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The Cole-Bar Hammer, a 7-year old Kickstarter that is still going

68 points| victorbojica | 5 years ago |kickstarter.com

105 comments

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[+] jasongill|5 years ago|reply
I think the "still going after 7 years" means "still hasn't been released after 7 years". It was supposed to be for sale in 2014 and still hasn't shipped yet (from what I can find in Google). The creators have been stringing along their backers for the better part of a decade.

As far as utility, it seems like more of a gimmick than something that would get regular use. I can't think of a time when I've been working on a project and wished I had a 1/2" drive ratchet, a short pry bar, and a hammer but only had space in the tool bag for one of them.

[+] mc32|5 years ago|reply
It reminds me of the useless Craftsman “gift” SKU Craftsman puts on display ends during the holidays: a combo crescent, hammer and pry iron[1]

Aha! That’s what I’ll get good old uncle Bill.

I think it took Leatherman ten years to get something out the door —but that was the 70s when you didn’t have the prototyping we have today.

[1] https://www.craftsman.com/products/automotive-tools/wrenches...

[+] warent|5 years ago|reply
How are they stringing them along? The Kickstarter can no longer receive funds. Do scammers typically provide updates for 7+ years after they stopped receiving money?
[+] dec0dedab0de|5 years ago|reply
I can't think of a time when I've been working on a project and wished I had a 1/2" drive ratchet, a short pry bar, and a hammer but only had space in the tool bag for one of them.

I don't know anything about the product itself, but based on your description I wish I had something like that in the van when i was in a band and we were going on road trips in a cheap van. Especially if they somehow included a hacksaw.

[+] elliekelly|5 years ago|reply
And here I thought it was a kickstarter for a hammer invented by a 7 year old kid.
[+] anonAndOn|5 years ago|reply
Maybe they'll make it out of titanium and go after the ultralight tool enthusiast market? It'll never get used, but damn it's light!
[+] fy20|5 years ago|reply
I used to quite like browsing KS in the early 10s. I didn't fund that many projects as I got burned by a couple, and a couple more were pretty underwhelming, but I used to like browsing it to see what innovative ideas people had (often my favourite were too far out of the norm, so never got funded).

Nowadays I see ads for Kickstarter and other crowd funding sites popup in my feeds quite a lot. The product is often interesting, but then when I look into it I realise it's an existing product, available now on AliExpress, that's just rebranded. The 'founders' of course give their 'story' about how they are tirelessly making this innovative product to change the world.

One notable example was a set of silicon lids for pans and plates as a replacement for plastic wrap. I saw the product, and was actually quite tempted to fund it as it wasn't very expensive (<$20), but it still had quite a while left for the campaign to complete and the estimated delivery was a few months away. I then found exactly the same product on AliExpress, for less than half the price, and it arrived before the campaign had finished funding :D

[+] jobigoud|5 years ago|reply
Are you sure it's not the other way around? There is a well known business strategy where Chinese entrepreneurs look at promising kickstarter projects and launch production in Shenzen and have something on the market even before the original campaign is over.
[+] williamscales|5 years ago|reply
Those silicon lids are great! My mom had a set long before the existence of KS, validating your belief in this case at least.
[+] s0rce|5 years ago|reply
I like those silicone lids, I think I picked up a set on Amazon, until the most used size tore.
[+] hiimtroymclure|5 years ago|reply
Back in 2011 I thought Kickstarter and crowdfunding in general was so cool. I funded a maybe 20+ projects. I think I received 4-5 items and the products i did receive were very underwhelming. Probably half of the projects I never even heard from after the funding closed. Needless to say I haven't been on KS in a long, long time.
[+] nikkwong|5 years ago|reply
Crowdfunding on Kickstarter changed my life. I was just a kid with an idea in college in 2014 and decided to try a project that became a business that I am still running today. I think there are gems to be found here and there, but it is definitely to find the signal in the noise.
[+] jcims|5 years ago|reply
Might be a fun game to have each person pick a kickstarter, strip it down to the pitch, the goals and the backer options and have everyone guess if it was successful or not.
[+] cbozeman|5 years ago|reply
The only thing I backed on Kickstarter was a game called Trial by Trolley. I went whole hog and got the $65 edition.

Took so long to make it that by the time I finally got it, no one ever wanted to play it. Most of my friends end up playing totally different party games when we get together.

