That "other direction" is much more significant, at this point.

For every Kickstarter/Indiegogo project that's cloned by a Chinese manufacturer (e.g, Fidget Cube), there's probably at least 10 or 20 "projects" created to resell something that's already available. It's a huge issue for the credibility of both sites.

What's truly fascinating is all of these innovative products made in Asia which aren't officially marketed in the West (thus allowing people to market it in smalltime ways, like Kickstarter). If you go to the right parts of Asia now you will see a wild array of amazing, futuristic products that you can't find anywhere in the US.

A lot of them are kind of misleading junk though.

Yeah, I see a ton of these stand-alone VR headsets that--on the surface--look amazing. But if you really start to scrutinize the specs, you realize they are two-generation-old Android phone guts slapped inside a cheap plastic box. You're getting a glorified Google Cardboard with probably a janky OS, and not anything up to the standard of even the now-2.5-year-old Samsung Gear VR.

like what? selfie sticks?

(i live in asia)

I remember being on holiday in Thailand and seeing selfie sticks about 3 years before they hit the mainstream in the UK. I wish I'd started importing them myself.

Way more than that. A large portion of the Fulfilled By Amazon program is imports like this. If the subreddit is representative, nearly all of FBA is AliBaba imports.

Stupid question -- isn't that (usually) good? My model of Kickstarter projects is "I wish this product existed so I could buy it", not "I would like to personally profit from bringing this to market".

This is what it was originally intended to be, but Kickstarter long turned into a marketing platform for companies to get pre-orders for their new products.

Ah, that makes sense. But it still seems mostly benign to me: it accelerates the transition from non-obvious demand to purchasable product, thus doing better on the "I wish this product existed" metric.

I can see how it's effectively leeching off the efforts of those entrepreneurs who are trying to get pre-orders, but, as long as they haven't started building the product, it's a relatively small amount of work lost, in setting up a kickstarter page.

My main problem is that because it is billed as an "investment" (where your return is maybe a slight discount on the product), you have no recourse if the product is never delivered.

Many kickstarters are made by people with no experience in actually delivering product and are almost certainly doomed to fail from the start. Another large group are established companies that have investment already, and are using it purely as marketing because it is impossible to build their product at the funding levels kickstarters reach (outside of the big ones like Pebble). There are very few kickstarters that have non-obvious markets and are run by someone I would be willing to risk money on to have made, and zero where the return is worth my risk.

Yeah, what we need is a patent system that only gives 5 years, maybe some lower barriers in terms of how it's enforced. Maybe where a jury is asked 'does this feel like a knockoff of what the patent was generally describing or does it really do something new.' The risk of going afoul will be enough to keep people innovating.

I'd really love to see a common sense approach to patents.

Import tax from China would solve these issues.

Killing the UPU subsidies might be enough on its own.