Someone seems to have done a demo, takes more than the 35 second disclaimer though....
Anyone else find the audio in this video to be super suspect that it was just dubbed over? I mean
1) the guy is talking and hitting the kite but you hear no sound other than the pump and the wind. (I guess you could argue it is very windy, but there isn't a peep)
2) he approaches the kite and backs up early in the video but there is little change in sound (at 1:23 you can hear a "yea" and then he approaches the pump but the sound is unchanged in volume). At 31sec there is another approach / back away from the kite- and there is a discrete change in the volume but it doesn't at all correspond with what I would expect walking towards and away from a pump would sound like at all, and it's a minor change in volume if any.
I've seen that the logo of the blue kite with 6 lines, which I had commented on in page 3, has been corrected to something a bit more relevant. So someone probably reads our feedback.
Talking about feedback, they're constantly adding more stuff to their Kickstarter page,
CorPump-feedback.JPG (20.65 KiB) Viewed 859 times
and the funny thing is that they even include feedback from people taking the piss. (rough translation: "anyway, nice to see that the product is compatible with Manera kites, Ion kites, Mystic and NP kites", and "gonflé" means inflated, but it's also something you'd say when someone says or does something unbelievable )
Everything about the wording and presentation of the product looks fake. It's like people who are not kiters pretending to be kiters and getting it wrong. I wonder if it's as simple as having a social media person who doesn't kite, and has english as a second language.
As a scam it doesn't really make sense. Why go to such elaborate lengths to scam a few tens of thousands of dollars when you can just pretend to be a long lost prince and hook people for squillions?
Many of us here have English as second language, but that feels another level of bad !
But yes, all the communication and social media is weird. I wouldn't say fake but rather very clumsy. To be fair I've had a few interactions with e-skate parts vendors in East Asia, and there's a very similar vibe actually. Young, enthusiast, approximative use of English and very different perspective on the market than us privileged westerners, also very limited resources and time constrained, but winging it as much as possible... and still getting something pretty legit in the end.
I agree that doing tech drawings and prototypes and a Kickstarter campaign doesn't seem like the most straightforward way to scam people and make easy money.
Well I think it’s more profitable to scam a kickstarter campaign than it would be to build and sell a specialized tech product to a community of kiters and wingers. Narrow margins and not that many products sold. Competition already exists on Amazon.
- There are cutaways. We don't see the pump doing the inflating for the entire sequence. There are plenty of places where they could edit out other pumps being used. If you want to do a demo then do an actual demo and actually show the entire sequence with no cutaways.
- There's no confirmation of the pressure at the end. Simply putting on a name brand pump and showing the pressure gauge would be enough. With the board simply standing on it to show how stiff it is would be enough.
- The kites are antiques. I had exactly that 12m kite in 2006. The age of the kite is not such an issue. They're supposed to be a group of "... kitesurfers, designers, production, and engineers all over the world, including the US and Shenzhen.", but they can't get a kiter with current generation gear. They don't have a designer or engineer that could create a simple demonstration that is clear and repeatable.
PS Crazy Ocean Rovers? Really? I've never thought of myself as crazy or that I was "roving" across the oceans. I could imagine somebody with no kite/water/ocean experience thinking that.