I also looked back a bunch of things I bookmarked to see what did and didn't get made - about 75% of the KSes I was interested in never got to funding status, or got funded, but eventually failed.

[+] ohazi|5 years ago|reply
Consumer crowdfunding websites like kickstarter and indiegogo have largely failed to live up to their early hype. Campaigns now fall into two categories: designer vaporware from people you've never heard of, and established companies that don't need crowdfunding but are using it anyway for marketing purposes.

On the other hand... niche crowdfunding websites like Crowd Supply seem to be doing better than ever. There are a few reasons for this:

1. A lot of campaigns are for open source hardware. These projects are developed in the open, and you can go to github and download schematics and look through prototype firmware to evaluate the project yourself, months before the campaign even starts.

2. Vetting seems to be better. There are almost always real prototypes floating around by the time a campaign goes live.

3. More modest goals. More often than not, the funding goals are right around some sensible volume buying / manufacturing threshold. The creators usually just want to be able to get a PCB with microvias, or buy parts by the reel rather than in single-unit quantities. You don't see as many creators trying to get rich quick or bootstrap a company.

In my view, this is more in line with what crowdfunding was supposed to be: Getting volume buying commitments for an already working design rather than speculative "investing." A lot of kickstarter/indiegogo "creators" should probably be in jail for fraud.

[+] egypturnash|5 years ago|reply
Crowdfunding still works great for independent comics. "Hey I drew this thing and now I want to use KS/IG as a way to manage pre-orders" is a proven, solid part of an artist's revenue stream.

My general rule of thumb is to avoid hardware campaigns, and to be exceedingly dubious about any campaigns that are asking for enough money for a creator to live on while they make a thing unless they have a long track record of delivering.

And any campaign that meets a lot of stretch goals should probably be expected to take at least twice as long to deliver, if not more; sometimes I think it would be really worthwhile for Kickstarter to build active support for stretch goals into their platform, that trigger changes in the delivery date promised on the page when met, because "add four more levels and two playable characters to the scope of this video game" sure is gonna take some more time to build.

[+] irrational|5 years ago|reply
The exception might be boardgames. Boardgames are huge on Kickstarter. 30-50 new board game campaigns come out every week (most non-board gamers are surprised to learn that about 5,000 new board games are released every year). Many are from new small publishers that use it for its intended purpose.
[+] detaro|5 years ago|reply
Lots of successful kickstarters are artists, musicians, ... that can't prefund a production run, but have a product that's a clear scope of how this kind of thing is made (book, artprints, ...) and a large chunk of the work already done. That is still not 100% risk free, but an overall success outside your two categories.
[+] dragontamer|5 years ago|reply
> and established companies that don't need crowdfunding but are using it anyway for marketing purposes.

There are also groups who are using crowdfunding to check-and-see if a video game (or whatever) has enough fans to be worth greenlighting.

See Mighty No 9, or Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

If a Kickstarter campaign is successful, then the investors dive in with the rest of the money to greenlight the project. If it fails, then they kill the project right there and then.

Mighty No 9 and Bloodstained have their share of issues, but I think the methodology has been proven to work. "Proving worth to investors" is a real step in the process.

[+] scrollaway|5 years ago|reply
Yeah. I'm wondering if there's somewhere that actively tracks this stuff, especially the popular ones.

The park & diamond helmet for example (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/park-diamond-foldable-bik...) raised over 2.5MM EUR and I lost track of how late it is but they've easily sent 10-15 updates saying "sorry, we didn't get it in time for [MONTH], but we'll be ready in [MONTH+2], promise!". They gave me a refund when I asked for one, at least, and since then I've only seen more of the same.

Hard to tell if it's a scam or utter incompetence.

[+] FullyFunctional|5 years ago|reply
Anecdata: of the 36 projects (not including projects that failed to get backing) I have backed in the past 8 years:

- 4 were outright scams (only 1 was caught and cancelled by KS)

- 32 delivered, practically all were very delayed, sometimes by years.

- Of the 32, most were as promised, but some turned out useless - At least half I regretted buying

One thing that was very apparent (here as IRL) is that software projects runs WAY over the schedule.

I have since completely stopped supporting Kickstarter, unless I'm backing people who I already know of and who has a reputation at stake. There's way too much fraud and useless crap (but "World First Ultimate Crap").

