Everpurse the Chicago startup that was founded in 2012 and made huge noise in local and national media when they launched might be donzo. When they launched, they started with a kickstarter campaign in 2012 raising over $200,000, more than their initial goal, write-ups in Glamour, TechCrunch, Forbes, Crains and even Refinery29 to name a few. Everpurse founder Liz Salcedo was highly lauded for creating a product that fused tech and fashion.
According to Crunchbase, they raised a seed round of $1mil in May 2014. They Announced in October 2014 a deal with Samsung SDI and most recently, unsuccessfully launched another kickstarted campaign where they only raised $43,160 of their $200,000 goal which ended Oct. 27, 2014.
According to an article in Oct. 2014, they have secured “more than a dozen large fashion companies that are B-to-B clients for their technology. They cannot disclose names yet, because the products are not yet complete, but Dan says the majority of them are billion-dollar fashion and accessories companies that are publicly listed in either Milan or New York City and want to use their technology in their own designs.”
But it seems all might not be well as customers have not received orders that were placed as far back as May of last year nor refunds they were promised with several messages on the Better Business Bureau page and on their Facebook page that reads:
“I’m running out of patience in trying to get someone to contact me regarding a promised refund on the everpurse mini. I’ve emailed multiple times, left messages here and on Twitter to no avail. I’ve tried to do things privately but perhaps it’s going to take some public foot stomping to get what is rightly owed?”
Another customer wrote: “Same here! I loved my original Everpurse so ordered three minis,got an email awhile ago that they were delayed and have been trying to contact them via Support with no response. Wondering if we will ever see our purse or our money! When trying to find a number for them I found their kickstarter from October that wasn’t ever funded.
“my friend and I ordered the mini from you guys back in April and May of this year. We were informed at the end of the summer that due to a battery issue, the mini wasn’t being produced and that we could upgrade to a clutch instead. I thought this was a really professional way for you guys to handle the issue….until almost a year has passed now and and I still don’t have purses, despite paying for them. We have both emailed you repeatedly to try and resolve this but our emails go unanswered without so much as an acknowledgment. Please contact me ASAP to resolve this with either immediate refunds, or immediate delivery of the product we were promised.”
I did a little digging and found that their co-founder and lead software engineer left in October and he is currently at Groupon. Their VP of marketing has also left.
As of this post, email sent to everpurse has not been returned. Got some info on this? send us a message: info@SociaLifeChicago.com
*images via Everpurse
