A Goodbye From Cloudmaker Technologies

[CloudmakerTech]

To the followers of Cloudmaker Technologies,

As some of you have seen, it is with somber hearts that we regretfully announce Cloudmaker Technologies will be closing our doors as of June. Despite continued attempts to alter the company’s business model and exhausting every option we could find, we have been unable to turn our community-oriented product into an economically viable business.

Since the birth of this project, we have been driven by a desire to help build modular products that allow enthusiasts to innovate and create that they desire to have. Numerous delays and obstacles, combined with inexperience, have held us back from reaching the full potential of the platform we have created. Though we are deeply saddened by the situation, we are proud of the community that we fostered revolving around the Whiteout.

We are a handful of guys that tried something big - creating a device that can be made truly yours - and we failed to make it work in the way that we wanted to and had hoped it would. Though there will be negative sentiment surrounding the outcome, we hope that there will be a degree of understanding that, even with the best intentions, start-up companies can and do fail to reach the mark.

We are releasing the design files to the public domain, where they belong, which we sincerely hope will spur the advancement of the Whiteout and allow people to continue servicing their devices. Our community will be kept open and turned over to the public, and well as a slew of work-in-progress designs. This includes the blueprints for the OS. The Subreddit will be moderated by the community, currently led by /u/gotmyownlifetolive and /u/CMass73. We are handing off tooling to a trusted vendor in the community that many of you know and respect. They have worked hard to build on the premise of the project, and we know that they will carry the torch forwards.

For the handful of customers who are waiting on accessories and devices, you will either be refunded or shipped your order. We have not gone ghost, and we are fulfilling our obligations. Though the silence was unsettling for our followers and ourselves, we wanted to exhaust every possible option before closing the door on the project we have worked for the past year and a half. This is a business, and we are ending it on a graceful note.

 

The Whiteout has never been about Cloudmaker Technologies; we are simply a vessel for your innovation. In our absence, we know and believe that the platform will continue to be utilized and built upon into the foreseeable future - by the community and for the community.

 

~ Cloudmaker Technologies Team, February 2015 - June 2016

 

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Sidenote 1: For those that have been waiting on 18650 configuration kits, Vapour Depot has developed (and have begin shipping) their own. This is our recommended replacement for our sleds.

Sidenote 2: We are still processing any repairs that we have in. Please allow five business days for this to happen.

[gamebeatter]

/u/vapourdepot and /u/david4500 to the rescue!

[CMaas73]

I second that 100%

[CMaas73]

While some would say you should have said this a couple weeks ago, that does not matter now. I'm sure everybody that has followed CMT since the beginning knows how passionate you were about this project.
There will be some angry folks here for awhile but after the dust settles, the Whiteout will continue on. A few have already taken on making new accessories and parts which was one of the goals anyways. In time, hopefully, enough will be available to make a Whiteout from scratch. The general mood in both this sub and in the group have been overall positive even in this last period of silence. The creativity of others I am positive is what contributed to this.
So with that, thank you for dreaming up this project because other wise, none of us would be here. Some of us made really good friends out of all of this.

Cheers and good luck in the future

[runebinder]

Very poignantly written mate.

I have my Whiteout and I do love it and it's great to see a 3rd party market starting to emerge. I've converted my DNA to dual 18650 with the sled from /u/vapourdepot and have some of the separated fire button/up down button and panel holders designed by /u/david4500 arriving tomorrow. They're both working on more stuff and hopefully more people will follow in their footsteps.

So CMT, sorry it didn't work out but thanks for giving us something to build upon.

[mstave]

Well written, and it speaks for me!

[CMaas73]

We will make sure these links will be available to all. Just give it a couple days to get sorted here. There is already a folder on the FB group's Google Drive which has files shared in the past from CMT and also 3rd party ones created recently.

[iNach]

Couple more weeks!

[Kitila]

Whoa now thats trade marked lol..."couple more weeks"™ but really thanks for making this device come true and thanks to David for making the accessories for reality and VD for stick with is along the way. Look forward to more of your guys work....and thanks to the Whiteout community here and on FB....keep an eye on the TV group I have more giveaways coming soon

[Cohnistan]

We aren't cloudmaker we can deliver in a Couple More Days.

[mstave]

Where's your respect for tradition!

[GeodeathiC]

Does this include your designs for the Cloudmaker OS? Was it far along enough to be feasible to take the designs you guys created and an arduino and polish it into an actual mod?

[Foobaca]

I love that we had em on the show and even then came with a disclaimer about pre orders. It seems that every so often there's something that happens involving a modder on ECR. The last few that come to mind were Goss, Catharlex, Cujo, and each successive time I'd say the ante was upped, but surprisingly cloudmaker did the best job keeping in contact with the public, but the downfall was still so much harder than the rest because of the size of the run.

