Context for this scampaign: Skarp rocked the crowdfunding scene raising $4 million on kickstarter for their futuristic "lazer razor". A bladeless shaving razor which they claimed would provide a closer and smoother shave than traditional blades and without any skin irritation.
Unfortunately for skarp, Kickstarter had been scared by recent failings of large funded tech campaigns such as the Zano drone. Under kickstarters new policy, tech/manufacturing campaigns had to show a working prototype, something skarp could not do. This campaign was then shut down by kickstarter which presumably wasn't a decision they made lightly as it was already funded to $4 million and would be a significant loss to KS.
Not to fear though because Indiegogo the crowdfunding platform with even less moral responsibility than KS which uses systems seeming designed to facilitate scams such as flex-funding, begged skarp to relaunch their campaign there.
Unfortunately for skarp most of the backers had been scared off from the KS campaign and they barely raised 10% of the original campaign. Nevertheless $450k is no small amount.
Since they were funded the communication from skarp has been suspiciously quiet. They did release a hilariously bad demonstration video showing what was nothing more than a 3d printed plastic handle with a long optic fibre glued to the end of it, connected up to large, mains powered laser equipment. This device managed to barely hack away at maybe half a dozen hairs over a duration of minutes. When questioned on the effectiveness of the device skarp insisted that the miniturised and battery powered final version would somehow perform better. Yet even then by their own admission it would only be able to cut around 5 hairs at a time.
Despite such a terrible demonstration which clearly showed burning and smoking of hair which is something skarp insists isn't the case, the majority of backers remain surprisingly optimistic.
In the 5 months since they were funded there has been no update on the progress of the shaver. They said to have received the specially made optic fibre 3 months ago which they originally claimed was the only thing that was needed to start production. Then more recently said they were still working little things like, you know, figuring out how to make it work.
Not only has there been almost zero communication from skarp with backers besides very occasional platitudes, they have been trying to move all backer comments out of public view completely by starting a private facebook page for backers. The fact they have struggled for months to even setup a facebook page speaks volumes for their general competence.
Their stance all along has been that they need to be secretive of what they are doing because supposedly "big razor" is trying to take them down and were responsible for having their original KS campaign closed. Bizzarre paranoia and the fact that their technology is already patented, wanting to protect some specific details of their tech is almost understandable. What doesn't make sense is that realtively innocent and frankly expected backer comments are being deleted. Things like "hey how is the project going?", "any update you can show us"... deleted.
I have known for some time a lot of comments were being deleted from their page. Many people with great technical knowledge about lazers and electronics had made minimal donations so they could ask questions in the comments, nothing rude or IP infringing, but definitely probing questions. All these people have been blocked from the comments section. But now they are deleting almost any comment from genuine backers who are asking legitimate questions on the progress of the campaign.
Now you wonder why they need to be so secretive, what are they hiding, why need a private facebook page to communicate, why delete backers comments? Surely a reputably campaign can answer relatively innocent questions, even if no direct answers were given it is pretty standard practice to at least reply with some PR spin (ala Dragonfly Futurefon) to keep backers placated.
Example of the sort of comments that are being deleted: http://i.imgur.com/sWHDt7g.png
And the same backer posted for the last couple of days that link which is also being deleted every time he posts: http://i.imgur.com/uTcRqTL.png
ここには何もないようです