An irritation-free razor that gives a close shave has been a dream for thousands of years. [Gillette] came close, and with multiple blades came even closer, but all razors today are still just sharpened steel dragged across the skin. This is the 21st century, and of course there’s a concept for a laser razor pandering for your moola. We recently covered the Skarp laser razor and its Kickstarter campaign, and today the campaign has been shut down.
The email sent out to all contributors to the Skarp campaign follows:
Hello,
This is a message from Kickstarter’s Integrity team. We’re writing to notify you that the Skarp Laser Razor project has been suspended, and your pledge has been canceled.
After requesting and reviewing additional material from the creator of the project, we’ve concluded that it is in violation of our rule requiring working prototypes of physical products that are offered as rewards. Accordingly, all funding has been stopped and backers will not be charged for their pledges. No further action is required on your part. Suspensions cannot be undone.
We take the integrity of the Kickstarter system very seriously. We only suspend projects when we find evidence that our rules are being violated.
Regards, Kickstarter Integrity Team
It only took eight hours for the Skarp team to relaunch their crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. As of this writing, over 900 people (ostensibly from the 20,000 backers of the original Kickstarter campaign) have pledged to the new campaign.
Although we will never know exactly why Kickstarter suspended the original Skarp campaign, the reason given by the Kickstarter Integrity Team points to the lack of a working prototype, one of the requirements for technology campaigns on Kickstarter. Interestingly, Skarp did post a few videos of their razor working. These videos were white balanced poorly enough to look like they were filmed through green cellophane, a technique some have claimed was used to hide the actual mechanism behind the prototype’s method of cutting hair. A few commenters on the Skarp Kickstarter campaign – and here on Hackaday – have guessed the Skarp prototype does not use lasers, but instead a heated length of nichrome wire. While this would burn hair off, the color of the wire would be a dull red when filmed in any normal lighting conditions. It is assumed the poor quality of the Skarp prototype videos is an attempt to hide the fact they do not have a working prototype.
Skarp’s move to Indiegogo has been lauded by some – mostly in the comments section of the Indiegogo campaign – and has been derided on every other forum on the Internet. Indiegogo is commonly seen as the last refuge of crowdfunding scam artist, but there are a few legitimate reasons why a campaign would choose to go to Indiegogo. Kickstarter is not available for campaign founders in all countries, and for some, debiting a card immediately, instead of after the campaign end like Kickstarter does, is a legitimate crowdfunding strategy.
But for a crowdfunding campaign to be suspended on Kickstarter and immediately move to Indiegogo? This almost never ends well. One of the most famous examples, the Anonabox, had its Kickstarter campaign suspended after it was found the creator was simply rebadging an off-the-shelf router. The Anonabox then moved over to Indiegogo where it raised over $80,000. Already the campaign for the Skarp Laser Razor has raised $135,000 USD from Indiegogo, after having its Kickstarter campaign raised over $4 Million. No, Skarp won’t be one of the most successful technology Kickstarter campaigns of all time. We can only hope it won’t be one of Indiegogo’s most successful campaigns.
