Coolest Cooler Says They Don’t Have the Money to Make All The Coolers They Promised

The problem? Coolest appears to lack the funds to produce all the coolers promised.

The Coolest began shipping its "party in a cooler" in July 2015, but has so far delivered just over 20,000 of the 60,000 coolers paid for by backers, says spokesperson Susan Towers.

In November, Coolest had begun delivery of Coolers numbering "in the thousands" to Amazon Launchpad—which received coolers before many original backers, many of whom had paid a steeply discounted $165, compared to a retail price of $499. Coolest had to discontinue the Amazon program after the backers complained mightily.

In an update February 26, Coolest wrote that there would be additional delays because of what Towers calls a "funding gap."

"We realized that the Coolest was going to cost more than the Kickstarter pledges," she tells WW. "You try to walk this balance and be upfront and transparent and hope that people won't panic."

The Coolest hired an investment bank last year, says Towers—although they have not yet gotten the money.

Towers blames some of the Cooler's troubles on the money they got from backers. "It's difficult to negotiate terms when the world knows what money you've raised," she says.

At TechfestNW last year, Coolest founder Ryan Grepper detailed his difficulties after the enormous success of the Kickstarter campaign.

Those difficulties apparently continue.

In their backer note, Coolest provided a graphic showing how their money got spent on factors other than production—but has not disclosed the size of their funding deficit. (In tiny print, the bar showing the funding deficit is asterisked as "not to scale")

Here's the full statement released by Coolest to backers:

"While there have been delays, we are still working diligently to complete our project–and our obligation to our backers.

We hired an investment back last year and while our search for the right partner has taken somewhat longer than anticipated, this is moving forward and we will resume production once this agreement is in place. We remain confident that we will secure our partner, but also have contingency plans to fulfill remaining backer rewards.  We have made and shipped many thousands of Coolest coolers and the fact remains that this is one of the largest scale, and most complex projects in the history of crowdfunding.  The project is not complete and we remain 100% committed to fulfilling ALL backer rewards. We have a highly engaged backer community and it has been a challenge managing the communication but we have tried to be transparent about the Kickstarter journey from concept and prototype, to finished project.

With regard to the coolers currently for sale on Amazon Launchpad we would suggest you read backer update 36 (kck.st/21Ecqwj) please check it out.  The Coolest made a one-time sale to Amazon Launchpad which is the current inventory they are selling through.  We are not selling any coolers on either our own website or on Amazon otherwise.

Due to the extraordinary increase in scale, there was literally no way Ryan could produce 60,000+ coolers out of his garage.  We created a company in order to complete this project and fulfilling all backer rewards is the number one company mission right now.

I thought the Geekwire story today was apt – this is, they wrote, "a master class in understanding the difference between crowdsourced products and buying items through traditional marketplaces". We have fulfilled many backer pledges and will continue as soon as we are able and we ask for their support and patience in the interim as we work through the plan to fulfill remaining backer rewards."

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