Speaking as someone who has sported a beard for seven years, shaving is a right old pain. It’s why I stopped in the first place. So I have good and bad news for the likes of Gillette and Wilkinson Sword: the good news is that a disruptive laser razor has been pulled by KickStarter. Hooray, one less competitor to worry about.
Not so fast. It’s already appeared on Indiegogo, and raised more than $61,000 despite a pretty public smackdown from Kickstarter. That’s how little people want to keep using traditional razors.
Despite looking and sounding extremely dubious, with a video demo that inspired very little confidence, Skarp Razor had managed to raise $4 million worth of funding before being cut off: 2,500% of its goal.
In an email seen by The Register, Kickstarter informed backers that the Skarp Laser Razor has been withdrawn for not having a working prototype. Or in their austere language, “we’ve concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards”.
This is quite a big step. Kickstarter doesn’t often get involved in products crowdfunded on its site, and there’s an unwritten rule among its users that you take a risk when you help fund a product. Clearly the degree of backing for the Skarp Laser Razor made Kickstarter take a closer look – and what it saw didn’t seem believable. The Kickstarter email adds that “suspensions cannot be undone,” so even if the laser razor’s backers produced a dazzling working product today, they’ve reached the end of the line as far as Kickstarter goes.
But it’s not gone forever. It’s already on Indiegogo, which may be prepared to turn a blind eye to Kickstarter’s concerns – especially with more than 20,000 frustrated, hairy backers prepared to put cash down. People don’t seem seem especially concerned with Kickstarter’s objections, with one backer commenting: “If you don’t show us working prototype, I’ll cancel my pledge! Oh wait … 🙂 But seriously Skarp try to communicate better this time.”
Will Kickstarter end up looking stupid? Probably not. But even if they do, with this demo video, you’d better hope they have two to three hours every morning for shaving:
They’re going to be there a while.
Kickstarter has brought us some strange things over the years. Here’s five of the oddest.
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