Soooo common. Tooling cost isn’t the only key though… building the ENTIRE business out with r&d, lease on space, payroll, support, cash flow, knowledge base, etc… running a business is the hurdle- with all its ugly bits. When margins are thin and you ignore all the hidden costs and time - any one of a dozen little problems could sink the ship.
Makibox is another good flop example. Craftbot did well, but those guys were selling a fairly conventional printer design and ended up having to raise their price to >$1000/printer to be sustainable.
@Brook_Drumm what I think is crazy is that all these issues are well-documented for printer crowdfunding now, but people keep doing it!
@Dave_Durant I’m one of the disappointed backers that you apparently think is a “whiny little princess”. I’ve backed a lot of Kickstarter projects before, and had some fairly expensive failures along the way. While I don’t expect to see my money back (that isn’t how Kickstarter works) I’m glad that the ONO (nee OLO) didn’t really cost a lot, all things considered. I am still very disappointed in the way the company has continually misled its backers WRT delivery status. I don’t think that @Daniel_Stauffer has any better chance of seeing the ONO he ordered than I do of seeing my backer rewards from this project (already 13 months overdue). And yeah, I think offering a product for sale to the general public before you’ve fulfilled your commitments to your backers is a dick move.
Also a backer and definitely disagree about being a whiny princess (or that princess should be an insult for that matter). People are upset and rightfully so. People have stressed that Bluetooth is a better option. They’re only recently doing it. People ask for better updates. They’re still not doing it. Communication goes a long way here.
@Craig_Trader , I was more referring to people who started screaming fraud when they were a month late.
And yeah, I think offering a product for sale to the general
public before you’ve fulfilled your commitments to your
backers is a dick move.
Well, I agree but if the choice is them being dicks vs declaring defeat and closing down, I’ll take them being dicks.
@Brook_Drumm , they started with an idea, not a product. The phone-printer connection was originally going to be over audio. Then they said the boards got through UL and - joy! - will be shipping in a month. Then they decided that the boards had to be totally redone because - surprise - there are actually lots of different kinds of phones out there and audio is not exactly the same on all of them. Then, just a few weeks ago, they decided that there is a better idea called Bluetooth and are ditching the electronics, again, and going for that.
I don’t think this is deliberate fraud or making mistakes on well-worn paths. They’re finding new and inventive ways to make new and easy mistakes which has certainly cost them more than KS generated.
I’ll be happily surprised to have mine by Xmas - i think February/March is probably more likely.
Kick Starter is tough. I sold 518 printers for between $199-$259. The margins were very tight and any mistake could domino into chaos.
Communication is key for sure, but it’s tough. Even working 80 hrs a week, I couldn’t get enough done to warrant a quality update to the community. It’s easy to duck down and push into the work, trying to accomplish enough to feel like I had a worthy update.
With $160k “laying around,” I briefly had the mindset of, wanting to make everything perfect, like the user manual, but quickly realized I was wasting precious time.
Regardless…
I determined early on in production that I couldn’t afford to hire very much work out, so I faced the decision to finish the last 350/518 printers myself, or use the “pre-sales” revenue to increase production, but pushing me further into the red.
I opened pre-sales to the public about 45 days after campaign ended, as KS creates hype and buzz, and waiting too long, makes people lose interest.
Bottom line, I didn’t want to fail, so I finished the last 350 printers myself, and about 50 pre orders as well.
I refunded about 8 kickstarters that were mad I was late, and I figure it was better to “pay back” the impatient backers, than to let them create doubt.
I aimed for Oct 2016 for final delivery, at 200 printers a month, but without any help, I could at best, ship only 25 per week, 100/month. The last KS shipped March 2017, last pre-order shipped in April.
I feel I was kind of “successful” because I didn’t waste a single penny. I ran through the budget weekly, to know exactly where I was. I also budgeted based on kickstarter, and not based on expected future sales. I also bought all the inventory up front.
Ultimately, I had everything carefully planned, and didn’t rely on expected future sales, to make good on my promises.
Too many companies bank on dreams, and when they realize their $4 million in KS funds is suppose to be spent on parts, and can’t be spent on the Ferrari they want… well I’ve gone on too long 
I think the bare idea of kickstarter and the other ones is pretty cool. But I cant understand, why people start a campaign probably not knowing a single thing about production as i assume. This ia Not meant to be Offensive to anybody here or elsewhere. Its just what I think. I have worked and I am still working for production companies, first in Automotive and now plastic processing, planning production as part of my job. I always have the feeling people Just jump right in without thinking common sense consideration on what they need ans want. Thats unfortunately true reality in my oppinion. People starting kickstarter campaigns should spend their time with thinking of how they can produce faster and betterbfor their cloents. So, nuff said.
@Daniel_Stauffer I think most people going into it just don’t know what they don’t know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
They put together a bill of materials, price out 100 or 1000 units, add 20-50% margin for themselves (haha) and say, “man, at scale, I could sell this for $XXX!” And they simply don’t take into account things like office space, parts warehousing, production mis-runs, and paying for their own rent and food until it’s done.
There’s also a tendency among engineers and hobbyists to think that designing and building a working prototype is the hard part. But it’s really the fun, easy, and cheap part, where no one is yelling at you and you don’t have a deadline. Making a thousand of something is HARD.
I started to back this on KS, but when people started pointing out on the comments that no one was answering any questions, I got cold feet and backed out. Bought a DaVinci 1.0 in July for $399 .
I was guilty of not knowing what I don’t know in my Kickstarter campaign. Asked for $25K, got $831K. Almost killed me. These type of challenges show the make-up of the person… I’m just one of those thick-skulled, stubborn beyond reason guys. My campaign really didn’t have any significant technical hurdles, so it was always achievable w hard work. When technical hurdles are involved, those are show stoppers. After a year of electronics, firmware and software struggle w the Simple Pro… I felt like I had been through another Kickstarter, only worse. We hit wall after wall and there was nothing I could do but wait and pray. In the end, we figured it out but I can now appreciate why some Kickstarter stuff stalls.
But I don’t get why people don’t just refund everything they can the minute they see it won’t work.
Brook
Mmm
So what do you want to do about that now