What's up guys is Cody here and today in this video
We're gonna be talking about Kanoa now
If you guys haven't seen my first two videos on Kanoa
Then I definitely recommend checking them out the first one is obviously the review of the Kanoa earbuds if you haven't seen that I'll put
A link in the description same thing for the aftermath after the company actually shut down entirely
After my terrible review of their product so both of those videos will be in the description
I definitely recommend checking them out and then coming back to this one to get the full picture of
Kanoa and get all the information that you possibly could ever want about Kanoa
So this will be my final update to this company that is just basically
Vanished into thin air and stolen. Everybody's money so the reason for this video is Marisa Kindle over Mercury News
Just did a new piece on Kanoa and did her own detective
research work and found out a lot of very interesting things if you guys want to check out that post I'll put it in the
Description as well, but I just want to tell the story because to me it's really really interesting
Even though I know a lot of people are really pissed off at this company and the founders sieve all for stealing all of their
Money and not coming up with a product, but let's start from the beginning and let's talk about Kanoa's dirty little secrets
So the founder of Kanoa, Cival Van Der Lubbe or Lubbe. I'm not sure how to say his last name
He came from a Caribbean island called Curacao. I think is how you say it and over
There is a beach called Playa, Kanoa, which of course is where he got his company name
So he dropped out of college back in 2013 and then started up his company Kanoa in
2015 just two years later so of course after he started Kanoa he started marketing these things to everybody talking about all the cool stuff
That they could do and how they were going to be not only better than the AirPods from Apple
But they were also going to come out before
the AirPods from Apple now the AirPods have been out for like over a year now or close to a year and of
Course we know Kanoa never made it to market so after he announced all these features and these ear buds
Cival launched a pre-order campaign and the customers just started rolling in they were eating it up
They were like these sound awesome, look awesome
They have promising features, and they're gonna come out for the AirPods
But what's a pre-order party without a little discount so Cival was nice enough to you know cut the price in half
50% off if you order these right now $300 retail price we're gonna cut it down to
150 bucks if you buy them right
Now 150 bucks, that sounds like a great deal. You know people are out there. They're like. Hey, maybe I'll get two pair
That's two for one and these earbuds are gonna be awesome
And all these customers were all about that early bird special at 50% off now notice that I'm calling everybody
Customers, and I'm saying they purchased. That's because there was no Kickstarter
That wasn't the thing I thought it was a Kickstarter apparently he was just selling them straight out right and he was saying hey
We're gonna deliver these at this time there wasn't a Kickstarter
I even heard about people going back to Kickstarter and saying hey, where's my money?
I want a refund Kanoa went under and Kickstarter's like dude
No there was no Kickstarter for Kanoa so Kanoa was literally stealing money from people in trying to develop headphones
Supposedly, that's what I would like to think I would least like to think that Cival and that team
Actually tried I hope that they actually really tried
I hope that they tried and failed otherwise it was literally just grabbing money and
Lying committing fraud and stealing everybody's money so back to the story in
2016 when these customers started buying these earbuds they were supposed to be shipped in
April they were supposed to receive those earbuds in April of 2016 and then Kanoa was like oh well
We're not really ready yet, let's let's uh. I think we should be ready in June. Let's shoot for June
We're sorry for the delay June is the month June of 2016. We'll get them out June rolls around oh
Well we're not quite ready at June let's go for September
There's been some delays, but September for sure absolutely. There's no way we're ever gonna miss September
September is the month September 2016 guess what you already know because nobody ever got headphones
They were delayed again until the spring of
2017 pretty insane, but the insane part is not necessarily that there was a delay because they're sometimes delay in these things
but the insane part is that they continued with all of these delays they
Continued to roll in those pre-orders
They continued to tell people to buy these earbuds
But not only that in September 2016 when they missed that deadline
They sent out an email blast saying that they only had fifty more units
Left in batch two and then they were gonna start shipping
And then they said if you really want these earbuds you better get them now because we're gonna bump the price up to
199 bucks really soon so if you want that
$49 discount today's the day guys
It's just insanely shady. They just continued and continued to miss deadlines
Not only that but then they start to tell people that hey
We only have fifty more units we're gonna be shipping these out soon
But if you want to get your headphones right now, then you're gonna save 50 bucks
They were literally just trying to grab cash as quickly as possible while completely lying to customers from day
One now the last blog post was August 10th
And they said that they were shipping units they were finally shipping units and the feeling was quote-unquote
truly indescribable
They weren't even shipping units they weren't shipping units there was only two people
That ever got headphones, and I was one of them no customers got headphones yet
They were saying they were shipping them back in August so what they were trying to do
I guarantee you is get me to do a good review of these earbuds
So that they could push that out into their newsletter and get more people to buy these earbuds while they continued to not
Ship them. I guarantee you that's what they were trying to do just like they had done before now. Here's a sketchy part
There's a company called Flex
They're the manufacturer for Kanoa and it gets crazier after this
but let's just talk about this first Flex the
manufacturer said they had no intention to make even close to the amount of
pre-ordered earbuds Cival did a deal with Flex back in June
Saying that he wanted less than 25 units
less than 25 units in a quote un-quote non production environment
That's it, less than 25 units that's insane, absolutely insane
25 non production environment units which I ended up getting
Apparently because those things were definitely not for production and the thing is you start to think about well
Okay, how much do they actually sell well Marisa got in touch with the person that Cival had talked to about his business plans
And guess how many he told this guy he sold he said there were
50,000 pre-orders
50,000 pre-orders, are you kidding?