Finally, it's not _all_ bad. The highlights: Klauf Light Bar (use them daily), Exploding Kittens (have played a few times), THIMBLEWEED PARK (love it), [Pocket]Chip, Nebia Shower, Kuroi Hana Knife Collection (use daily), Stingray Non-stick pan (use daily. Note, a 2nd campaign from the Kuroi Hana Knife people).

[+] elliekelly|5 years ago|reply
I’m shocked you actually got 32 of 36 items regardless of the quality. I would have guessed a much lower number of deliveries.
[+] thomas|5 years ago|reply
My findings largely reflect this, but I have to admit that I stopped after about 10 projects. Now I will no longer do a KS, regardless of the product, or the founder, or the price. I'll just wait, pay full price later if it's worth it, and save myself the frustration and multiple "regrettable delay" notes.
[+] g051051|5 years ago|reply
Cool idea, let's see how I did:

- 41 projects backed

- 5 unsuccessful

- 5 I cancelled

- 1 outright scam

- 1 not delivered

- 27 delivered

- 2 still pending, including SpaceVenture at 9 years.

Of the 27 delivered

- 15 video games or software. Most were delayed, but were generally considered excellent when they were finally delivered.

- 4 physical objects that wound up being just OK. (Coffee Joules, Brimstone Card Deck, Fidget Cube, Thimble Slide)

- 8 media (books or cds) that I mostly really liked

[+] bbarn|5 years ago|reply
I used to be super into my cooking knives, but after a decade of using everything from rubber handled target chef knives to 300+$ japanese art-work knives, I've learned that it's better to buy a 40 dollar chef knife every 3 years than a 200$ one every... 3 years.
[+] shib71|5 years ago|reply
I've backed quite a few projects (150), so I did a review to look for patterns.

* 33 software/game projects

* 23 board game projects

* 20 "thing" projects (i.e. requiring manufacturing)

* 60 rpg material projects (adventures, systems, supplements, etc)

* 14 other media

I initially backed quick a few software and "thing" projects. But both seem to be prone to unexpected setbacks, delivering late or never. My only outright scam was a "thing", but quite a few of these have gone silent. Transparency in these projects was never great, but maybe that has improved since I stopped backing them?

Of the board games: I enjoyed half and still have 3. Honestly, this seems to be in line with the games I try in general. Kickstarter has practically become an official business model for the industry, with established companies using it regularly. The result is that there is a high standard even for amateur projects in terms of understanding the game they're making, having artists lined up, having reasonable ideas of manufacturing/shipping costs and delays, posting regular updates, etc.

Currently I mostly back RPG books. They're often useful and inspiring for my own games and I've found quite a few systems that I'm keen to try (fingers crossed, 2021 will let that happen). About half of these result in a product I like and keep, and for the rest... Almost everyone running these projects is an RPG nerd like me, looking for an excuse to take their crazy idea as far as they can. I can get behind that. Transparency on these projects has usually been very good.

On lateness: every project has been late, except the ones that were basically just a preorder for something already in progress. The best you can hope for is regular updates that are transparent about progress and setbacks.

[+] smcleod|5 years ago|reply
I'm at:

- Total: 13

- Scams: 3

- Not delivered: 4

- Delivered on time: 0

- Delivered with <3 month delay: 1

- Delivered with <1 year delay: 4

- Delivered with >1 year delay: 1

[+] tekstar|5 years ago|reply
Just to chime in, I bought a CNC and 2 3D printers from Kickstarter over the years. One was junk, one was a scam, and the other ran out of funds before they shipped a unit.

The first CNC (MyDIYCNC) was 6 months late and the quality was horrible. The two MDF walls that held the metal Y axis in place were pre-drilled more than an inch apart. It was sold as a budget CNC printer but in reality was basically useless except as a learning exercise in what matters in CNC design.

Of the two 3D printers I bought, neither arrived. The Peachy Printer was a cute, simple, and cheap design.. after many updates of adding complexity and delays one founder accused the other founder of running off with the funds and buying a house, but did so in such a weird way one has to wonder what the hell actually happened.

The other 3d printer I don't even remember the name.. it was supposed to be high quality and cost around $300 CAD. Manufacturing delays and issues, they cancelled the whole thing and shipped nothing.

[+] latchkey|5 years ago|reply
This one is 5 years and never got delivered. I vowed to never do another KS type site ever again after this one.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1284726646/the-lampster...

