Smart Travel Jacket Raises $9.2 Million In Kickstarter Campaign

That smart travel jacket, with its nine utility pockets for electronics, drinks, sunglasses and passports, ended up raising nearly $9.2 million in its now-completed Kickstarter campaign, the sixth-most-funded campaign in the crowdfunding platform’s history, the company says.

The owners of the Baubax Travel Jacket, which began their campaign in early July seeking $20,000 and ended it September 3 with a chart-popping $9,192,055 campaign backed by a crowd of 44,949 funders, say “our operations and design teams are at the factories now working to build the final factory-ready patterns.”

The jackets are slated to appear in time for the holiday-shopping season in eight styles. And they should be ready for travelers heading out on their vacations early in 2016.

Whether the Baubax Travel Jacket, with its blanket and hand-warming pockets and built-in neck pillow, will ever become more than an extremely niche product remains to be seen.

But at least Baubax LLC’s husband and wife team Yoganshi and Hiral Sanghavi listened to the needs of the masses over the course of the Kickstarter campaign and subsequently announced:

“We heard you ladies. We have changed our Women’s Blazer to a Two-button design instead of One. Having two buttons will make it more consistent with the look of a Business Jacket. Also, it will allow more room in the inside to fit the pockets perfectly.”

ScotteVest, you’d better zipper up.