The rise and fall of Sugru

Watched from the sidelines as Jane invented an early version of Sugru at college in 2003&#x2F;4. Everyone I knew (and me) thought she was completely bonkers, developing a weird substance that didn&#x27;t seem to do anything but make a horrid mess of well-designed objects. Saw how doggedly she persisted for years to get it off the ground, eventually winning me over (in theory) for the main use cases. But still, as a hard-won fan with 15 years of anecdotal observation turned admiration, and as an accomplished DIYer and general proponent of fixing things, I couldn&#x27;t find a use for Sugru in my life.<p>The real story here is a major life effort, not a crowdfunding over reach.

A lot of people are pointing to weaknesses in the product, but it&#x27;s a highly convenient little product that applies to a lot of small problems. It was never going to be a huge business, just like 2 part repair epoxy is never going to be a huge business. But that doesn&#x27;t preclude it from being a successful small company -- Sugru has plenty of benefits over 2 part mixtures. One can sell in Walgreens and the other in Home Depot.<p>I would propose a different mistake: they simply got too ambitious. If they had raised a little money and grown organically, they could have eventually been a tidy little $5-10M a year business, netting the founder a healthy 6 or 7 figure income. Nothing says you need to follow the start-up venture funded playbook, in fact, most consumer packaged goods businesses do not.

Bloody hell Wired.<p>Blu Tack was invented in Leicester, and Bostik still make it there. It&#x27;s reusable and doesn&#x27;t set or cure, though it deteriorates a bit after a decade in a drawer. Can repair pretty much nothing, but handy for sticking posters to walls. :)<p>Sugru is&#x2F;was a silicone putty that cures after a few minutes in air, and expires in a few months in the packet. Seemed terrible value for money based on the tiny packet I bought so I&#x27;d never buy again.<p>At least with two part putties you can keep plenty in a drawer, for years, they don&#x27;t cure until you&#x27;ve mixed them and cost a fraction of Sugru.<p>Edit: Well this provoked quite the discussion. If you&#x27;re looking for repair putty the two main UK brands I know are: Araldite (Now a US brand, mainly DIY and automotive, also epoxy adhesives), and Milliput.com (Epoxy modelling clay, perfect for repairs to plastics, steel etc. Comes in a few grades and colours), with shelf life in decades. Milliput are Welsh. :)

I repaired a tablet case with Sugru and replaced the worn feet at the bottom of my Macbook with it. I also reinforced several cables with Sugru to prevent breaks. Overall I&#x27;m pretty happy with the product, but I don&#x27;t have many problems where Sugru is useful. It&#x27;s too expensive to make bigger things out of it and small repairs just don&#x27;t happen too often.

I think the problem is the product itself. I bought it online, wasn&#x27;t that cheap, and wasn&#x27;t that useful.<p>And, by that, I don&#x27;t mean that the product isn&#x27;t good (it is), doesn&#x27;t fulfill the purpose (it does), but it just will not be used in that many situations. Sometimes you&#x27;ll fix the broken thing with commodity glue, sometimes with duct tape, and all those cost less than Sugru.

I make my own Sugru: simple silicone caulk and corn starch. I have no idea how well it compares to the real thing, but a repair to the rack inside my dishwasher has lasted for several years without any noticeable degradation. The benefit of this is that the caulk and corn starch last for a while and don’t cost as much as Sugru per unit volume.<p>Source: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instructables.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;How-To-Make-Your-Own-Sugru-Substitute&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.instructables.com&#x2F;id&#x2F;How-To-Make-Your-Own-Sugru-S...</a>

The cost was too high. At $12 USD for a package, it passed my threshold of spontaneous purchase. Silicon tape, which is amazing stuff, is about half that price. Silicon tape is water tight, flexible, bonds to itself, and very versatile. Ultimately I never tried Sugru because more affordable alternatives could do the same job.

Anecdotally, I bought a pack a few years ago and didn’t replace it when used. I was only partially successful at the mends I used it for, and for the cost, simple electrical tape would have been better. And of course regular sticky-tack is still better at hanging photos, etc, and cheaper, and the same goes for multi-surface glue. I am sure there are specialized use cases in which Sugru excels, but I didn’t think it worked as a general repair product and I think that hindered its growth if early adopters like me didn’t enthusiastically recommend it to others or buy more.

&gt; “I’m very disappointed as the funding literature indicated high growth plans,” says a Crowdcube backer who wishes to remain anonymous<p>I&#x27;m not surprised they want to remain anonymous if they failed to perceive a downside in investing in a new product. What would you exepct - &quot;our plans for growth are unambitious and we expect only mediocre performance in the market&quot;?

I bought some sugru thinking it&#x27;d be useful but by the time I wanted to repair with it, it had been too long and it had hardened...<p>If you have kids it might make more sense but otherwise, I think it&#x27;s a difficult sell given the cost

I wish they&#x27;d pushed harder to become a key part of the Maker scene .. I really wonder what a 3D-printer that used Sugru as its base material would be like. Probably prohibitively expensive in comparison with the ABS materials, but then again .. maybe they could have carved a niche in that segment that pushed their value higher.<p>One thing is for sure, after seeing it adorning various devices and appliances around the scene for a few years, I&#x27;ve come to associate it with &quot;ghetto hackers&quot; who don&#x27;t have the druthers to just 3d-print replacement parts themselves. It always amuses me to have this thought - its a bloody expensive material, all things considering.<p>The one thing I consider it really excels at, also, is preserving peoples fingerprints...

