OTOH people actually pay through the nose for coffee from little plastic pots to save themselves the twenty seconds it takes to put coffee into the machine and remove it. Since I like to vary strength, these don’t appeal to me at all - but ten times the cost of fairtrade coffee in bags?
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The tea ones are even more ridiculous, because tea already comes in pre-measured packets you just add water to.
Seriously, 10x the price for what ends up being almost more work and can’t be composted. What is with that?
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The Aristocrats! Late-stage capitalism.
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Shoot, I missed my opportunity for secondary market counterfit kool-aid bags you could put in your Juicero.
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I have heard about this. Is it really a thing?
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I can’t stick to anything with so much lube around!
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And for all that, they don’t even taste good. I think it’s a bunch of marketing people showing off - “no, really, can sell anything”
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They weren’t selling anything; they were trying to rent it.
It’s the shaver model, only you keep paying for the handle to use the ridiculously expensive blades.
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Here’s BOLTR’s hour-long teardown, looking at the quality of the inside parts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Cp-BGQfpHQ
(Sorry, put in the link to the original material instead of the weiird duplicate posting on youtube.
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“We’re looking for someone stupider than our customers to buy us out.”
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Imma have to steal that for my 80s/Reagan lecture…
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Juicero was more of a squeeze-down than a shake-down.
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I’d not do the happy dance just yet. Wait for reports that refunds are actually coming out in sufficient quantities.
I will not be surprised if we start seeing press releases mentioning “minor difficulties” with the refund process and “asking our customers to please be patient” and other stall tactics while the senior execs get their money safely out of the country if it isn’t already totally squandered and then themselves turn up missing one bright afternoon…
Statement of personal opinion only. No facts are alleged…
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During this process, it became clear that creating an effective manufacturing and distribution system for a nationwide customer base requires infrastructure that we cannot achieve on our own as a standalone business. We are confident that to truly have the long-term impact we want to make, we need to focus on finding an acquirer with an existing national fresh food supply chain who can carry forward the Juicero mission.
I seem to recall that back when the story originally broke, there were plenty of people saying, “It’s not a terribly bad investment because they’ve built up all kinds of infrastructure.” So much for that idea.
Eh, they never really went anywhere. Things were at least as bad a few decades back.
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“We began identifying ways that we could source, manufacture and distribute at a lower cost to consumers.”
I wonder if they identified placing juice in bottles instead of packages to be pressed.
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My other thoughts:
I don’t get all the hate on rich people for this. Rich people are allowed to buy luxury stuff that most people would think out of their price range.
The hilarious part of this is what they wound up selling was basically a machine that squeezed pre-juiced juice out of a package. It wound up not being able to do what it was advertised to do at all. It would be the same story even if the machine were super cheap.
(Except for the DRM which was just stupid from the get go no matter what the machine can or can’t do.)
My point: I find people making fun of rich people (or poor people who were suckered in) a bit missing the point. It’s the machine’s failure at everything that’s entertaining, not that people fell for high end promises that weren’t there.
Addendum: Feel free to continue to make fun of individual rich people for being out of touch or doing stupid things, and especially fight to even the distribution of wealth, but I find no joy in making fun of “rich people” as a group.
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There’s definitely a market for something like this, as you describe. The problem is that the “more money than sense” market is not large enough to create the “unicorn” that tech VC investors are always aiming for, and the product’s price point (even with the razorblade-model subscriptions) wasn’t going to generate the kind of revenues that a product like a luxury wristwatch or automobile or yacht would. The bad PR was there, but any responsible steward of other people’s money would have known well in advance that this idea was a lemon.
This is completely off topic. But the term Yacht is often a bit misused. Basically referring to any pleasure vessel over 30 or so feet. And I’ve always been surprised how razor thin the profit margins are in the boat building business. Manufacturers are constantly shrinking their product lines. Collapsing. Getting bought out by larger competitors. Fading from the market. Relaunch. Even very, very old. Well regarded and seemingly successful boat builders. Even brands that are “woah that guy must have money” brands. From what I’m told its a really, really weird market to work in. Boats are long lived (good hulls never die) and the vast majority of the market is in used boats. Profit margins are very low. And its really mercurial. I knew a boat dealer who could run off several millions in sales in a given season. And then not make another sale for two years. A base line in commercial/working boats can keep you stable but that market has even stricter margins. And the smallest boats are apparently where the moneys at (for manufacturers).
Though you’re referring to the luxury/super yacht market. Which is different thing (you just got me thinking). In that market you’re basically manufacturing 3 of something. Or building custom one offs. At hugely exorbitant “money is no object” pricing levels that can guarantee profit. Even not insane very large boats and ships you’re basically talking about something on the order of manufacturing an airliner.
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Correct – that’s what I was talking about. You can build a nice stable business in the high-end luxury market, but the price points and quality of the product/service have to be extremely high and there can’t be an expectation that it will ever become a volume/mass-market business. Those kinds of businesses should not be looking for VC funding.
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Good. Back to the mad universe that spawned them. Or I suppose to the landfill, but I prefer to think all the machines just vanished in a puff of acrid pink smoke and sinister clown giggles.
