Juicero startup with $ 400 juicer closes

In April , several articles were published on Geektimes about the Juicero juicer, which was able to raise more than $ 120 million during a crowdfunding company. According to the developers, this device develops tremendous pressure in order to squeeze the maximum amount of fresh juice out of a bag with a specially prepared mixture of fruits or vegetables. At the start of sales, the cost of a smart juicer reached $ 699. Over time, the price dropped to $ 399, but for a juicer, it's still a bit much.



Plus, it turned out that juice from those most special packages can be squeezed by hand. Yes, it turns out a little less than when the juicer works, but the difference is not so great. Accordingly, many users of the Network have been puzzled by this device, and the company that sold juicers was subjected to fraud charges.



The group of experts even decided to disassemble the juicer on the cogs, to find out how everything works, and to check whether the authors of the device did not save on details. As it turned out, no. The design of the Juicero Press is of high quality, and the materials and parts used in the assembly cannot be called bad. If they are not the most expensive in their category, then they are among the most expensive .



But all this quality was unnecessary, because the juicer after a series of scandals simply ceased to be sold. Sense to buy a thing for $ 400, if its work at about the same time can be done with your own hands? As a result, the company that launched the device on the market, said it was closing. It happened on the 1st of September. It was also announced that the sales of both the juicer itself and the packages with mixtures for the production of juice were completely stopped.





Disassembled Juicero Juicer. Source: bolt.io



This news came shortly after the announcement of the "strategic changes" in the work of Juicero. Management in July announced that it plans to drastically reduce the cost of the device and all its accessories. Packages with mixtures, by the way, cost a lot, $ 5-7. Head of the company Jeff Dunn said that it was the cost of the device that did not allow to fulfill the mission of the company that she had set herself.



The management spoke about the impossibility of further price reductions. Juicero production is expensive, and the company cannot operate at a loss. As for the closure, the company announced its intention to find a buyer for its assets so that the developments would not disappear altogether. A source who is close to the leadership of Juicero, told that all employees were notified of the planned closure of Juicero, which should happen within two months. In addition, buyers (everything, no matter, new or old) can optionally receive a refund of their purchase if they send a request to the company.



Interestingly, before its closure, representatives of Juicero said that the company plans to release a second model of a juicer, the price of which should be much more humane - only $ 200. This is really a radical decline, considering that the original price of the device was $ 699. Juicero still failed to cope with the flow of negativity after the first Bloomberg publication conducted an investigation into the juice packs, which could be squeezed by hand.





The head of the company recently sent Bloomberg a message in which he complained about the actions of the company's journalists. “It was strange to see that everything that we had always known and didn’t interest our customers was exposed as something new and important,” said Dunn.



After news of the hand-squeezed packages began to appear everywhere and everywhere, the management declared that it did not see anything wrong with that. According to them, the purpose of creating a juicer was to create a smart device with a corresponding ecosystem of accessories, which allowed the owners of the juicer to get tasty juice without any problems and worries. Dunn said that the design of the device contains valves, which can withstand 16,000 lb-force (71170 Newtons).



The startup at the beginning of its work received about $ 120 million from a dozen investment funds, including Campbell Soup, Google Ventures, Artis Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Two Sigma Ventures, First Beverage Group, Acre Ventures, Double Bottom Line Ventures, Thrive Capital, Vast Ventures and others .