Successful Kickstarter Campaign Suspended - Panda Watches
Posted: Tue May 20, 2014 6:53 pm
Panda, a company who had previous success on Kickstarter funding bamboo sunglasses, has returned to the platform to fund their newest product: bamboo watches. Although their project has just been cancelled, they had raised over $70k, or 352% of their original goal. Kickstarter has decided to cancel this campaign after allegations that Panda has been taking a third party product, and reselling them for a more than 400% markup.
Many backers reduced or withdrew their pledges as they waited for confirmation about these allegations. The project has now been canceled by Kickstarter for not following guidelines, and the project's creator admitted to the Daily Dot to having used the same manufacturer as those sold on Alibaba for some parts of the watch.
It's great to see the Kickstarter community (and online community in general), looking out for each other and getting this noticed. Do you guys think this kind of example will dissuade others from doing similar things in the future? Or do you think as crowdfunding gets even more popular these types of fraudulent projects will be more common?
Source: http://www.dailydot.com/business/panda-kickstarter-watch-alibaba/
In recent days, commenters on the project’s Kickstarter page began to notice uncanny similarities between Panda’s own bamboo watch design and bamboo watches already available on wholesale website Alibaba, an online auction house similar to eBay. ...
Redditors on the r/kickstarter subreddit have also since pointed out that bamboo sunglasses strikingly similar to the ones that Panda sells can be found wholesale on Alibaba.
Many backers reduced or withdrew their pledges as they waited for confirmation about these allegations. The project has now been canceled by Kickstarter for not following guidelines, and the project's creator admitted to the Daily Dot to having used the same manufacturer as those sold on Alibaba for some parts of the watch.
It's great to see the Kickstarter community (and online community in general), looking out for each other and getting this noticed. Do you guys think this kind of example will dissuade others from doing similar things in the future? Or do you think as crowdfunding gets even more popular these types of fraudulent projects will be more common?
Source: http://www.dailydot.com/business/panda-kickstarter-watch-alibaba/