WE SHIP WORLDWIDE. ALL PRICES IN US$
Hello Everyone
Inspiring
Its been a year full of trials and
tribulations, notable victories and good learning
experiences and struggles that continue to this day, however, one thing
for sure is that Stark Drive has achieved so much more then we had ever
anticipated with the launch of our ultra affordable electric bike thanks to you
backers. It has been a incredible experience with the community that we discovered
that had the same vision as we did in bring ultra affordable
electric bikes to everyone. The understanding demonstrated by nearly
all our backers when we faced hurtles and delays was humbling and we are
incredibly thankful to all of you who believed in us.
Its been a long road to get to where
we are today
Just to recap what it took to get
Stark Drive here today we wanted to briefly go over the history and finally
reveal information that has not been discussed on our blog previously which
will serve to clarify precisely why schedules seemed to lag behind our original expectations.
Kickstarter
Stark Drive originally launched on
kickstarter on November 1st 2016. At the time we were new to this whole
crowdfunding business model and this inexperience showed. We made many
mistakes including not promoting Stark Drives' launch, setting our funding
minimum at a level that was assessed improperly as well as not
spreading the word about our campaign after the launch in the best way.
After a few days on kickstarter we
were contacted by Indiegogo. Indiegogo thought we had an excellent product at
an unbelievable price (perhaps too unbelievable for some?). At the time Mate,
offering a similar electric bike based on a similar frame, had been on
their platform since around July 2016 with the 'backing' to get one of their
bikes at around 2x Stark Drive's prices, and they had raised millions
of dollars.
Indiegogo saw an opportunity to
further improve their revenues (all crowdfunding websites take a cut of the
total revenue when anything is launched on their platform) with Stark Drive, a
handsome well built and well equipped electric bike stood out in the crowd.
On contacting us, they told us at the
time that if we cancelled our crowdfunding with kickstarter and moved to their
platform they would provided us a dedicated support team, something that
kickstarter did not offer at the time. Although it was not unheard of to launch
on two platforms at once, they cited 'backer confusion' as a good reason to end
our cooperation with kickstarter. We decided that this was the way
to go and thus, cancelled our crowdfunding campaign with their platform and instead
Follow the advice that they provided us regarding how to launch a successful
crowdfunding campaign.
Thus began round two with much
better marketing, much better promotion and spreading word of mouth about Stark
Drive and our new upcoming launch which was now scheduled on February 15,
2017. During the interim. We focused our efforts on everything that
indigogo told us about and when we did eventually lunch, or more
correctly relaunch, we were a striking success raising just shy of US$300,000 in
the span of about one week with the momentum building daily.
Indiegogo
Then started the most chaotic time up
to that point for Stark Drive and our continuing existence. At around 10 PM
GMT time on February 23 2017, we started receiving emails from indigogo stating that They were issues with our account and that they were going to be
canceling our crowd funding campaign. All of our emails to indigogo went unanswered and we learned then that there actually is no way to contact indigogo besides email. They do have a 1-800 number however this is a number that just
provides more information verbally as opposed to via their website text. True to form as they have stated via their email to us our campaign was
in fact canceled and all the backers refunded.
Obviously, in terms of a company
trying to crowdfund a new product, this would cast a significant level of doubt
as to the credibility of the product and/or the company that was tried manufactured. Not resting on our laurels we in the following days frantically tried to establish what had gone wrong and the
reasoning behind why our campaign was canceled.
After contacting legal representation
And trying to get a hold of anyone at indiegogo unsuccessfully we decided that the
only way to get some answers was to go straight into the dragons den and
visit the indiegogo offices. oscar booked a flight to New York And traveled to
their offices and met with them. Oscar has summarized this visit In a blog update which you
can read If you're interested here. we won't discuss too much on
this now, however, the visit was fairly successful in terms of them once again demonstrating a high level of interest in our product and they were impressed
at the level of refinement And professionalism in our Advertising campaign.
They especially Liked our promotional video which they felt to be clear concise
to the point And enticing.
Relaunch
After leaving indiegogos’ offices
once again we set to work on the Seemingly insurmountable task of relaunching
Stark Drive. As our account with indiegogo had been suspended I had no way of
contacting any of our existing backers. However one thing that I have done correctly
Was to keep a database of Email addresses of those whom were interested in
Stark Drive and these people were once again contacted and informed about the relaunch at
the end of April 2017. We were successful in raising enough funds in order to proceed
with manufacturing Stark Drive just hours after our relaunch.
Conspiracy Within Our Ranks
As the relaunch had done so wellI we were easily able to proceeded in placing the first order with our manufactures in China whom
we had already signed contracts with almost 6 months prior. We sent money over
to our local representative in China, Lance Liu (pictured below) Whom had a company registered there and able to
accept US dollars. It was his responsibility to transfer the funds over to the factory to begin production of all of the electric bikes. He role also included QC to ensure that every bike met our expectations.
oscar traveled to China at the end of June
Approximately 2 months after the launch Expecting to see hundreds of electric
bikes ready To be boxed and shipped out to backers around the world. When he arrived
There were only two prototype bicycles manufactured. oscar had known Lance for
years and had worked with them on projects prior to Stark Drive and thus
trusted Lance to handle the funds and begin production of Stark Drive.
It turns out that this was a huge mistake which oscar will get into more later. The visit went fairly well with the factory owner demonstrating a clear level of enthusiasm to work with us and to manufacture the highest quality electric bikes possible. Upon leaving the factory We were promised by special contract that the bikes be finished by the end of July. It was at the end of July that the deception was discovered.
