
The rise and fall of Sugru - villaaston1
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-rise-and-fall-of-sugru
======
jmkd
Watched from the sidelines as Jane invented an early version of Sugru at
college in 2003/4\. Everyone I knew (and me) thought she was completely
bonkers, developing a weird substance that didn't seem to do anything but make
a horrid mess of well-designed objects. Saw how doggedly she persisted for
years to get it off the ground, eventually winning me over (in theory) for the
main use cases. But still, as a hard-won fan with 15 years of anecdotal
observation turned admiration, and as an accomplished DIYer and general
proponent of fixing things, I couldn't find a use for Sugru in my life.

The real story here is a major life effort, not a crowdfunding over reach.

~~~
dotancohen
I use Sugru on almost everything I own. It's on my steering wheel and gear
shift, it is on my telephone protecting the camera lens, it's on my stylus,
fountain pen, keys, and wallet.

Pretty much any time I think "that could have been designed better" I use
Sugru. I agree that it's expensive, but it had saved me more money than it
costs. I would actually love a subscription, where one gets a single packet in
the mail once a month, to address the expiration issue.

~~~
shostack
Do you happen to have any photos documenting this? I'd love to see some of
your use cases.

~~~
dotancohen
I'm not a big social media user, but if there is anything specific that you'd
like to see, I'll photograph it.

~~~
shostack
I'm most interested in the phone camera, wallet and keys use cases.

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cjlars
A lot of people are pointing to weaknesses in the product, but it's a highly
convenient little product that applies to a lot of small problems. It was
never going to be a huge business, just like 2 part repair epoxy is never
going to be a huge business. But that doesn't preclude it from being a
successful small company -- Sugru has plenty of benefits over 2 part mixtures.
One can sell in Walgreens and the other in Home Depot.

I would propose a different mistake: they simply got too ambitious. If they
had raised a little money and grown organically, they could have eventually
been a tidy little $5-10M a year business, netting the founder a healthy 6 or
7 figure income. Nothing says you need to follow the start-up venture funded
playbook, in fact, most consumer packaged goods businesses do not.

~~~
tinus_hn
At least the article doesn’t say how much the founder made. It may well be
just the investors that got shafted.

~~~
cjlars
Wow, you're right! According to the listing on CrowdCube [1], they only sold
4.6% of the company in the offering. Scratch what I said before, the founders
made off like bandits and the investors took almost all of the hit. Sadly not
much recourse for them.

[1]
[https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/sugru/pitches/bgNOBZ](https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/sugru/pitches/bgNOBZ)

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oldcynic
Bloody hell Wired.

Blu Tack was invented in Leicester, and Bostik still make it there. It's
reusable and doesn't set or cure, though it deteriorates a bit after a decade
in a drawer. Can repair pretty much nothing, but handy for sticking posters to
walls. :)

Sugru is/was a silicone putty that cures after a few minutes in air, and
expires in a few months in the packet. Seemed terrible value for money based
on the tiny packet I bought so I'd never buy again.

At least with two part putties you can keep plenty in a drawer, for years,
they don't cure until you've mixed them and cost a fraction of Sugru.

Edit: Well this provoked quite the discussion. If you're looking for repair
putty the two main UK brands I know are: Araldite (Now a US brand, mainly DIY
and automotive, also epoxy adhesives), and Milliput.com (Epoxy modelling clay,
perfect for repairs to plastics, steel etc. Comes in a few grades and
colours), with shelf life in decades. Milliput are Welsh. :)

~~~
Djvacto
It expires after a few months in the packet?

RIP my spare Sugru.

~~~
fredley
This is what bummed me out about it most when I tried it. I had to buy a pack
of 6 (maybe smaller sizes are available now), when I wanted to use half of
one. The rest was all waste.

~~~
Someone1234
This might sound a little melodramatic, but it ruins the product for me.

Sugru is the type if product I want to throw in my toolbox for when I need it,
because when I need it I NEED it. But instead I have to buy it online, takes 3
days to arrive, and by that time I've already used duct tape and moved on.

It is a good idea and a great product, but the short shelf life is a huge
problem.

~~~
dingaling
Plumbing putty has been around for a couple of decades and is available in
most hardware stores. It hardens to a waterproof seal.

~~~
rlonstein
> Plumbing putty

Plumbing putty doesn't harden, it's calcium carbonate, petroleum grease, and
silica. The hardening stuff is Plumber's Epoxy aka WaterWeld,et. al.

~~~
newnewpdro
Plumber's epoxy putty has been recommended in a number of sailing/cruising
"must-have" lists I've read over the years, which has earned it an entry in my
(yet-to-be-exercised) provisions list.