50,000 pre-orders in the absolute minimum that they sold these things at was a hundred and fifty dollars
That's the minimum they went up there were like a hundred and eighty bucks
They sold some at 200, but the absolute minimum amount of money that he got from those pre-orders
7.5 million dollars
7.5 million dollars do you know what percentage of units?
25 is 250 thousand I didn't either so I did the math and it's point zero five percent
It's not even one percent. It's not half a percent. It's ten percent of half a percent
That's insane seven point five million dollars
And he ordered less than 25 and supposedly it was costing him
$50 per unit you have to be really good at math to show that there's a lot of money missing here
That was also talks about Kanoa trying to raise money with outside investors
But after my video went live that apparently fell through it was kind of the final nail in the coffin so to speak but not
Only that something else that shows fraud lying and terrible business practices
I mean literally against the law type stuff, and I don't understand why he's not arrested
But he also told everybody back in June that he passed the FCC with flying colors
Literally flying colors and guess what guys this is the case right here? You do not see an FCC ID number on there
It's completely blank you
Don't see an HVI in number
And you don't see a serial number all of it is completely blank and on the FCC website
There is absolutely no record of application from Kanoa or Cival for these earbuds, which means he didn't do it
He didn't get approved by the FCC and these earbuds with absolutely a hundred percent
require FCC certification in order to be sold and there's not even an application on FCC website for it and Cival said that he
passed with flying colors
insane absolutely insane
I knew something was shady with this dude when I was talking to him on the phone now if you're out like
150 bucks, 300 bucks or however much money that you spent on these headphones
You should really feel for this guy right here his name's Eric Birdman. He was a design consultant for Kanoa
He's the guy that actually thought up the whole octagon shape and you know the whole design of the ear buds
And he didn't work for them
He was a contractor and Kanoa left him high and dry for tens of thousands of dollars
So we know none of that 7.5 million went to Eric Birdman that actually did work on the headphones
So where did all that money?
Go it's hard to say he worked with Cival and the Kanoa team for over two years
And he never got to test a functioning product well
We all know why he wasn't able to test a functioning product
And that's because there wasn't a functioning product to test and in 2013
Birdman started to question Cival and Kanoa their business practices their ethics and by the end of
2016 Cival and everybody else on the Kanoa team stopped responding to his calls
Stopped responding to his emails
Just basically shut him out completely and didn't pay him his money whatsoever now. That's almost
Expected at this point of what Kanoa and Cival was gonna do but the thing that's crazy
absolutely insane
Is that not only did Birdman get screwed over and not get paid it's that Kanoa
announced him
Eric Birdman as one of their management ranks in one of their emails that they sent out last year the email apparently listed 10 people
In these management rank positions and turns out almost all of them were contractors
They didn't actually work for the company. They were just contractors. I even have an email from Cival saying
Thank you on behalf of the four people that work at Kanoa so apparently there are only four people that worked at Kanoa of course
It could all be a lie and literally it could just been Cival you know screwing everybody over
He's the only person that I actually talked to on the phone
He might be the only person. Maybe he made up all these other people
I don't know. It's just this is all so crazy to me so after my review went live he went completely silent
He tried to call me. You know 30 minutes after that review
I didn't answer and then the entire company shut down and then they put up a letter
Thinking all of their backers on their crowdfunding campaign, which never was a thing nobody knew about this crowdfunding campaign
Everybody thought they were purchasing products, but Cival saw as thanks for your money. We'll do our best
I mean
I don't think that fifty thousand people are gonna fork over a hundred and fifty dollars a piece
to some no-name company
To some no-name dude in just hopes that they're going to actually get a product at some point maybe in their lifetime
I don't think that many people are gonna do that and the fact that everybody said that it wasn't a crowdfunding campaign
And they were actually selling them on their website. It's not really hard to decipher
What was going on here so of course after he did this stunt put up his little letter
Thanking everybody almost all web sites like the Kanoa subreddit Kanoa
Facebook the Twitter account even the social media accounts were either deleted or abandoned and apparently a couple of weeks ago his
Landlord got an email saying that he was moving out this dude is piecing out
He is not sticking around probably going back to Curacao whatever however you say that and there's an auto repair shop
That was right next to the Kanoa office
Which somebody visited and of course all the curtains were drawn shut nobody answered the door
But the guy at the auto repair shop saw Cival a couple of weeks ago, and he told the guy quote-unquote
I'm getting out tonight
So he probably went back to his Island and is possibly not going to suffer any
repercussions whatsoever other than a completely tarnished reputation if he ever wants to try to start a new company
I think it's absolutely insane that he's not legally responsible for all of the stuff that he did all the shady business practices
All the lying all the pre-order/
Purchase BS. I mean how can you do that and get away with it?
It's absolutely insane, so that's pretty much the story and really I think the main takeaway here is
Don't preorder stuff
From a company that you don't know anything about it doesn't matter
How cool the product is don't think that you're gonna miss out on it because if it's a good product
And if it's a reputable company, that's gonna stick around then you're gonna have the ability to get those products once
They're officially released if you preorder products from a no-name company from a no-name guy promising awesome products
It could turn out to be like a Kanoa
So that's the last update that I think I'll do on Kanoa unless something just absolutely insane happens, and I feel like you know
It's newsworthy to tell you guys about but of course
I'm really interested to hear what you guys have to say about Kanoa about, Cival, about this entire situation
Down in the comments below alright guys. That's all I got for this video
I hope you enjoyed it
and if you did and you want to see more of my videos
Make sure you subscribe and I'll see you guys in the next one