In my view, consumer printers are hulking and inscrutable plastic machines, worse to look at than to use. When industrial design students need to be punished, they have to sit alone in a room with one.
So a year ago, I got excited about a new Kickstarter project that promised to change the printing design paradigm. Zuta Labs' printer looked like a tiny marvel: a little machine the size of a large apple that walked across pieces of paper, leaving ink footprints. Twee as a doily collar in a Wes Anderson movie, this device seemed a perfect critique of existing printing technology. I wanted a whole family of them. I wanted to replace my family with them. We'd go to the park, eat ice cream, chase each other though the grass, and during a quiet moment, sitting on a blanket, the printers would inch across my hands and knees, writing, "I'm so happy." Me too, printers. Me too.
Zuta Labs' Kickstarter goal was high ($400,000) and its estimated ship deadline was far off—January 2015. "Buying" a printer through the project was expensive, the reward for a minimum $180 contribution. I had to say no. Ultimately $180 was too much money for that adorable little printer, even if it was the only kind of printer that will ever fit in a tiny New York City apartment. And as I talked myself down, I reasoned that if it succeeds, I can buy it later. Maybe. Hopefully.
Recently, I remembered the project and had to check up on it, as you do with erstwhile crushes. The Zuta Labs printer was successfully funded, having raised $511,662. It's gotten a makeover since I last saw it (the crush metaphor holds) and now has a closed design with its mechanics encapsulated in plastic. After reaching its funding goal, the device went on to receive heaps of coverage in various tech press outlets. It even won a Consumer Electronics Show award for innovation.
It also hasn't shipped. That's not to say it disappeared. Zuta Labs still plans to ship its printer, but the wait time I thought was lengthy a year ago has more than doubled.
By this point, fairy-tales about successful funding and horror stories of projects that end in abject failure or corruption have led most of us to recognize the volatility of any Kickstarter project. But lost between these two extremes is a long, sometimes confusing road that is invisible, and sometimes even inaccessible, to the mildly interested passersby. In today's Kickstarter Web storefronts, projects appear so singular to their backers that any unplanned activity can seem more erratic and suspicious than it actually is. In most cases, though, delays are normal.
This underreported grey area between funded and shipped (or sailed) isn’t necessarily something to loathe. Rather, it highlights many of the reasons crowdfunding is worth protecting—even if some of the practice’s worst contradictory forces are at play.
The after of "happily ever after"
Severin Marcombe is one of the creators of Lima, a file-sharing dongle that acts as the "brain" connecting one person's various devices: USB keys, tablet, laptop, desktop. If the Lima software can be installed, Lima can assist devices in sharing files between them without having to put anything in a cloud service. The project asked for only $69,000 in funding, but it cleared $1.2 million before its campaign closed. Over 12,000 people backed the project. Lima estimated that its first round of rewards, one of the "plugs" that enable file access between devices, would ship to backers in December 2013. As of this month, the company has yet to ship its final project. It did just complete a beta testing round with 500 users, however.
"We were a really small team," said Marcombe. The product idea, he said, is actually nearing four years old, and its founders turned to Kickstarter after they were unable to impress investment sources at the product's earliest stages. "The first thing they say is, OK, you need money to make 1,000 [units], and I will invest."
Later, Marcombe wrote that he was expecting only 1,000 backers (Kickstarter provides tools to limit the number of people who can buy a reward, such as the physical product). But once funding was done, Lima ran up against several manufacturing problems. "What we had was a lot of providers being late… you can't anticipate it," he said.
After funding, Marcombe wrote in November 2013 that the team had made a decision. Lima would aim to ship a polished, thoroughly-tested product rather than a "first iteration." He presented a redesigned Lima and noted the new, higher standards for functionality. This would take "several months."
Marcombe told Ars that he had heard from other startups that his hands were tied by the number of backers he'd be affecting with his product; he'd regret it if he rushed either the software or hardware. But the hardware proved difficult to pin down, with several trips to China logged in the project's updates. At one point, Marcombe's partner wrote a long post about troubleshooting a shipment of devices that were having kernel panics in order to figure out the RAM provided by one of the two factories used was subpar.
Like Lima, many product-oriented Kickstarter projects, even the multimillion dollar ones, tend to stumble because they hit a logistics dead zone. They’re too big to hand-make but too small to get clout with overseas manufacturers, who are used to dealing with and prioritizing much larger companies with much larger orders. Perhaps rightfully, project creators tend to feel like they are at the absolute bottom of the priority list.
These manufacturing problems are then compounded by two things: a lack of focus in the product design and a need to shift priorities in the lives of the creators. As of 2012, Kickstarter no longer allows creators to show only renderings of a product; any functionality described must be performed and demonstrated with a working prototype. However, creators often continue to add to a product's functionality after funding is finished, and there continues to be a vast gulf between a prototyping a product and manufacturing one.
While some project creators are aiming to start a business, many others are shepherding side projects that become runaway successes. Finding Kickstarter success forces a creator into several more full-time jobs practically through osmosis, from operations manager to customer service to marketing to HR. As a result, creators often back themselves into more of a full-time role than originally intended.
Justin Knowles, the creator of the Kickstarter project for Kolstom carbon-fiber sunglasses, said that though his Kickstarter raised only $80,346 on a $15,000 goal in 2012, managing it still overtook his life. He'd created a prototype of the sunglasses shown in the campaign and had experience making carbon fiber products before, since "product development is my full-time day job." After completing funding, he delved into developing IP for his product, the start of a purgatorial two-and-a-half years of development during which he spent more money than he raised.
Throughout, Knowles posted photos, visible only to backers, of the production process. He considered switching the glasses to a plastic "subframe" that would be wrapped in carbon fiber and easier to manufacturer. But when his backers pushed for the full carbon fiber product, he switched back. In May of last year, Knowles wrote:
"This update isn't an easy one. Since the last update [in April], I have yet to hear back from my manufacturing partner. They've been non-communicative at this point and while I'm very frustrated I am holding judgement until I am able to go down there in person. The team there has been generous with their time and resources and while Kolstom has been a back burner project for them I really think they are the best option I have."
Six months later Knowles ultimately declared failure, drowning in spreadsheets of his spending.
"I thought sunglasses would be easier," Knowles told Ars.
Stories like Lima's and Kolstom's happen more often than we realize. Take ZPM Espresso's attempt to create and ship a limited-run, PID-controlled espresso machine, which began with a runaway funding campaign—$369,569 pledged on a $20,000 goal. This initiative also ended with a declared failure despite one its creators, Janet Tambasco, telling the New York Times Magazine that "the coffee machine works, and has always worked." But the story, the team's lack of experience in manufacturing, inability to hold sway with overseas manufacturers, and ill-advised hiring of consultants who could not add to the project led to a premature ending in January 2015.
reader comments
85