Gallery: 5 Kickstarter Projects Slammed With Success
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Kickstarter can be a blessing to artists and entrepreneurs—sometimes too much of a blessing. Earlier this year, a slew of crowd-funded projects received money that was an order of magnitude more than requested. Such windfalls can turn a dream into a nightmare: They often bury ill-prepared creators and lead to manufacturing delays, lawsuits, defective products, and irate backers. Here are a few projects that got slammed with excess success. *Illustration: Eero Johannes*
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The Order of the Stick Reprint Drive ------------------------------------ __Deliverables:__ Rich Burlew hoped to reprint 5,000 hardcover books of his web comic about role-playing games. The Philadelphia illustrator also promised a panoply of bonus rewards—magnets, stickers, patches, and art prints—to those who donated as little as $11. __Funding goal:__ $57,750 __Amount received:__ $1,254,120 __Complications:__ The resulting 110,000-book order exceeds the printer's capacity. Burlew has also encountered vendor snafus for the patches and other swag. He says he's spending his days wrangling dodgy suppliers and devoting "more time to financial spreadsheets than anyone in a creative field should ever have to." __End date:__ TBD *Photo: 2012 Giant in the Playground*
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Oh Expletive: Zombies, Unicorns and 8-Bit Creatures! ---------------------------------------------------- __Deliverables:__ Phoenix illustrator Safwat Saleem dreamed of creating handmade screen prints. Pledging extra got you custom T-shirts and illustrations. __Funding goal:__ $3,000 __Amount received:__ $32,000 __Complications:__ It proved difficult to fulfill orders for 950 prints (not to mention 660 hand-screened T-shirt bonus gifts). "I did not budget my time at all," Saleem says. "Suddenly I have all these white-people problems, and I'm not even white." __End date:__ April deadlines pushed to June. *Photo: Oh Expletive*
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Printrbot: Your First 3D Printer -------------------------------- __Deliverables:__ Brook Drumm, a web designer in Lincoln, California, wanted to make cheap 3-D printing kits. __Funding goal:__ $25,000 __Amount received:__ $830,827 __Complications:__ The IRS immediately smacked him with a $330,000 bill. "To be honest, there's very little money left," Drumm says. But try telling that to backers: "There's a crushing amount of customer support needed; they're just calling all day long." __End date:__ Pushed from January to summer. *Photo: Printrbot*
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Pebble: E-Paper Watch --------------------- __Deliverables:__ The Palo Alto company offered smart watches that paired with iOS and Android phones. Custom watchfaces were promised for pledges of $1,250 or more. __Funding goal:__ $100,000 __Amount received:__ $10,266,845 __Complications:__ "We would have been more than happy to make a thousand watches," cofounder Eric Migicovsky says. They had orders for 85,000. The company went from three staffers to 10 and had to hire outside customer support. __End date:__ September ... maybe. *Photo: Pebble*
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Pen Type-A ---------- __Deliverables:__ Brooklyn artist- designers Taylor Levy and Che-Wei Wang planned to produce a small run of sturdy, minimalist steel pens. __Funding goal:__ $2,500 __Amount received:__ $281,989 __Complications:__ The duo got orders for about 6,000 pens, not the planned 50. After meeting funding goals, they got a cease-and-desist letter from an alleged copyright holder, which required legal counsel. A trip to China revealed that the initial manufacturer was incapable of meeting product specs. Then a new manufacturer also proved unsatisfactory, requiring more legal counsel. "We made a lot of mistakes," Levy says. "I do get that people are frustrated." __End date:__ TBD *Photo: CW&T*
