Crowdfunding on Kickstarter the Touch Time Digital Watch raised over $300,000 on a goal of $50,000. This was back in September of 2012.
The “Next Generation Digital Watch” which was to include a touch screen and “smartphone-like apps” was a huge hit capturing wide ranging media accolades. Organizer Donald Brewer of Phosphor, a former VP of Technology from Fossil Watches, put together a professional video for his product. The watch integrated a modern look with a sleek highly functional design. Estimated shipping delivery for the watch was November 2012 for the over 2000 backers promised a watch.
Jump forward to November 2013 and no watch has yet delivered.
Recently one of the backers reached out to Crowdfund Insider as they were rightly concerned due to the lack of communication on the crowdfunding project. The last backer update was posted on August 20th which shared a hopeful shipping date of sometime in October 2013.
Crowdfund Insider attempted to contact their Media agency only to discover they were no longer affiliated with Phosphor. They were kind enough to forward our inquiry to the Phosphor team. Simultaneously project backers had recently been attempting to contact the company as well.
Today in a backer update Donald delivered a post of contrition. Acknowledging their shortcomings in communication, he paired this with a promise of more frequent updates for those who supported his vision. A portion of the update is excerpted below:
Dear Kickstarters,
While this has been a considerably more difficult and costly development process than our team ever expected, we are now making great progress and the end is near.
BUT before I go any further, I want to make a personal apology to each one of you. You have been incredibly patient throughout this project and I realize that I have failed to properly communicate with you as our team pushes through the difficult production process. I want to assure you that the delays in shipping your units has not been from a lack of genuine daily effort, but from firstly issues in changing to the larger battery size and recently addressing firmware issues to insure we have a reliable product.
Nonetheless, I have not shared information with you nearly as often as I should. Please rest assured that my lack of communication has not been from a lack of investment in this project. The entire team has been working extremely hard to get you the product we promised you and we all feel the stress and disappointment of failing to deliver in the time that we originally anticipated……
…Finally, I pledge to post far more regularly as we approach the completion and delivery of your watches so that you know we are striving everyday to get these watches on your wrists. As you have seen from various posts from beta users the final design and hardware is complete and our beta testers get many compliments on their watches, and once shipping to you we will still be the first non-rechargeable touch digital watch with extended battery life in the market today, true to our original specification and Kickstarter goal
We will continue to work hard to ensure that we ship all watches as soon we possibly can with our deepest
gratitude for supporting us through this process. I hope shortly to share a picture of our mass production line producing finalized watches.
Thank you for your support and patience.
Donald
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