Nick Statt at the Verge on the Coolest Cooler Kickstarter disaster:

Coolest, the company behind a popular Kickstarter-funded cooler, is now selling its product for $499 on Amazon in an effort to raise enough money to continue producing new units. The news may frustrate Kickstarter backers, who were promised the product in February of this year. Coolest said today it now plans to deliver the last shipment of coolers to Kickstarter backers by April 2016.

In a video uploaded to YouTube, CEO Ryan Grepper said the Amazon sale is to “keep the lights on” and “make certain that every single backer’s Coolest can get made and shipped.” The problem lies in the cooler’s blending motor, which is made by a supplier that’s currently on strike, he said. Coolest has been unable to find a viable replacement.

As I’ve said before, making things at scale is not something you want to take lightly.

User interpol in the comments makes a great point:

Uhh, so $12,000,000 in funding — take off $1mil for Kickstarter fees — divided by 60,000 units is only $200 per unit.

This seems like a vastly underfunded project.

My two successful Kickstarter projects, Bicycles for Our Minds and Charms, Quivers, and Parades both involved two ingredients: paper and ink. Once your project involves electronics and moving parts it takes the complexity to a much higher level.

This doesn’t mean poster and book projects can’t be highly complex. Then can be.