Kickstarter project OwnPhones is out of money and unable to deliver product

A Kickstarter project that aimed to create custom-printed wireless earbuds is in financial trouble. The amount raised has run out and because investors dropped out, the inventors cannot deliver the product.

OwnPhones raised $767.472 via Kickstarter in 2014, which is about 703,600 euros. The amount achieved was more than three times what the makers thought they needed to be able to release the printed earplugs. In an e-mail to the backers, OwnPhones creator Itamar Jobani declares that the money has run out and that the promised earplugs cannot be delivered.

Jobani writes that the success of the Kickstarter project has attracted the interest of a number of large companies, who may have wanted to invest. The team looked for a partner in China who could take care of the production. It turned out that 3D scanning and customizing the earplugs would be the biggest challenge. The makers promised to use ‘Dual Balance Armature’ drivers in the OwnPhones; Jobani says he did not realize how complicated that would be. As a result, the making of a working prototype was postponed time and again.

In March this year, Jobani thought he had found the perfect collaboration partner. A Chinese investor would have been willing to invest 5 to 7 million dollars in the project. According to Jobani, the production costs were $450,000, but more money was needed for more research. Negotiations were postponed and when the stock market in China collapsed this summer, the investment was called off. The money raised from the Kickstarter campaign had since run out. Searching for new investors has yielded nothing and because OwnPhones no longer has any money in cash, it does not look like they will be found easily.

Jobani says in the letter that the team has made many mistakes: “Many of those mistakes are due to a lack of experience managing a large company and underestimating the development costs and time required to do so. The biggest mistake is trust. from a partner.” He apologizes and says he is trying to get the project back on track. However, without a new investor, that chance seems small. He does not talk about returning the invested money.

Kickstarter does not guarantee a successful completion of a project, but projects that have reached their target amount must meet a number of conditions. For example, they must make every effort to reimburse backers if the project fails and account for how they spent the money. Backers gather in the comment section below the project’s Kickstarter page. A lawyer has already been contacted to try to get the money back through a lawsuit.