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A crowd funding campaign to create a futuristic razor that uses a laser to cut hair, rather than traditional blades. The campaign had raised just over $4 million on Kickstarter over the last couple of weeks but the campaign was suddenly suspended after the company behind it also put the campaign up on Indiegogo for additional funding. Kickstarter isn't going to change its mind either, as it confirmed in an email that “suspensions can't be undone”.
In addition, Kickstarter also said in an email to The Register that: “we’ve concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards”. So basically, Skarp, the team behind the laser razor was selling a concept with no working prototype prior to launching its campaign.
This will likely be quite the set back for Skarp, particularly since its Kickstarter drew in plenty of backers, collectively raising $4 million, well over ten times the campaign's initial funding goal. Things aren't looking too bad over on Indiegogo though, with $70,000 raised in the first seven hours of the campaign going live.
However, it will be interesting to see if the Kickstarter suspension hurts Skarp's reputation to the point where it is unable to fund its project a second time.
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KitGuru Says: Skarp's video for the laser razor sounded promising enough and it seemed to suggest that a working prototype did exist. However, Kickstarter appears to disagree, which has cost the start-up quite a bit of potential cash.
What absolute idiots, shooting themselves in the foot by going to IndieGoGo after getting $4mil on Kickstarter!
I already had my doubts when I saw the project, sounded way too good to be true. Guess KS is with me on that.
And I’m certainly not going to back it on IndieGoGo if there is no working prototype.
Greed is a terrible thing. Ruins so many…
Definitely something a bit fishy if you have said how much you need and get a lot more …and then set up another crowdfund…i will be very surprised if indigogo does not do something
Fucking greedy cunts, much deserved
Suspended on KS about 18 hours ago, 117k raised on IndieGoGo in 11 hours.
How could it be suspended because of being on IndieGoGo if it wasn’t even there at the time of suspension?
The reason: Kickstarter also said in an email to The Register that: “we’ve concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards”. So basically, Skarp, the team behind the laser razor was selling a concept with no working prototype prior to launching its campaign.
They have a working prototype being shown in a video though (even if that isn’t the final product). On top of this, Thousands of kickstarters have been allowed to finish and collect the money that had no working prototype, one example of this is a game called Planetary Annihilation which raised something along the lines of $2 Million and never had a working anything.
They set up the IndieGoGo campaign after the kickstarter was Suspended by the looks of things
You’d be surprised, there have been numerous legit campaigns that have asked for a lot less than they managed to raise. I’ve seen campaigns ask for as little as a few thousand and manage to get hundreds of thousands, Several (digital) games have reached 10x/100x what they asked for.
Personally, I actually see a different side to this which is… Kickstarter, atleast in the past and as far as I am aware, only accept payment through Amazon Payments which essentially means that you have to pledge to a campaign on Kickstarter using a Credit/Debit Card whereas IndieGogo is a nice alternative to use as it allows people to pay using Paypal however Kickstarter being the more popular website, gets alot more traffic. I think it’s a good thing to set up a campaign on both websites as it then gets your campaign the visibility it needs but also then if users search for it, gives them the ability to pay using paypal which for some people may be the only way that they can contribute.
There was another campaign a while back which did something similar to this which was for a game called “Planetary Annihilation” (completely different type of product I know but bear with me). This Campaign raised approx.$1.8 Million on Kickstarter however also managed to raise another $1 Million (approx) through their own website as they offered Paypal as a payment method on their own website. The only difference there was that the company behind that product already published and sold their own games on their own website so they already had that facility. For a company like this, Indiegogo may have been their only option in order to accept Paypal Payments.
Having looked at both the campaigns though, it would appear that the IndieGogo Campaign was only set up after the Kickstarter campaign was suspended.
One thing I find a bit odd from the article and kickstarters reason(s) for Suspension was the following sentence “In addition, Kickstarter also said in an email to The Register that: “we’ve concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards”. So basically, Skarp, the team behind the laser razor was selling a concept with no working prototype prior to launching its campaign.” as their kickstarter campaign does indeed show a working prototype of the product (as seen in this screenshot – http://i.imgur.com/c8ycZHi.png ).
For the record, I am not interested in the project or associated with the project in any way, shape or form nor did I back it or have any intention of doing so. In fact, reading this article was what made me aware of the campaign as I had no prior awareness of it or the product.
Which means that this article is misleading, since it incorrectly states that the reason for the suspension was the fact that it was put on IndieGoGo for additional funding.
Also i find it somehow funny since they seem to have a working prototype, also the fact that many projects finished without having a prototype makes it sound somewhat fishy that this would be the reason to suspend their project.
Anyways, i don’t want to offend anyone over at KitGuru, but i think that by not checking your facts before releasing this article you are hurting Skarp’s rep a lot more than the suspension itself.
They started the IndieGoGo campaign after the KS one was suspended.