New Start
Fortunately Oscar had the private contact
information for the factory owner which Lance was not aware of and Oscar Contacted
a friend whom was fluent in Chinese and thus began the dialogue That unraveled
the deception that had occurred. Lance had not transferred any money to the factory.
In fact left the factory was a bit confused about our company and exactly what
we are doing because a lot of promises kept coming from Lance but there was
never any action (ie $$'s moving).
This was a catastrophic event. Knowing
that there is a lead time between 45 and 60 days to manufacture Electric bikes
as per our factory contract. Oscar immediately used personal funds and wired them to the factory's new contact to start production.
Now remembering that it was now the beginning of August That meant
now that the bikes were going to be finished at the end of October And shipping
at that point. And this corresponds with our actual batch one
shipping dates and when our backers received batch one bikes. There was of
course an unfortunate knock on effect to batch two due to the fact that batch
one had been delayed. This delay of course being caused by the former business
partner Lance whom we had now filed criminal charges against in Chinas well as
being forced higher legal representation there in order to reclaim our funds.
HSBC
As a small business owner we would like to mention that HSBC was incredibly uncooperative during this whole situation. the funds were transferred to one of their accounts and when we learned of the deception, we contacted them in order to place some flag on the account. Call, after call, email after email, there was no cooperation from their side and the only thing that they would tell us was that if the police contacted them they would cooperate fully. In the mean time however the account was open to further moving the funds and making it even harder to reclaim what was stolen from us.
Determination
This did not deter us or dissuade the company from our ultimate goal of launching ultra affordable electric bikes worldwide. The
knock on effect only really had a significant impact on batches one and two,
batch three which were starting at the time did not have as significant a delay
as was associate with the first two batches and thoughts we are able to improve
our delivery by reducing the delivery time in every consecutive batch.
Ironically this deception by our
former business partner Lance might actually have been a good thing If we look
at it from the perspective of the relationship between Stark Drive and our
manufacturing partner in China. Such a
deception could be said to not look so favorably upon the country as a whole
and the factory decided that they would work even harder in order to achieve our
extremely ambitious pricing targets. Not only that but they are willing to work
with us to do customizations which would normally require large initial orders. This is
how we were able to compete with the more established bigger players In terms
of providing ultra customized electric bikes versus our competition which
provides one model that's identical with the possible color change. If you look at it from the perspective that every single bike was unique and required exceptional monitoring to ensure that it corresponded to the backers customizations on our website. we know of no other bike manufacturer offering this level of customization.
we like to think of ourselves as optimists and think of the glass half-full. A positive perspective on life and
words to live by.
Payment Processor
Ironically the deception that was
caused by our former business partner in China did not only affect us in terms of the delay in
the manufacturing of the electric bicycles.
This also had a significant Impact on our payment processing partner
PayPal. Of course It is understandable that PayPal wants to protect their
customers from fraudulent transactions as they ultimately have contracts with
all credit card providers in order to do so with the extended delivery of
batches one and two It raise some eyebrows over a PayPal and they decided that
it was In the best interests of all their clients to put a hold on all of the
funds that Stark Drive had with them. This
caused us even further problems as even though we had an Excellent partnership with
our manufacturers in China they must also purchase all of the product in order to manufacture Stark Drive and Ultimately cash is king. We then faced a situation where our cash flow
was causing us difficulties. Once again for the sake of keeping the dream alive oscar was compelled to use his own funds in order to keep Stark Drive on track.
It took approximately one year for
the situation With PayPal to resolve itself however with this resolution came more problems In that we were no longer welcome on the PayPal platform.
Fortunately for us we had a good relationship with our other payment processors
and were able to continue our crowdfunding via of those means.
Stark Drive MIni
If you stand still the world will pass
you buy. While we were working with our very funds and dedicated team to deliver bikes all
around the world we were also hard at work to making our Master Plan a reality.
In the coming weeks we are going to out do even ourselves and once again launch the worlds
most affordable electric bike at $299 US. The bike will still have the
same ability to customize it to your needs and not only that we are going a
step further and every single bike that leaves the factory will be fully 100%
assembled. All you need to do is remove it from the box, turn the key and start
riding.
Stark Drive Torque
Furthermore the launch of Stark Drive Torque is well underway with customized moulds being completed as we speak so
that we receive the first prototypes with the batch 3 bikes that are being
shipped out. This of course being important so that we can test and fine tune
the performance to deliver the best torque based electric bike experience
possible.
We don't have the resources of our
competition, all of our team have day jobs and 'work' at Stark Drive for free
with the reasoning being that an altruistic goal such as ours is one that will
never come easily. There will always be those that want to uphold the status
quo and prevent companies such as ours from lowering the global prices of
electric bikes and hence the barrier of entry into owning this environmentally
beneficial technology.
Just because our competition has
tried to prevent us from being a green transportation enabler does not mean we just
let them walk over us either. there are some fairly significant legal actions
that are ongoing as we speak which could result in a fairly significant slap on
the wrist for those that tried to cause the global electric bike market harm.
This has yet to be decided and we will of course report on it when a resolution
is reached.
we want to extend a heartfelt thanks
to everyone that believed in Stark Drive and our mission, as difficult as it
was to achieve. For your patience, for your understanding and for your and your
unfettered belief in what we are trying to do.
The world thanks you.
Sincerely,
Stark Drive Team
CEO, Stark Drive LLC.