It happened how I imagine legendary secret societies are formed: a group of individuals, bonded by a common interest, gather around the table, drink wine until the early morning hours, cast their lots together, and say “I’m in” in order to achieve their mission. And so it was with the formation of Parducci Society, though not so secret or amounting anywhere near legendary. The four founders – Jennifer, Meredith, Sara Jean and Denise – decided to pool our collective talents and efforts to promote the work of Corrado Parducci and architectural ornamentation.

We would have loved the time to savor the moment, sip the champagne, and discuss strategy. But we had work to do. We all agreed that our first major project was to help promote the Corrado Parducci documentary that Jen and her partner, Jack Johnson, were already working on. The project hinged on an interview in California with Allen Parducci, Corrado’s last living child. With each of our schedule constraints and the opportunity to interview Allen growing scarce, we knew we had to move fast. Besides, this was a project Jen had been planning for ages, ever since becoming the local expert on Parducci. We felt compelled to dive right in.

So, the next thing we knew we were awash with activity – trying to fund the documentary and hopefully get Jen and Jack (the director) out to California to talk with Allen. We chose Kickstarter to help. We did everything we could think of to promote our Kickstarter project, contacted everyone we could think of, sent out press releases, started a social media campaign, and talked and shared and asked, talked and shared and asked – rinse and repeat. Some efforts paid off – we were featured in Huffington Post Detroit – but many did not. It was hard watching the Kickstarter tracker every day and seeing little return on our efforts, but that is the risk of using Kickstarter!

No, our project did not get funded. But 77 awesome individuals backed just over 50% of it. We consider this to be a success, but more importantly, a testament that the work of the Parducci Society is relevant and needed.  For a project that drifted in out of nowhere, we still made a splash.

Don’t think for one second this setback has slowed us down. Like any good secret society, we regrouped in the dark corners of a public house, bemoaned our fate just enough to soothe our egos, then started discussing what we could have and will do better.

In the end, what held us back from reaching our goal was probably the absence of time to fully strategize and build an audience. We had no established reputation or presence to back us up, to share a clear vision of who we are and what we are going to do.

And so we are working on that. One payoff of our Kickstarter documentary project is that we were invited to participate in the Detroit Design Festival.  We will have a Parducci exhibit up at the Detroit Public Library Main Branch starting September 19th. We are taking this opportunity to prove the our value of Parducci Society, and to start building our name.

So, we are still kickin’ despite Kickstarter. We are still working on establishing our organization. We are slowly emerging, and hopefully, so will the name Corrado Parducci.

-SJB