The crowdfunding market is huge and ripe for all sorts of exploitation, but we have to say we’re completely floored by the sheer chutzpah of the people behind a new Indiegogo project for a product called Boom Bx. This ‘breakthrough‘ speaker technology was apparently ‘sketched on a piece of paper’ by Nick Robinson and his grandfather who spent ‘countless hours‘ optimizing the design. Really? Really?
The more astute among you will recognize the product as one we featured back in January this year, called the Touch Speaker. Do you notice any similarities? At the top, the Touch Speaker, the bottom image is the Boom Bx.
Touch Speaker
Boom Bx
Incredible similarities in design don’t you think? But of course it can’t be the same product can it? After all, no-one would be dumb enough to try and raise $28,000 for a product which you can buy off the shelf for $39.99 would they? Surely not? Anyway we’ve taken a copy of the project page, just in case it gets pulled soon.
Consider us absolutely totally flabbergasted. So the message from this is, be very very careful before putting your money into crowdfunding projects. Do your due diligence, check to see if there are any other products which feature the same technology, ask around, check out the Ferret. Just don’t plunk down your hard cash until you’re absolutely totally sure it’s cool and above board. Caveat emptor indeed!
In was inevitable, these types of things were bound to creep in with the popularity of crowdfunding on the rise. It would be nice if Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc. could vet each and every campaign more thoroughly, but that’s not realistically going to happen. Buyer beware.
On that note, sometimes there are campaigns for new versions of products that are already in the marketplace, where the campaign product clearly improves upon what is out there. The Sansaire Sous Vide circulator comes to mind. ON the other hand like the Boom Bx, there are some flagrant ripoffs and also rans.
Right now on Kickstarter is the FPP Holder (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/553557430/fpp-holder), which is pretty blatantly a less elegant copy of the Flygrip (http://shop.flygrip.com/), which has been out for awhile and enjoys very good ratings and sales. With items like this, the project owner is much better off coming clean and highlighting the differences between their product and the competition than trying to pretend that the competition doesn’t exist. And if the “inventor” actually doesn’t know that the competition exists, that speaks volumes about their ability to make their own product a success. Skipping or skimping on the market research for your product doesn’t inspire much confidence.
Absolutely spot on. This is one of those things that comes with the territory I guess. Unfortunately there are always going to be those who try to take advantage of other people.