Synth maker Aodyo Instruments has announced the failure of their Kickstarter project to produce the Anyma Omega polysynth and that they now in liquidation.
They say that most of the campaign funds were spent on product development, and that the company now has no cash flow and is under the liquidator’s control. It is unlikely that contributors will recover their investment.
Here’s what they shared on Kickstarter:
“First and foremost, we want to express our sincere apologies for this prolonged silence. It was never our intention to ignore your concerns, but we were working tirelessly to explore every possible solution that could allow us to continue our operations and deliver on the projects you supported. We understand your frustration and disappointment with the lack of communication and transparency over the past few months. We know you were expecting updates from us, and we regret not living up to your expectations.
The truth is that we have been going through a very challenging period since the safeguard procedure was initiated on the June 24. This legal process was supposed to help us restructure and avoid bankruptcy, but it also required us not to disclose any information that could discourage potential investors or buyers.
During the summer, we continued to work on the Loom and Omega, convinced that we would find a solution. Unfortunately, our efforts did not succeed, and we are now forced to announce what some of you may already know: Aodyo Instruments is now in liquidation.
This means that the company will cease its operations on November 1st, and that a court-appointed liquidator is overseeing the process of closing the company and managing its remaining assets to repay creditors.
We understand that this is a hard blow, and although there are details we are not at liberty to disclose due to our legal situation, we want to try and address the key concerns you raised during these last few weeks.”
Backers should see the project site for details.
Note: Crowdfunding projects essentially ask you to be an investor in a project, which comes with risk, in exchange for early access to new gear, and reduced prices. Kickstarter says that about 7% of project backers never get their chosen reward, with risks pretty similar across product categories.
Synthtopia always includes a risk statement when we cover crowdfunded synth projects, because these projects sometimes fail and backers never get their rewards. If you want to avoid this risk completely, skip crowdfunding projects and buy the gear, at the higher price, when it is commercially available.
There goes my 200$ ??????
Unfortunately, yes. From the project page:
“Unfortunately, it is unlikely that contributors will recover their investment.”
As mine…
Paragraph 2:
“They say that most of the campaign funds were spent on product development, and that the company now has no cash flow and is under the liquidator’s control. It is unlikely that contributors will recover their investment.”
who?
? entirely predictable..
Behringer should swoop in and save the developers by building the project.
Behringer has enough unbuilt projects of their own.
Berhinger seems pretty cautious about the products they create.
How many original synth designs have they made, out of the hundreds that they’ve released? 5 or 6?
Being an adult, this is the kind of stuff that happens all the time. Must be the kids making drama over 1000,- letdowns; those are part of life; shit breaks and fails! Next!
Have you thought about getting help with your emotion avoidance?
Exactly.
It seems like there may be a lot of people doing synth Kickstarters that have never invested before.
oh well, was really looking forward to the Desktop. at least we got a Phi out of it, and all the open source it was based on is still there. a one-cpu-per-voice architecture based on floating point Plaits would have been a slam dunk. screwing around with threading and fixed point math was bound to be an exercise in herding CPU cycles.
Aodyo is officially Adios.
Une belle bande de bras cassés qui a voulu péter plus haut que leurs cul
Have you ever watched The Producers?
It’s a shame. Sounded like it might have been an interesting instrument. Maybe a big name will pick it up and make it.
I had the previous monophonic Anyma Phi, it could sound good, but it was difficult to program, and there were extremely few presets for it. Combine that with minimal marketing and you have a recipe for disaster. But the engineering was excellent.
Trusting the french on a budget and deadline… HAHAHA…
(Been working for french companies the last 25 years.. I’d never trust them with my money for a deadline, it’s just facts, organization and planning is not the strongest things in their business culture…).
Feeling Sorry for all the gullible people who lost their hard earned cash here.
Rumor has it they spend all the cash on french toast
All 475k € (Kickstarter + Indiegogo).. that’s a lot of toast!
those office scooter, air hockey tables, and kombacha machines aren’t going to enjoy themselves you know! ok, funs, funs, but time to move on. it was a joyous diversion against reality. now back to business of defeating fascism “every 100 years or so…” time to put our teeth back in.
There there sir! A toast to you and your fighting spirit!
The Loom was the very first Kickstarter I backed…and most likely the last. Too bad because it looked almost finished and very promising. It looks like the Omega synth project sucked the money that would have been necessary to put the Loom into production. I did not even know about the Omega when I backed the Loom!
“You know what you get when you preorder a game?…”
🙂
Wow. 475k € and it was not enough for a small company to deliver… Looks like they spend it in a very unwise way. Anyway, would never invest in a Kickstarter project if there is no refunds when project fails
Then you would never invest in Kickstarter, period as refunds simply never occur unless the funding is not met.
Go Fund Yourself!
They should BEG Uli to help them out. In the end, Aodyo would still exist and the costumers would have their product.