Fuck guys, on one hand I am disappointed to see a shit-talking thread inspired by my commentary, as that is not really my style at all. Yes - I am a pretty direct and call-it-like-I-see-it-kinda guy, but I am not one to start a thread to bash manufacturers who are working hard to design and sell the products we love while simultaneously creating jobs and etc etc etc. In short, I have lots and lots of love for all vape manufacturers including Boundless who inspired this thread and I do not mean any disrespect by acknowledging the horrible launch of the Tera.
However, since this thread has already been created, I guess I may as well chime in while I am five beers deep and several bowls through the Fierce and a Bocote Underdog.
I design industrial equipment and oversee its manufacture for a living. I have a general but vague understanding of how difficult it is to release a product to consumer market as there are a ton more challenges than are faced in a typical industrial product design process. Once you add in the fact that some consider these devices medical devices and some people who consume cannabis in excess develop crazy viewpoints that defy logic and defend them to the death, you realize that launching a new vaporizer is a fucking minefield.
That said - there is nothing more expensive than designing and releasing a brand new product to market and then having to buy back the entire lot in full. It would have been cheaper and easier for boundless to cut their losses at this point and abandon the Tera entirely - but of course this would have been a short term strategy only which would probably have hurt hem in the long run. Anyway of course I am happy to see that they decided to stand behind their product and solve the problem in the right way but of course again there were some hiccups and they had to do it all over again. I can't say how much this cost them, but I can say that it was very very very expensive and they probably made absolutely no money on the first several thousand Tera sales.
In the other corner, we have the Grasshopper - a beautiful, functional, ostensibly 'safe' made-in-USA vape which has a mean time between failures of about half a gram and a lifetime warranty. This is also a very very expensive formula that I would not like to be a part of at all. Yes, this launch was very bad but really the fatal flaw will be the unreliable wire-free design coupled with the lifetime warranty.
I do not really consider Loto Labs Evoke to be a contender in the most expensivist launch race, as taking peoples' money in advance and then never releasing a product is probably very profitable.