I put Sugru on the buttons of my camera to make it easier to feel them at night. I was always surprised how well it works and how long the buttons would last.<p>It makes me a little sad that a company with a good and useful product doesn&#x27;t survive while others who sell only junk do.

Sugru anecdote.<p>I had read about Sugru in~2011&#x2F;12 or so -- I wrote to her (inventor of it) and she sent me a packet for free.<p>Then the Fukushima meltdown happened and a few days later San Francisco experienced one of the most wicked rainstorms ever - and the wind was driving the water against my glass-door flooding my apartment (twin peaks)... there was a hole where the sliding glass door lock should have been on the bottom of the door and the water was flowing in through there - I grabbed a pack of Sugru and molded it into the opening and plugged the leak.<p>When I discovered the leak at 1AM - I had thought my dg had peed in the dining room...<p>My dog thanks you, Sugru, for not being blamed for peeing....

When Sugru was a new gimmick it made a gift idea for that nephew you have no shared interests with. I suspect that a lot of the initial sales were clueless gift purchases, the packaging looked legit, the product was theoretically useful and what else do you buy someone when everyone has everything (including Blu-Tak)?<p>Was there any need to get tens of millions in funding? If you have a deal with Target stores or John Lewis in the UK then you can order from your suppliers what they need, do a back of the envelope calculation as to what you can fund on the basis of those sales and stock accordingly.<p>Greed and hubris gets the better of people though. We have seen it before with boo.com and in plenty of other examples.<p>Much is said in the article about the 90% lost by investors, I think there is another 90% - I doubt that 90% of this stuff was ever opened or used. It was gifted by well meaning mums and aunties. Then those recipients didn&#x27;t rate or use the product enough for it to become &#x27;as exciting as cellotape&#x27;.<p>£2 million buys you a posh house in London, so the bank loan wasn&#x27;t that big in the scheme of things, but a lot of money if your product is neither &#x27;fast moving&#x27; or &#x27;big ticket&#x27;.

I think this exposes the problem with crowdfunding investments. Most people aren&#x27;t savvy enough to perform proper due diligence, or don&#x27;t have the risk tolerance. (Edit) Or don&#x27;t have the time needed to do the kind of due diligence needed to invest in this kind of a company.<p>On the other hand, crowdfunding products, which essentially is a pre-order, is something I love. It&#x27;s well within my risk tolerance and due diligence.

It was useful for a few things, but much too expensive. £7 for three sachets. For comparison an epoxy sachet is less than a pound and lasts forever.<p>I think Sugru might have even put the price down - I remember them being even more expensive.

Sugru is just overpriced thermoplastic. Search Instamorph, Polymorph, Moldable Plastic for cheaper options. It comes in dry pellets that don&#x27;t dry out like sugru.

I would like to see what the cost of all the chemicals needed to make it. I have seen a few companies fail because the vastly overpriced the product they made, thus killing their market. Would sugru have met with success at a lower price? I for one(of many I see) put off by the huge cost.

I bought some many years ago, entranced by its promises, but then somehow never managed to find a concrete use for it.<p>This does not say good things about the product&#x27;s viability.

Bad headline. Crowdfunding isn’t what killed it, the failure to meet bank loan requirements was.

Since they&#x27;ve been acquired, hopefully it&#x27;ll get considerably cheaper now.

I suprised and sad that they failed. I guess the product may still be available from the acquiring company ?<p>Having kids who damage toys all the time, Sugru was really universal repair tool for us.

I&#x27;d be interested to know whether they qualified for EIS (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdcube.com&#x2F;pg&#x2F;eis-seis-tax-relief-overview-43" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crowdcube.com&#x2F;pg&#x2F;eis-seis-tax-relief-overview-43</a>) or not. It&#x27;ll allow to deduct parts of the losses made against your taxable income and therefore the overall amount lost could be much less than the 90% quoted in the article.

I heard about Sugru when it first came out. I bought a few 6 packs and gave some to my engineer friends. I think I was the only one who got pretty exited about the possibilities. Since then, I have lost several packets to age, and learned to keep any I bought in the fridge. As several people have said, I would love to know a place to get the raw materials. It is much nicer to work with than silicone caulk.

I was minutes away from investing £5k to sugru back in 2014...I was convienced the product would be popular like sellotape or superglue :(

I love Sugru, it works great. I don&#x27;t care that it expires because I only buy it when I need. I know people that buy it in bulk because they use it very often. The loan out audio&#x2F;video equipment and use it to reinforce cables and fix things. I&#x27;ve also found that it lasts well past the expiry, it is definitely a conservative date.

Wow, I had no idea it was still around.<p>I checked my GMail, and I ordered 2 &quot;Smart Hacks Super Packs&quot;(multi-color multipack of sugru) on 21 October 2010. I&#x27;m pretty sure most of it is still in my freezer. Well, by that I mean, it survived 2 moves and is now living in its 3rd freezer.<p>I guess, ultimately, I just don&#x27;t have to mend that much stuff.

The ridiculously high cost and short shelf life put me off sugru, but looking in to it did lead me to a handy and cheap DIY alternative - clear silicone mixed with corn starch. I don&#x27;t know how the &#x27;rubbery&#x27; property compares to sugru after it sets up, but it worked nicely for my needs.