Mario Pinto Launches Kickstarter Campaign for New Label

Apparel designer Maria Pinto has re-launched her career by with a Kickstarter campaign. Currently, she has raised more than a quarter of a million dollars in pledges for her new label M2057.

Pinto, who previously designed for Michelle Obama, lost a luxury clothing business due to bankruptcy during the financial crisis.

She unveiled M2057 earlier this year on Kickstarter, which is her new line of more affordable designer clothes and accessories for women. Her goal was to raise $250,000.

Saturday, Pinto's Kickstarter campaign topped that number with the help from 576 backers and only 46 hours left before the funding drive was set to expire.

"It's really amazing to see all the people -- especially those I don't know -- who backed me," Pinto said in an interview. "It's been a crazy six weeks since the campaign went up, with lots of highs and lows."

Pledges only trickled in at the beginning. But all that changed when M2057 organized a live event in Chicago for friends, previous and potential clients and the press.

"When they touched and saw the product and tried it on, people liked it and then told their friends," Pinto said. "That's when you saw the pledge numbers go up."

Now that M2057 has reached its pledge goal, the firm will next send a survey to all the backers to confirm details of the products they ordered. Then it will produce the items for delivery in March.

Pinto also plans to start looking for more traditional backers and hopes to a larger M2057 collection for fall 2014 to be sold in retail stores.

The successful Kickstarter campaign should definitely help!

"This is proof of concept - we already have over 500 customers," Pinto said.