My new theory is that kickstarter actually works best as a demand gauging/preorder tool for a completely finished product that is in the process of working out

My new theory is that kickstarter actually works best as a demand gauging/preorder tool for a completely finished product that is in the process of working out a mass manufacturing deal. These guys already knew exactly where/who to go to and took care of all the business side of things for manufacturing very very quickly. I'm pretty sure they could and would have manufactured some of those watches with or without kickstarter. The only real problem kickstarter solved for them was knowing how many to manufacture. The fact that other successful kickstarter projects such as Glif, Lockpick tools, and C-loop succeeded under similar conditions seems to somewhat back this theory up.