Such a familiar story: great idea, hundreds if not thousands of hours invested, clearly a strong market, no investor interested.<p>Get some sales, suddenly investors come out of the woodwork expressing "passion" and "belief".<p>Been there. Bankers will lend you an umbrella when you don't need it and demand it back when it starts raining. So many investors are similar.<p>But not all. The good ones are better than brilliant.<p>Well done Sugru - I hope you go from strength to strength.
I'm not a particularly emotional guy, but something about this story just got to me - especially the part where they launch and it's sold out in 6 hours. After so much....so much slog...finally.<p>Ok. Time to man up.<p>BTW, notice how the story follows the classic startup curve?<p><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/6247592885/" rel="nofollow">http://www.flickr.com/photos/caseorganic/6247592885/</a>
I fixed a cheap plastic key fob that was snapping apart with Sugru at their stand at the Maker Faire in Newcastle in 2010. Just yesterday, after jangling around continuously in my pockets for a year and a half, and becoming a substantially worn down and different keyring, it finally broke completely.<p>The Sugrued part, however, is still in perfect shape, and still attached to the key ring.
This is slightly OT, but if someone from Sugru is reading, the page looks weird in Chrome. The background is very jittery when you scroll (Chrome 15.0.874.121). It stays fixed in Safari and scrolls down in Firefox, and both look fine, but Chrome looks a bit weird.
Their customer support has also been great. I ordered an early batch, they discovered it had some problems and proactively notified me, explained they were manufacturing replacement batches and then sent me the bug fixed version. And I hadn't yet noticed the problem.<p>How I wish all companies were like that.
Sounds fantastic, although given some of the examples (child-proof camera, and dishwasher repair) the fact it's not certified as being food or child safe is slightly disturbing.<p>I'd play down those two examples if it was me, until it did get certification from a reputable source.
That may be the quickest a site has ever sold me on something ... I'd never heard of it before this, and just ordered a pack to Thailand, and the shipping was only £1.91 to Thailand. Now that's awesome.
Having "I have a voucher code" on your payment page is just a reminder that I may not be getting an awesome deal and leads to me leaving the page to quickly search, often forgetting about an impulse buy in the process.<p>Lovely story and marketing of the community though.
God, why are physical product startups so terrible. I understand it's the nature of the beast. But still, it's been at least 25 years since the advent of carrier shipping and the proliferation of make-piece manufacturing throughout Asia.<p>I suspect there is a billion dollars in it for someone with supply chain experience who wants to make the Amazon of manufacturing.
This is a such a great story. It's valuable for a lot of reasons, but I like it simply because it's a story of success from having a passion, working hard and persevering. Kind of the same way I don't think I could never watch too many inspirational movies (Remember the Titans, Miracle, Rudy, etc. come to mind), I don't think I could ever read too many stories like this.<p>You can't read stories like this all day (at some point you have to work on changing your corner of the world), but having something like this once a week is super motivating.
Well done Sugruonians!<p>Fixed the broken side brushes of my Deebot yesterday. With Sugru of course. Very nice material, easy to handle, good results. Recommend it.<p>-jsl
What an amazing story!<p>It is interesting how much they mention "community". I have a feeling that forming such a community of early adopters and treating them well is the future of marketing. The days of "build a better mousetrap" may be numbered; now you not only need a better mousetrap, you also need a community of people who will use it and support you.
Sweet story. A part fell of my earphones a few days ago, exposing the water-sensitive internals. I think I'll order a pack of Sugru and see if I can fix them myself :)
It's a compelling story and its well presented here. I'm a fan, as I've found Sugru works really well for extending the life of the Vibram shoes I use trail running (although it took some practice to apply it in a way that didn't leave me with a lumpy foot). They have a pretty neat product and service it well.<p>Good for them.
Lost within the story is the amazing, powerful way they delivered the message of how they came to be. Subtle, unique storytelling that is quite unlike anything I've seen before in the way it was presented. Clearly, there's a whole heaping of talented people in there - and not just an amazing product.
Just checked, it's already on Hacker Things <a href="http://hackerthings.com/product/sugru-silicone-rubber-100109" rel="nofollow">http://hackerthings.com/product/sugru-silicone-rubber-100109</a>
Totally cool. But I am looking for a video that shows you trying to pry two items apart. I want to see how strong the bond is.<p>The video of the stack of items isn't enough to see how strong the bond truly is.
How To Make Your Own Sugru Substitute:<p><a href="http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-Your-Own-Sugru-Substitute/" rel="nofollow">http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-Your-Own-Sugru-S...</a>
Imagine if patents had been eliminated. They would have died once a big company like 3M got a sample back to their lab.<p>This company exists because they were able to patent their invention.<p>People say that patents are bad because everything relies on previous efforts. Well, they didn't invent silicon rubber. They didn't invent the volatile compound that allows their rubber to cure overnight. But they did invent a new thing.<p>Pretty analogous to software patents and combinations software-hardware patents like the iPhone's multi-touch.