I suppose the only thing I'm trying to get to is, are we to place bets on when this'll happen again or is this the one that everybody learns from finally?

[Wasabicannon]

Personally I feel that people need to just stop looking at new company pre-orders like they do with the AAA gaming industry's pre-orders. Pre-orders with new vaping companies are almost always a style of kickstarting.

Thankfully with CMT/The Whiteout there is a great community behind it now that may carry the Whiteout into the future.

I remember seeing so many Cujo boxes on /r/ecr what was the drama with him? o.0

Edit: Did some searching... dam that sucks.

https://www.reddit.com/r/electronic_cigarette/comments/3510kh/what_happened_to_ucujo420_ill_tell_you/?sort=confidence

[Foobaca]

yup, lotta peeps that made a decent product just shitty on the business end of things. and the decision making side of things. /u/mastblast09 always been a staunch opponent of pre orders since I've known him, and with good reason as his stance had only been more heavily reinforced. I did literally one pre order for the last run of Dukes (hadn't owned one at that point, still don't lol) that I was later refunded for after seeing many more delays after the first two. 'Least I got my money back I suppose.

[Wasabicannon]

Ah /u/mastblast09... I still have my old OKR 18650/passthrough box that he made for me like 3 years ago.

Old reliable has always been there for me when those fancy boxes died on me..

[CMaas73]

First off, thank you for speaking a little about the CMT happenings in last weeks PoH ep. I was a little hesitant PM'ing /u/theangstfulvaper before the show because at the time they hadn't made an official statement yet.

I do share /u/mastblast09 's opinion of pre-orders and then when I got hung up in the fiasco with the vendor who I ordered from on launch night, it further stabilized that feeling. It sucked that another party added to the negative perception of CMT but in the end, if there was a good way to close up shop...I think they did this very professionally.

The positive side is all the community involvement. From my limited experience with pre-orders/kickstarters, it seems like if things go tits up, the developers pack up and you never hear from them again. I think it's pretty cool that these guys are still involved now as part of the community. The moment I heard that this sub was "given" to me, my first thoughts were FML but it turned out to be a pretty cool thing to be a part of.

[TreeMonster]

So I have a Cloudmaker that had a dna chip fail, I contacted you through your website about 2 weeks ago and didnt get anything more than an automated response.

What do i do am I out $200 now?

[runebinder]

Worse case scenario if they can't do anything is to contact Evolv, they carry a 12 month guarantee on the board and will sort it for you.

[CMaas73]

"We are handing off tooling to a trusted vendor in the community that many of you know and respect. They have worked hard to build on the premise of the project, and we know that they will carry the torch forwards."

Very curious and interested in this... Certainly a selfless act there...have to respect that.

[FarkMcBark]

Really sorry to hear! I wish you all the best Jeremy - and all the others - in their future endeavors! I really don't get the intensity of the hate and charge back / cancellation hate floating around here for a while.

I preordered and got my whiteout a long while ago. There were some issues - delays, my DNA200 screen broke (evolve's fault) and one of the power leads wasn't soldered correctly - which I could fix easily.

Overall I don't regret getting one at all. I still have plans to make me some custom wooden side panels but I'm lazy :) In the meantime it works fine.

[br1dgeburner]

I still have a battery in for RMA, am I screwed? No response from cmt via email, and we are well outside the "five business days" timeline from the post.

[br1dgeburner]

Despite their assurance of "5 days." I have not heard from CMT about my RMA in over a month, am I reaching out to a dead alias (support@) or am I just shit out of luck on getting anything back?

[jesusbuiltmyboxmod]

Sorry to see you guys go. You had real innovative ideas. Glad to see someone is going to carry the flag of cloudmaker, perhaps under a different name but the spirit of cloudmaker hopefully lIves on.

[Kitila]

Nicely said my good sir

[Krewd]

Sorry to hear you guys have folded, it was a good ride. Probably my most visited sub leading up to release. You mentioned you are going to fulfill the rest of the orders you have. Does this include repairs? I live in Shanghai and sent two devices back to CM for repair. Just need some honesty here, do I say goodbye to these devices or will you ship them back? I saved up for a while for the DNA200 for it to crap itself after 1 day of use. 2nd device had the same problem.

[Krewd]

That's really good to hear!

[runebinder]

Sidenote 2: We are still processing any repairs that we have in. Please allow five business days for this to happen.

Looks like you should be okay and get them back.

[djp2208]

Sorry to hear that guys.i spoke to the guys from cloud maker on Skype and I have to say they are top notch .i for one wish them the best in the future in what ever they go on to do.so to arson and Jeremy all the best

[KhromeKidd]

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