A local Kickstarter campaign might have some explaining to do.
Patch, a Vancouver urban agriculture initiative with the goal of putting a herb garden on every kitchen counter, raised more than $50,000 towards expanding its innovative self-watering planter design last summer.
The 2013 campaign, riding the surge in the grow-your-own-food movement, garnered both mainstream and digital media coverage and high-profile local endorsements.
The product was beautiful a sleek origami-style planter that was fully recyclable, did all the hard gardening work for you, and unfolded to fit easily on a windowsill.
The campaign funds were intended to upgrade materials and expand Patch's manufacturing ability. People who pledged $29 or more were to receive incentives, such as a Patch planter, and 639 people contributed or "backed" the project. When the project met its $50,000 goal, those funds became committed.
But complaints are surfacing on social media that the planters have yet to be delivered, and that the company cannot be reached.
On the Patch Facebook page, the message, "You did it!!! Patch reached our $50k Kickstarter Goal thanks to our supporters!!! Patch Love. you can still support" lingers tellingly at the top, with no further communication since June 13. Rather, the wall is littered with complaints from customers about non-delivery, dating back to June 26.
The website LetsPatch.com no longer exists and emails and phone calls go unanswered. Our attempts to contact Patch founder Kent Houston for comment have not been returned at this time.
Ki Communications had previously done some PR work for Patch, however, spokeswoman Sonya Hwang says she also hasnt heard from Houston since the campaign ended, adding that her firm still owed payment for the work they did for the company.
Mark Busse, who wrote about the Patch campaign on Foodists.ca last summer and pledged support for Patch himself, says this reveals an issue inherent to any crowdfunding endeavour: lack of recourse.
"The problem with Kickstarter is that it really comes down to if you're going to give money to these people, there's not much more security in that exchange than if you met someone you knew on the street and said, 'Here's $100; good luck with your project.' There isn't a legal mechanism to ultimately hold them accountable."
Kickstarter connects millions of people around the world with creative projects, and allows them to support an idea with dollars. Since its launch in 2009, 5.5 million people have pledged $962 million, funding 55,000 creative projects.
Kickstarter's controls extend to verifying the identity, address, bank account, phone number and email for the project creators. It also vets projects to try to ensure that the platform is only used for the expansion of creative projects, not, for example, to fund personal purchases. Ultimately though, transactions take place between the backers and project creators, not Kickstarter.
"Kickstarter is a facilitation engine, Busse says. And they go to great lengths to make sure its only very serious, qualified candidates who actually have a product to offer or are creating something. You and I both know that Patch was very real. I have one sitting right here growing herbs in it. It's a real thing and a very good idea, but they can't send the cops after him. And we, as the people who gave him the money, can't be too upset by it, because it's crowdfunding.
"You don't play the lottery unless you're willing to lose money. Kickstarter should be viewed like that. If you believe in something and you want to get excited about it, do it. Don't do it because they promised you a T-shirt."
A representative from Kickstarter was not available for comment at press time, but, according to the Wall Street Journal, Kickstarter has hosted more than 100,000 projects, and of these, less than a dozen have been shut down because of fraud concerns.
But the question remains whether crowdfunding, more so than traditional financing channels such as private banks or the government-run Business Development Bank of Canada, which is dedicated exclusively to supporting Canadian entrepreneurs, is the safest way to make sure that good ideas get grown.
You can follow reporter Kelsey Klassen on Twitter @KelseyKlassen.
