Investing “Green” is always good. Yeah, right. Stuff reports on yet another “Green” idea that has predictably gone tits-up.
Buyers waiting for delivery of innovative eco-products invented by a Nelson man have been told the enterprise has collapsed.
Nelson man Mohi Healey attracted national attention earlier this year when he introduced his concept of an eco-friendly, stone-based alternative to traditional toilet paper which dissolved completely within 60 seconds of flushing.
Healey raised more than $70,000 in crowd funding in four weeks with 910 backers who are now out of pocket. A number of people contacted Stuff this week when they did not hear back from Healey in the past three weeks after asking about the delivery of their orders.
[…]In a long email sent to purchasers on Thursday, Healey announced the RockRoll business was no more.
[…]Healey cited a combination of mental health issues, business inexperience and being overwhelmed by the time and resources required as factors in the failure.
A deckhand on the Sanford-owned deep sea factory trawler San Enterprise at the time, Healey left his job to focus solely on the RockRoll vision.
[…]Healey said he realised he was not able to build a machine locally to make the product so invested a “mass proportion” of the crowd-funding with a Chinese manufacturer.
“Devastatingly, the concept was deemed unfeasible to produce this material at scale – unfeasible for highly efficient and skilled professionals in this field, let alone this inexperienced, lone kiwi guy with an idea.”
Don’t know about you, but that sounds like a bullshit excuse to me.
He said a key stakeholder who had agreed to supply the calcium carbonate also backed out before he had secured a supply agreement.
Maybe he smelt a scam and ran away before he was left out of pocket?
[…]Healey launched a follow-up product – a highly-concentrated dishwashing tablet called Ecotab – in mid-August. He said Ecotab was his “eureka moment” of trying to redeem the loses he had incurred.
“I thought would save my name and add value to the orders that RockRoll pledgers had made (which weren’t going to be fulfilled).”
So let me get this straight. A self-admitted inexperienced businessman with a failed bullshit non-existent product decides to then launch another product?
[…]He would now rely on customer feedback to make decisions on how to proceed with any refunds, but was willing to repay as much of the full $72,000 within 24 months.
[…]Auckland customer Brooke Hutchings had been waiting since August 16 for her Ecotab product to arrive.
An email came about the shipping on the August 23 but it had been complete radio silence since then, she said.
Now you’re free to come to your own conclusions but, to me, based solely on the facts presented in the Stuff article, this has scam written all over it. It’s possible of course there may be facts I don’t about that would sway me more towards “naive idiot who didn’t know what he was doing.”
That said, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out the basic idea was never going to fly as the more “biodegradable” a piece of bog paper is, the more likely it is to fail the all-important one finger test.
All in all, this is an illustration of the “Green” business model, the most well-known being of course Tesla. Start with an idea. Doesn’t matter if it’s a good idea or not so long as it’s “green”. Next, attract media attention which then attracts lots of stupid eco investors. And when it all turns to custard, either take the money and run or make up excuses so that you can milk your investors for even more money.
Which reminds me: I need to send out some media releases for my brand new “solar panels that work in the dark” business. Moon-panels anyone?