FlowMotion ONE Smartphone Stabilizer Shipping After Delay

NewsIndustry

by Jakub HanJuly 20^th, 2018

The smartphone stabilizer FlowMotion ONE, which was successfully funded on Kickstarter over a year ago, seems to be finally shipping to the backers and customers after some delays in production.

The FlowMotion ONE Stabilizer. Source: flowmotion.co

Back in December 2016, we published a news article about a very successful Kickstarter campaign. A company called FlowMotion presented their new motorized smartphone stabilizer simply called ONE. The FlowMotion ONE project took the crowdfunding platform by storm and reached the initial $30,000 goal within an hour. The project did not stop there of course. Its creators watched the numbers grow rapidly and introduced a couple of stretch goals along the way. They ended up raising a total of $1,325,241 from their backers in just 50 days of the campaign. Our old article about the FlowMotion ONE Kickstarter campaign can be found here.

What makes the FlowMotion ONE unique in my eyes, is the position of the battery. It is placed right next to the smartphone mount and therefore makes it possible to detach the grip and use the stabilizer without it (for instance, mounted on a helmet or chest for stabilized POV shots). Most smartphone stabilizers have the battery within the grip, which is not detachable.

After successfully raising funds for the FlowMotion ONE, it was time to produce and deliver all of the ordered gimbals to the backers. According to the plan, the stabilizers were supposed to start shipping in April 2017. The company also launched pre-orders right after the Kickstarter campaign was finished. In total, FlowMotion claims that more than 20,000 people have ordered the gimbal.

In July 2018 (roughly two weeks ago), one of our readers commented on the old article from December 2016. The comment stated that no product has been delivered – even despite having pre-ordered it in February 2017. After investigating for a bit I found more frustrated comments on the FlowMotion Facebook page. It looked like a lot of people still had not received the stabilizer, more than one year after the promised shipping date.

I contacted the FLowMotion team and received an answer from the CMO and Co-founder of FlowMotion Didrik Dimmen. In his e-mail from the 5th of July 2018 he stated:

“We’re currently fulfilling all Kickstarter orders at a pace of 1000-1500 units pr. week, and are expecting to clear all pre-orders (20K) by September (we offered pre-orders through our website after the Kickstarter campaign). It’s been challenging to manufacture with the precision and quality we wanted, but we’ve established a sustainable production and are very excited to deliver a great product to our backers.”

A few days after that I briefly checked Youtube and already found a couple of new “Unboxing” videos of the FlowMotion ONE stabilizer, so it really looks like the production is ongoing and Kickstarter backers, as well as people who pre-ordered the gimbal, should get their product soon.

The FlowMotion ONE looked like an interesting and relatively cheap smartphone stabilizer back in the beginning of 2017. This segment of the market evolves rapidly though. In the meantime competitors like DJI or Zhiyun-Tech introduced new generations of capable smartphone stabilizers at very competitive prices. I can also imagine many people might have canceled their pre-orders, after having to wait for so long.

Generally, I would say that the delay in a production is a certain risk that all Kickstarter backers should keep in mind. It keeps happening with a lot of products on those crowd funding platforms – some companies were even unable to deliver the Kickstarter-funded products at all. I am happy to hear that with the FlowMotion ONE this did not end up being the case.

Did you back or pre-order the FlowMotion ONE? Did you receive it already? Did FlowMotion provide regular updates concerning the delays? Let us know in the comments below.