PEBBLE and the Osborne Effect

Pebble has always been the poster child for crowdfunding. The most successful kick-starter project of all time raised gazillions and resulted in arguably the "ugliest" yet coolest watch ever.

The original Pebble watch with its low-power, 'eink' display quickly became an icon.

Actors were seen wearing it on the most popular sitcoms.  It became the Prius of watches. 

As watches got smarter and cooler looking, and Apple entered the gave with their uber-cool watch it became important for pebble to evolve, and they tried with the 'face-lifted' pebble steel, and when that crashed and burned, they announced the Pebble Time Steel.

This one looked quite a bit better and had a color eink display and all sorts of glitzy band and metal options.

The die-hard fans put in pre-orders enmass. And life was good.

The only problem was that the Moto 360, Samsung gear, LG and Huawei decided the world wanted round watch faces that looked like normal traditional watches. And it looked like they were right.

So while people were still waiting for their pre-orders of pebble time steel to ship, Pebble announced a new much thinner round watch called Pebble time round.

Suddenly everyone who ordered the 'Pebble time steel'  wanted a Pebble round and canceled, opting for the new round face.

PEBBLE now had a new problem.

They were nowhere near able to ship the previous model let alone the new one and with so many people changing their orders they were stuck with old stock that they couldn't sell, not even after they slashed the prices.

The new stock required money, and customers would only pay when they should, but their capital was tied up in old stock that was suddenly dead in the water; all because of their premature announcement.

They figured that if they waited till they were ready to ship, to announce the new watch they would lose their loyal clients to the competition, who had already ready to roll, so they announced, early and couldn't deliver.

And suddenly couldn't free the money they had tied in old models.

Classic Osborne effect.