CST-01 - It's just not gonna happen

Is there any evidence that these guys actually have any money to return to backers? $1M is practically nothing when you're talking about shipping a product, especially when you don't have any experience with overseas manufacturing. Judging by the quality detailed in their most recent update, my guess is they unwittingly picked a bad manufacturer and ended up throwing a lot of money down the drain. I think there's more evidence that these guys are just bad businessmen than the project being a scam.

Same guest here.  Just wanted to note I backed this on kickstarter.  As a side note, I think anyone who pre-ordered this off of their website absolutely deserves their money back.  But as for those - like me - who backed it on kickstarter, well that's just the risk we take.  It's been what - 2 years since I ordered this?  At this point I don't care anymore if it ever arrives.  If it does, cool.  If it doesn't, oh well.  It wouldn't be the first time a kickstarter I backed didn't pan out and it won't be the last.

In all fairness, if he didn't have a day and ONLY worked on the watch, he'd probably end up homeless.

Agreed. All this talk of CST running a scam is just alarmist nonsense. There's no way they would have posted detailed pics of the custom assembly rigs and whatnot if they were just trying to make off with people's money. That gear is real, and shows their considerable investment and commitment to producing these watches.  If this was all a scam, or vaporware, the Kickstarter page would just have consisted of some average photoshops and an awkward CGI video - you know the kind.

Also, people demanding refunds are kidding themselves. The majority of the money collected will have been burned up purchasing parts, which they now have sitting on hand while they work out their yield issues. Where is the refund money coming from?

IMO, the best they can do now is keep at it and try their best at getting watches shipped. And keep us informed. Radio silence is the real reason so many people are butthurt over this whole thing.

In summary:
Great product: Yes.
Mismanaged? Yes.
Terrible communication? Yes.
Scam? No.

FWIW I preordered two watches from the website. I have no idea if they'll pull this off and get the watches out the door, but I still hope.

Did anyone grab David & Jerry's contact information before it was pulled down?

Update 8 – Mar. 4. 2013 FUNDED
„We are not charging people for pre-orders at this time, but will be sending out e-mails once product is ready to ship to finalize the transactions.“

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Update #12 Jul 30 2013
"The Update Where We Talk About Delays and Hope You Understand
... we are still looking at an estimated delivery window of the watch to backers fromDecember 2013 through January 2014."

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Update #14 Oct 25 2013
development of the CST-01 is requiring our full attention. We want you all to know that we’re fully committed to this and only this right now. Our job is to deliver high-quality watches. Period.

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Update #15 Nov 24. 2013
"...We were hoping to start shipping the first batch of watches in late December, but now it looks like it will be late January before we could start shipping units."

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Update #17 Feb 10 2014
There is still a good chunk of work to be done and it looks like the watches will ship around the last week of April.

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Update #20 Apr 25 2014
...the first ship date to be more likely the 3rd - 4th week of May for first shipment.

"Since we are fast approaching a first ship out, we will post shorter, more pointed, and frequent updates ..."

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Update #22 May 27 2014
Tolerance Survey

We apologize for the delays, and are working as hard as we can to get these out to you as quickly as possible.

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Update #23 May 28 2014
The results are in.
We assure you this does not mean we will be taking our time getting these out! We will continue to work as hard as possible to get the watches to you as soon as possible AND have them be within the original planned tolerance.

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Update #24 Jun 18 2014

We know all of you are eagerly awaiting your watches, and we hope we can communicate to you our complete dedication to this project.
We will start shipping as soon as we can get these wrapped up, which we hope will be in a matter of weeks.

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Update #25 Sep 5 2014
First off, we know we need to do a better job communicating and apologize for the lapse.

As far as a new ship date, we are faced with the challenge of whether we give you the date we expect, as we have been doing (which means we assume that no more unexpected delays come in to us) or do we assume that another new delay of some sort is bound to occur and give you a safer date.

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Update #27 Oct 24 2014
...sometimes communication suffers and we apologize for this.

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Update #28 Dec 9 2014
Once again, we were delaying the update until we could say "we started shipping!" since it looked like it would be just a week or two out for the last few weeks. We apologize that our update cadence is slower than many of you would prefer, so we will be revising our approach to keep you informed irregardless of whether the milestone we anticipated was met.

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Update #29 Feb 5 2015
We are shipping

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Update #30 Apr 14 2015
Production numbers and speed of production are much lower than estimated,
...actual production including yield was only 130 over the past 2 weeks.


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i think its 20:80 if we will ever see a cst1 or they simply declaring bankruptcy