The original Pebble smartwatch campaign in 2012 was a fabulous success, collecting $10.3 million dollars in Kickstarter pledges. It produced a real product that shipped, but not after some backers were disappointed when the company stocked Best Buy’s shelves before sending out watches to Kickstarter backers that had been paid for up to a year earlier. In its new campaign to launch a color watch, Pebble promises: that will not happen again.
The Kickstarter backer/Best Buy wholesale order controversy wasn’t as bad as it initially appeared on the surface: the company claimed to have 93% of the Kickstarter rewards shipped, but problems with the white version of the watch meant delays for people who chose that color. People who hadn’t received their watches while new ones sat on the shelves at Best Buy were understandably unhappy.
This morning, Pebble launched its second Kickstarter campaign for a color version of the watch, the Pebble Time. The $500,000 goal was met within half an hour, and as of this writing the pledge total stands at $5,804,324. That’s great. More importantly, though, far down the page where the company lists the rewards, they promise that this time all Kickstarter reward watches will ship before watches go out to retailers.
We understand that it was an exceptionally difficult choice when the company received an offer from Best Buy to carry the watch, but it’s nice that they’ve explicitly promised to ship orders of the Pebble Time to Kickstarter backers first. Let’s hope that they’re able to stick to it.
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist
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