Backlash not honoring Indiegogo campaign promise

You mind providing more insight or a link about this indiegogo campaign?

 

Well that's pretty egregious... If they're ignoring your emails, perhaps make some public comments on their Facebook & Instagram posts?

 

Estimated Shipping August 2017, and its Oct 2019. Over two years of waiting and all you get is we are a very small business and we will let you know. No estimate, No further information. There are too many other breweries in the area to support. It will be easy to pass on these guys.

Sorry dood, I'd consider it a lost cause.

 

Looks like Backlash is a facing a....wait for it.....


....BACKLASH!!


(I’ll see myself out now.)

 

Ouch sorry that you may have gotten bait and switched. I'd be very curious if you have any future updates. Bad look for Backlash and it's unfortunate if it discourages people from supporting other local business endeavors via crowd funding in the future.

 

Ok, so if I understand this correctly... everyone who gave them $150 or more was supposed to have exclusive access to six different beers in the first year of operations. A quick scan of their donations shows that to be 159 people. So they agreed to make six whole unique beers, "the dankest of the dank" by their description, apparently involving some kind of aging process for less than 200 people?

I'm actually willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that they just haven't had the resources as a small business to complete this project, but they never should have proposed it in the first place.

The juice does not seem to be worth the squeeze for anyone involved here. They only raised $40,000, which barely seems like enough money to justify producing six unique aged (?) beers that you can't sell, never mind all the other rewards that were promised.

 

Coming on 3 years since the indiegogo landed seems like enough time to pump out the promised beers?

 

Triple P (Piss Poor Planning): Just that donation level got them 200 x $150 = $30,000. If you're then having the same difficulties as some broke startup ("limited resources"), well that business plan is not going too well.

 

30k, MINUS the cost of the merch, throwing the party, and importantly the opportunity cost in that your brewers are now on the hook for six (6!) whole unique special beers that you billed as best-of-the-best, which you also said you wouldn't sell to anyone else. And of course the bad publicity/word of mouth is a real cost as well. I can't exactly quantify all these things but it's not even clear to me that they're coming out ahead on this deal. This is why I don't think it's a intentional scam, because it's such a bad one.

As to the poor planing aspect, there's an obvious perverse incentives problem with this kind of fundraising. If they are strapped for cash, what are they going to brew first? The electric company will shut off your power if you don't pay them; crowd funders by comparison have little recourse. So even if you're going with the best of intentions, the reality is you have very little obligation to these people, and when push comes to shove, that reality is going to exert itself.

 

https://www.brewbound.com/news/small-massachusetts-craft-breweries-face-closures-bankruptcy

Well I wouldn't count on getting your beer since the landlord has been advertising the location for rent since midsummer according to the linked article.

 

Damn shame ... I wish them the best, its not going to get any easier out there. Wait until Tree House blankets the state with beer ... from the usual beer consumer everything will still look great as there is not shortage of great beer in MA. Us beer geeks that pay attention to the whole scene its sad to see brands we love struggle.

 

Jason , Can you explain what you mean about Treehouse blanketing the state ? Have I missed something ?

 

Night Shift and Lord Hobo have already blanketed the state, but Tree House expanding is an issue?

 

Its a solid prediction, I could be wrong on this but with their expansion of warehouse space and see reports of shorter lines means they may eventually have to unload some beer unless they simply only brew enough beer for the people that come to their brewery. Tree House will always get a good amount of people showing up but when you are brewing 40K+ BBLS they might have to drop some beer here and there ... so blanketing the state could be a slight exageration though look at the Alchemist, you can get Heady Topper and Focal Banger at some of the Jolley Gas Stations in VT.

 

I think it would be for other brewers that sell beer in MA, its business but it would rattle some brewers and distributors.

 

Just seems weird to vilify a brewery that grew organically and give a pass to places like Lord Hobo that aimed to crowd out other breweries from day 1.

 

Not vilifying Tree House at all, their brand name holds clout. I never gave a pass to Lord Hobo. I'd actually embrace Tree House more if their beer was more readily available. As I said ... "its business". ;-) FWIW we should probably move this conversation over to a new thread. I'll get to that soon. Cheers!!