Chickens rock the shoot with Ray Banks, a senior in business management from Colorado, whose Kickstarter project to fund a “Chickens of Laie” calendar has earned almost twice its original funding goal. The idea originally started as a Christmas present for his sister. “My sister went to school here before. We thought it was so funny how there are so many random chickens all around town. One time I was talking on the phone with her and saw a chicken - like always if you go anywhere - and thought, ‘Oh, it’d be so funny to make a ‘Chickens of Laie’ calendar’.” Banks said he initially put the project on Kickstarter.com to become familiar with the website for future projects. “Honestly I was just bored in the library and thought, ‘I should put it on Kickstarter!’ I grabbed one of the photos that I had from my project for my sister and put it on there. It was successfully funded. I was only going for $150 - each calendar is $15 so I needed 10 backers - but it ended up getting funded $236!”Paul Wilson, a BYU-Hawaii teacher of digital entrepreneurship, said the success of the calendar was Banks’ ability to transform his idea into reality. “I think the power of his idea is the fact that you can take something that small and have success with it. He needed $150 to throw out his idea - that’s not massive funding. Through crowd funding techniques he almost doubled what he needed,” Wilson said. “I love the story because it’s not outrageous. It’s just showing someone trying something entrepreneurial and going somewhere. I’m curious to know how it turns out.” Banks said he has been thrilled with the publicity his calendar has gotten. “I had an article run in the ‘Honolulu Star Advertiser’ and I’ve had people come up to me and say, ‘Hey, are you the guy with the chicken calendar?’” Brandon Johnson, a senior in marketing from New Jersey, is a longtime friend of Banks and said the project’s popularity has grown without any marketing or advertising on Banks’ part. “It’s marketed itself because of the humor in it and the geographical location in which he’s doing it. It gets a lot of recognition.”Banks said he believes the calendar will please his customers. “I think it’s going to turn out really nice. All the chickens will have little hats and some costumes that depend on the season or culture of the month they’re featured on.”Banks said the project has already seen a lot of humorous moments. He laughed, and said, “I used my friends DSLR and he had some stale tortilla chips so I just threw those and watched as chickens flocked over to me. One of my roommates was coming back home and saw me there on the ground surrounded by chickens.”Banks said, “To be honest, I don’t really have much planned for selling the calendar because it was just for fun. I might ask the bookstore if they want to sell some.” “At this point there is no way to buy it, but I’m going to put it on baselinebicycles.com which is my own business I started last year to sell my own brand of bikes,” said Banks. “Even though the chicken calendar is totally unrelated, I’m going to put it as a product on there as a preorder for the Christmas season.”
Writer: Joshua Mason ~ Multimedia Journalist
