Current street pricing for this phone appears to be around €269.
Volla is getting from €298 to €359 for them (Let's ignore the t-shirts, books, etc.).
If we assume they are buying the phones for, say, 25% off, their COGS is around €200 per unit. In other words, they are getting paid between €100 and €159 to develop software and support their version of the phone. In the case of the KS campaign, that amounts to about €5000 and €7950.
There are other possible business arrangements that are often negotiated in these kinds of deals. For example, Gigaset manages fulfillment under the Volla brand and they split the profits. That would imply zero upfront costs to Volla. That's the kind of deal I would want to make if I were in their shoes. Don't deal with hardware if you don't have to. Hardware is hard and very expensive.
I am going to guess or assume (and we know how dangerous assumptions can be) that the bulk of the software has already been developed and might even be in release-able condition. I make this assumption because they've been at this crowd-sourcing thing for a while.
In other words, they have sunk costs. And it might very well be that they don't really have to invest much more to actually deliver these modified COTS phones. In that context the €5K to €8K they just raised (after paying for the hardware) might be fine. It's a signal rather than a bankroll needed to produce phones. They are NOT manufacturing hardware from scratch. At worst they might have custom printed packaging, which costs nothing.
I then looked into Gigaset. It's a solid company. Used to be Siemens Home. Now 70% owned by Goldin Group out of Hong Kong (which puts into question just how much is really "Made in Germany"). Still, this is a real company with real products. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the hardware at all.
One way I came out of this is to consider the idea that, if the Volla software does not work out for whatever reason users might be able to reprogram their phones with the standard Gigaset software and life goes on. If this is the case, and you like Gigaphone, this deal has basically zero risk. You are paying a relatively small premium to try a proposal that may or may not work. Which is fine. Good project.
This is just a Gigaset GS290 with different software:
https://www.gigaset.com/hq_en/gigaset-gs290/
Current street pricing for this phone appears to be around €269.
Volla is getting from €298 to €359 for them (Let's ignore the t-shirts, books, etc.).
If we assume they are buying the phones for, say, 25% off, their COGS is around €200 per unit. In other words, they are getting paid between €100 and €159 to develop software and support their version of the phone. In the case of the KS campaign, that amounts to about €5000 and €7950.
There are other possible business arrangements that are often negotiated in these kinds of deals. For example, Gigaset manages fulfillment under the Volla brand and they split the profits. That would imply zero upfront costs to Volla. That's the kind of deal I would want to make if I were in their shoes. Don't deal with hardware if you don't have to. Hardware is hard and very expensive.
I am going to guess or assume (and we know how dangerous assumptions can be) that the bulk of the software has already been developed and might even be in release-able condition. I make this assumption because they've been at this crowd-sourcing thing for a while.
In other words, they have sunk costs. And it might very well be that they don't really have to invest much more to actually deliver these modified COTS phones. In that context the €5K to €8K they just raised (after paying for the hardware) might be fine. It's a signal rather than a bankroll needed to produce phones. They are NOT manufacturing hardware from scratch. At worst they might have custom printed packaging, which costs nothing.
I then looked into Gigaset. It's a solid company. Used to be Siemens Home. Now 70% owned by Goldin Group out of Hong Kong (which puts into question just how much is really "Made in Germany"). Still, this is a real company with real products. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt the hardware at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigaset_Communications
One way I came out of this is to consider the idea that, if the Volla software does not work out for whatever reason users might be able to reprogram their phones with the standard Gigaset software and life goes on. If this is the case, and you like Gigaphone, this deal has basically zero risk. You are paying a relatively small premium to try a proposal that may or may not work. Which is fine. Good project.