototype model to a full certifiable model. It will also be used to make the start-up’s first key hires and to develop 10 Beta units to be sold to Wellington-based businesses as soon as July 2021.
Thornton says: ‘Being all new to the world of raising money, we learnt a lot about capital raising and the value of having some market validation as early as possible to get investors over the line faster. We also learnt that asking for money at the end of the year is not great! Most people in New Zealand have clocked out, which added a bit of extra time on our raise journey to reach our target.’
The FTN team already plans to do another raise around October 2021, in order to raise extra capital for a larger production run. This run will also include the 100 Founder’s Editions Streetdogs, which are currently being pre-sold and which will be produced by December 2021.
The bike is powered by a 3kW hub motor and weighs only 136 lbs (62kg). With a range of 100 km, or 60 miles, the FTN is already taking deposits (NZ $100) with a purchase price of NZ $7,995 (US$5,650) for their founders edition. The first sales are only open for New-Zealand locals for now. Their expectations are for starting delivery to their local clients by end of the year.
Sinclair says: ‘We didn’t have any money to spend on advertising so we hit the streets and just showed the bike off! It was great to get so much traction without spending any money. It really helped prove we were onto something. People just love the design and there’s nothing out there like it!’.
Source: FTN Motion