MAXEVIS背后的成功策略
Last Updated 2026-07-03
Can a single board game generate over $73,000 (₩100M) in funding twice? The AI Smart Go Board proved the answer once again. Following its initial success of raising $95,000 (₩130M), the brand launched an encore project, shattering records with a 20,893% achievement rate and drawing 947 supporters. The secret was simple: instead of just listing technical specs, they deeply understood the needs of Korean consumers and crafted a tailored story for their target audience. Here is the story of how Maxevis, a Chinese smart device brand, achieved this remarkable success on Wadiz.
| Project | Key Causal Summary | Performance |
| Original Funding Project | Reimagined a traditional Go board as an AI-powered home entertainment hub for the whole family | ₩130M raised (~$95K) |
| Encore Pre-Order Project | Product upgrade positioned as a May Family Month gift, timed to Korea’s gift-giving season | ₩104M raised (~$73K) |
Four Strategies Behind Two Successful Campaigns
In an era dominated by short-form, high-stimulation content, sustained family engagement has become a rarity. To change this, MAXEVIS set out to build a home entertainment hub that could bring families back together. Channeling 20 years of manufacturing expertise into the AI Smart Go Board, they launched a Wadiz campaign to test this vision in the Korean market. Here, the Wadiz Global Team reviews the project and highlights the four key strategies behind its success.
01. Introduce Your Product's Unique Edge
The product’s core distinction is simple: it adds AI technology to Baduk (Go), a traditional strategy game, and packages it as a smart board game anyone can pick up easily. Beyond Baduk and Omok (Gomoku), the board supports a range of strategy, deduction, reaction, and puzzle games in a single unit, which made it stand out even among Wadiz’s pool of new-product launches. At a time when short-form, high-stimulation content dominates children’s attention, the board found a strong audience as a gift parents wanted to give their kids — which is why the project specifically targeted the household as a unit, rather than an individual buyer.
The design also shows clear attention to ease of use. The maker emphasized a button-based physical interface along with adjustable difficulty and LED brightness settings, reinforcing the message that anyone can use the board “without wrestling with a complicated app.” Furthermore, its portability, long battery life, and a form factor that sets up anywhere lowered the barrier further for camping trips, travel, and family visits.
02. Align Your Project Timing with Korea’s Holiday Season
The project title included the line “End Your May Gift-Giving Worries,” and that single phrase defined exactly what the AI board game was for.
May is known in Korea as “Family Month,” packed with occasions — Children’s Day, Parents’ Day — when families exchange gifts as a matter of course. By naming that seasonal pressure point directly in the title, the project gave supporters a concrete reason to check out and pay now rather than “someday.”
The review comment section reflected that pressure in real time, with supporters comparing prices for their children’s gift and debating options for nephews, middle schoolers, and grandparents in their nineties — a wide range of “who is this for” scenarios playing out in public. As Children’s Day, Parents’ Day, and camping season converged, a flood of delivery-date questions added real time pressure: supporters increasingly treated the board not as something they might buy eventually, but as a gift they had to lock in for that specific moment.
Positioning the AI device as a “May gift solution” rather than a generic tech product is what drove the project ’s high conversion rate. For any maker preparing to enter the Korean market, mapping Korea’s seasonal gifting calendar in advance is a practical way to raise the odds of a similar result.
03. Write a Story Tailored to Your Target Audience
The maker built its Wadiz project story around the project ’s core audience: families. On Wadiz, the project story functions as the product page. However, unlike a typical e-commerce product page, a Wadiz story’s success hinges on how effectively it answers “why this product.” This project delivered a clear answer by framing the reward as a perfect gift for children, a thoughtful present for grandparents, and an engaging activity for the whole family to enjoy together.
Core Messaging Used in the Project Story :
- “Helps children build stronger thinking skills.”
- “Helps older family members ward off loneliness and stay mentally sharp.”
- “Thirty minutes that brings the people you love back to the same table.”
Especially with tech products, showing how a product changes someone's daily life is much more powerful than just listing its features. Success comes from focusing on the product's true differentiator. This project embraced this strategy perfectly, communicating that the smart board game not only boosts concentration and engagement but also reunites friends, couples, and families around the dinner table.
04. Build Close Relationships With Supporters
On Wadiz, a maker’s relationship with its supporters is deeply tied to its credibility. Active engagement—through news updates, community comments, and reviews—is just as crucial as the product itself. In fact, it is now more important than ever: a recent update to the Wadiz algorithm directly boosts a project's visibility and long-term success based on supporter engagement signals.
According to Wadiz data, projects that publish 10 or more updates see a funding success rate of 98%.
MAXEVIS used its updates to remind supporters who were still deciding on a Children’s Day gift that funding “now” meant delivery before the holiday. The maker also ran a ‘thank-you event’ after the project hit ₩40 million within three hours of launch, giving a bonus charging head to the first 200 supporters. Events like these are what turn supporters into a maker’s ongoing base of support, rather than one-time buyers.
The community section vividly captured how deeply supporters envisioned the product as a gift, starting from the very earliest 'launching soon' stage. This connection grew through words of encouragement, inquiries, and hands-on impressions once the reward shipped. Reading through them, it’s clear how precisely they imagined sharing this product with others:
- “If I order three, do I get three bags too?”
- “Does buying two bundle sets come with two bags?”
- “Is there a bundle option for three sets or more?”
The lesson here is clear: offering two-unit and multi-unit bundles, paired with a dedicated carrying-case option from day one, would have unlocked a much larger share of the gifting market. Monitoring these comments is critical, as they provide the exact blueprint for a richer reward lineup in an encore project.
Ultimately, Wadiz functions as a powerful testing ground to capture authentic, unfiltered feedback from Korean consumers. For overseas brands entering the Korean market, it provides an essential gateway to validate actual demand and optimize product positioning before a full-scale launch.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. What should I do if I need support with everything from project launch to shipping and logistics?
A. You can search for a Korean logistics agency directly, or if that’s difficult, Wadiz can introduce you to an official partner agency. Wadiz’s official global partners provide all-in-one services covering everything needed to run a project from start to finish.
Q2. What are the advantages of running a Wadiz crowdfunding project as an overseas maker?
A. As a crowdfunding platform, Wadiz allows for overseas expansion without inventory burden. You can reduce inventory risks by predicting demand based on the performance during the ‘Launching Soon’ phase and public project periods and then producing products accordingly.
Furthermore, wadiz’s unique ecosystem allows international brands to overcome their lack of domestic recognition, securing a foundational "Korean review set" and building an organic, high-converting core fandom simultaneously.
Q3. How does story translation work?
A. Wadiz offers an AI-powered Story Translation feature that automatically converts a global project’s story into multiple languages. Story AI Translation currently supports four languages:
• Korean
• English
• Japanese
• Chinese (Simplified)
Write your global project story in any one of these languages, and Wadiz’s AI automatically translates it into the rest for supporters to see.
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