Funny story though, I bought them as gifts for the 4 founders of our company. CEO went nuts after a year and the 3 of us eventually left. Company is still in business, is much hated on the internet and I hope one day he will get a nice delivery of 4 lamps and wonder where they came from.

[+] mxxx|5 years ago|reply
So is the moral of the story that their Kickstarter is a scam, or that it takes a surprisingly long time to design and manufacture a high quality hammer?

I'm not sure what background this crew has, but presumably there's a large delta between thinking "hey i reckon i could invent a better hammer" and actually designing it, mass producing it and getting it to market. On the face of it you might think if you back a project like this you'd get your hammer within a year or two, but maybe it's more involved than that. I honestly don't know.

[+] lilSebastian|5 years ago|reply
Ah the gamble of crowd funding on a platform who refuse to get involved, even when there has been violations of their terms of use. Some great examples spring to mind.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tangibleinstruments/arp...

'Tangible instruments' have a product 'ready to ship. Turns out to be an empty case. Essentially spent all the investment money, but didn't get ownership of the hardware design from the ee they contracted so had to start again. Still no product, and years after it was due to ship it's been superseded in terms of functionality by products available in the marketplace.

[+] dusted|5 years ago|reply
I've used a lot of tools recently, including crowbars and hammers of various sizes. This is a stupid idea, as stupid as multi-tool pliers or the swiss army knife.

It means that it WILL sell, and the buyers will be the category of hipsters sporting well-trimmed beards, thick rimmed glasses and forester's shirts. The customers will be very happy with their product, as happy as they are with their multi-tool pliars and GPS watches, and since they will never actually use it for anything remotely resembling actual work (as with their other posessions) they will remain happy with it.

So.. Good on you, Cole-Bar. You can be as next-gen as you want, you'll never get picked up on an actual building site. You're too flimsy (and expensive) to use as a crowbar (they are TOOLS and they will be hit and bent in every imaginable angle, with any imaginable tool), and you are.. not a good hammer for anything, not as a light precise hammer, not as a heavy duty one. Congratulations, you're about as useless as your target audience, a match made in heaven.

[+] moistbar|5 years ago|reply
While I agree this looks dumb, I don't understand your loathing for multi-tool pliers. The most useful tool is the one you have with you, so I'm going to carry as many as I can fit in my pocket at once.
[+] pimlottc|5 years ago|reply
Kickstarter campaigns are basically the modern day infomercials.

It’s all about having the perfect pitch video and impressive tram bios, getting shallow pro-forma coverage in all the tech blogs, and then name-dropping them all in order to bolster your image (along with the obligatory credulous pull quotes). Make sure your social media team keeps putting out updates, and don’t forget to add some ridiculous stretch goals for when you go viral.

Never mind that your team has never actually shipped a working product at scale before, and never mind that fulfilling all your reward tier posters and T-shirts will take nearly as time as delivering your actual product.

At least when you bought something off TV you’d actually get something. Sure, you’d have to wait 6-8 weeks for it to arrive, but that’s practically Amazon Prime compared to Kickstarter.

[+] renewiltord|5 years ago|reply
I go into Kickstarter and IGG and friends with the view that I want to contribute a small sum of money to see something realized. If you take a good crack at it and eat the money, that's okay.

After all, I gave you like $200. It's not the end of the world.

[+] donclark|5 years ago|reply
Is there an opportunity to create a business that kickstarts products/services and assures that the funders get the product they contribute to. The business would provide a framework of services to help kickstart the products listed, as well as help with any/all aspects of the delivery (incubation, local resources, grants, testing, etc)
[+] sharadov|5 years ago|reply
KS has become a scam. I crowdfunded this one product, they kept delaying the shipping date, then they said they shipped it, no details of shipment, then they informed me that it was delivered. I gave up, scammy douchebags!
[+] simoneau|5 years ago|reply
I’ve always looked at crowdfunding as a bet. That is, here’s something I wish existed and maybe these people can do it. If you think of it as a way to preorder, you’re bound to be disappointed.
[+] noncoml|5 years ago|reply
So much shilling and gaslighting in their KS's comments page.
[+] dafoex|5 years ago|reply
I remember first seeing the Stanley FuBar what feels like 7 years ago. I wonder which came first, and whether they were invented independently of each other...