FlowMotion ONE Smartphone Gimbal – Shipments Further Delayed

NewsIndustry

by Jakub HanJune 18^th, 2019

EDIT 01.07.2019: We were notified that the company behind the FlowMotion ONE gimbal unfortunately filed for bankruptcy after problems in production due to a complexity of their product. As the company’s CEO stated in the official letter to their customers, there will be no refunds nor additional shipments of the gimbal units.

FlowMotion ONE is a 3-axis motorized smartphone stabilizer. It was successfully funded in a Kickstarter campaign in the end of 2016. After dealing with some technical and financial troubles, the company was behind with their shipping dates, but have shipped all the Kickstarter units last year. Now, there seem to be more financial troubles concerning production, so the pre-ordered gimbal shipments are further delayed.

FlowMotion ONE smartphone stabilizer. Source: FlowMotion

The Kickstarter campaign for this little smartphone gimbal stabilizer called FlowMotion ONE took place back in the end of 2016 (here is the link to our initial article). Because the company had troubles sending out the Kickstarter units on time, I wrote a short follow-up post in July 2018. Nearly one year after, we are still getting comments of customers who are not receiving their units.

I have contacted the FlowMotion team and they sent me a copy of the official letter from their CEO Lars Flesland from May 2019. According to FlowMotion, all their customers received this letter. Here is the full version:

Dear customer,

I personally want to follow up your FlowMotion ONE order, and the lack of updates you have received. We are truly disappointed over the continuous delays, and I apologize for not sending this email earlier.

In our last update, we said your FlowMotion ONE would have been shipped by now. Unfortunately, we have not been able to keep our promise — we need more time to ship your FlowMotion ONE.

Why is your order is delayed?

The mass production of FlowMotion ONE has been challenging/hard/complicated/complex/difficult/tough—and costly.

When we started this company, we were not prepared for the kind of volumes we have experienced. We have successfully shipped thousands of FlowMotion ONEs to all over the world, but we have made mistakes and faced many production issues along the way.

Although we have resolved all production issues, the delays and extra costs have caused temporary financial challenges.

To accommodate the financial situation, we are raising funds from new and existing investors. Investors are positive to the continued success of FlowMotion. However, we need more time to complete the fundraising process.

Due to this, we are unable to ship your product, nor pay out refunds, before August.

We sincerely apologize for the new delay. We know your experience has not been close to an acceptable standard, and for this, we are truly sorry.

This is a challenging situation for all of us. However, we have faced—and resolved—many challenges in the past, and we will resolve this as well.

We are working as hard as we can to ship your FlowMotion ONE as quickly as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact us here and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

The FlowMotion website claims that all Kickstarter backers have received their units. If that’s the case, then the units that have not been shipped yet are all direct pre-orders, which doesn’t make the situation any better, though. Let’s hope that FlowMotion will eventually resolve their financial troubles and ship all pre-ordered units or send refunds to their customers.

As I have mentioned in the end of the GearEye follow-up article: Please be aware of the risks when backing the development of a project on crowdfunding platforms. Please read Kickstarter’s terms of use – especially Section 5 “How funding works”. Unfortunately, not all project creators are honest and even with those who are, some projects can bring along unexpected complications in the final stages of development. Those can either significantly postpone the delivery date or kill the project completely.

As you can see with this example, you should also be very cautious when pre-ordering products from a new company or a start-up, because there are certain risks, too.

Did you already receive your FlowMotion ONE or are you still waiting? What do you think of the gimbal and the shipment delays? Let us know in the comments underneath the article.