Martian Watches shuts down shop and cancels mVoice G2 hybrid

We have grown accustomed to news of closures of small wearable tech companies. Jawbone, Pebble and a slew of others have shut down shop in recent years. We can now add Martian Watches to this list.

The US based outfit has sent news of the closure to backers of its new mVoice G2 watch on Kickstarter. The company says it has failed to raise enough funds to complete production, which is really a bit odd considering they raised more than 10 times the intended $30,000 goal.

Nevertheless, Martian Watches will be shutting down operations and closing the company before fulfilling all orders. The company has apparently attempted to raise new funding from “venture capitalists, private equity firms and a lead investor for a large financing round of $15M” but was unsuccessful.

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Some of the luckier backers did get their devices. Around 480 of them received their units back in April. What will happen with other 1,500 or so that were waiting for delivery remains a question. Its safe to say they’re not too happy with the situation.

Unfortunately, funding projects on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms is a gamble and comes with no guarantees of delivery or your money back. This project seemed less risky considering Martian Watches has been around since 2007 and in that time has successfully launched the Martian Notifier and Martian G2G.

According to the message shared with backers, Martian plans to update them with its next steps in about a month. It doesn’t look like they will be getting their money back, though. Particularly considering the company stated it does not have sufficient liquid assets to pay off all its debts.

Stay tuned. We will update this article when we hear more.

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