------
adrianN
I repaired a tablet case with Sugru and replaced the worn feet at the bottom
of my Macbook with it. I also reinforced several cables with Sugru to prevent
breaks. Overall I'm pretty happy with the product, but I don't have many
problems where Sugru is useful. It's too expensive to make bigger things out
of it and small repairs just don't happen too often.

~~~
cptskippy
My biggest complaint about it is that it expires! I bought a 5 pack because I
had an immediate use and it worked amazingly well.

6 months later I again had a need for it and I went to grab one of the 4
remaining packs and they were all dried out and hard. I flipped them over and
there was an expiration date that had passed!

This is the type of product I want to keep on the shelf for when I need it,
not something I want to purchase on demand. Also it's expensive.

~~~
mmjaa
I use this stuff from 3M that is absolutely vile-smelling but delivers the
same results as Sugur, for about 1/5th the cost. It comes in these little
rolls, with an inner core material and an outer material, which somehow manage
to co-exist on the shelf without curing, until you remove the end-caps which
expose both layers to oxygen, somehow setting off the curing process .. you
then smoosh it together, so it becomes this ultra-disgusting smelling blob,
then apply it where necessary. Within a few hours, its like, rock-solid. I've
fixed countless things with the batch I bought a year ago, and its still good
after living in the fridge ...

~~~
tra3
Would you mind sharing the name of the product?

~~~
tra3
Doing some quick googling revealed this: [https://www.amazon.com/J-B-
Weld-8276-KwikWeld-Reinforced/dp/...](https://www.amazon.com/J-B-
Weld-8276-KwikWeld-
Reinforced/dp/B0006O1ICY/ref=pd_sim_263_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B0006O1ICY&pd_rd_r=P1AXVGA9SKJ344N92229&pd_rd_w=GuqIi&pd_rd_wg=57g0M&psc=1&refRID=P1AXVGA9SKJ344N92229)

Apparently two part epoxy dries really hard. So not quite the same application
as Sugru.

------
woliveirajr
I think the problem is the product itself. I bought it online, wasn't that
cheap, and wasn't that useful.

And, by that, I don't mean that the product isn't good (it is), doesn't
fulfill the purpose (it does), but it just will not be used in that many
situations. Sometimes you'll fix the broken thing with commodity glue,
sometimes with duct tape, and all those cost less than Sugru.

------
samch
I make my own Sugru: simple silicone caulk and corn starch. I have no idea how
well it compares to the real thing, but a repair to the rack inside my
dishwasher has lasted for several years without any noticeable degradation.
The benefit of this is that the caulk and corn starch last for a while and
don’t cost as much as Sugru per unit volume.

Source: [http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-Your-Own-
Sugru-S...](http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-Your-Own-Sugru-
Substitute/)

~~~
poizan42
Sugru seems to be mostly silicone caulk and talcum powder, so probably not
that different. A lot more R&D has probably been put into the optimal mixture
ratio and choice of solvents.

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iakopa79
The cost was too high. At $12 USD for a package, it passed my threshold of
spontaneous purchase. Silicon tape, which is amazing stuff, is about half that
price. Silicon tape is water tight, flexible, bonds to itself, and very
versatile. Ultimately I never tried Sugru because more affordable alternatives
could do the same job.

~~~
_dan
I don't understand why they don't sell it for a few bucks a sachet in a simple
point-of-sale display or via the internet. I'm waaaay more willing to buy one
when I need it than have to shell out for a big multipack of stuff that has a
limited shelf life..

~~~
sago
Perhaps because a small part of the cost of the product comes from the sticky
stuff itself. Selling a quarter of the quantity may have 90% of the cost of
sale. So it might have to be $12 for a pack or, $11 for a small sachet, to be
worthwhile.

------
1123581321
Anecdotally, I bought a pack a few years ago and didn’t replace it when used.
I was only partially successful at the mends I used it for, and for the cost,
simple electrical tape would have been better. And of course regular sticky-
tack is still better at hanging photos, etc, and cheaper, and the same goes
for multi-surface glue. I am sure there are specialized use cases in which
Sugru excels, but I didn’t think it worked as a general repair product and I
think that hindered its growth if early adopters like me didn’t
enthusiastically recommend it to others or buy more.

------
m0nty
> “I’m very disappointed as the funding literature indicated high growth
> plans,” says a Crowdcube backer who wishes to remain anonymous

I'm not surprised they want to remain anonymous if they failed to perceive a
downside in investing in a new product. What would you exepct - "our plans for
growth are unambitious and we expect only mediocre performance in the market"?

~~~
jVinc
Honestly I would too be disappointed if a company planning high growth goes
out and says "whoops we lost a backer, now we're selling" It definitely makes
it seem like the company is knowingly misledning investors in an attempt to
pull in funding for an urealisabel plan.

If you're at the verge of having to sell the entire company at a loss, the
least you can do is try to restructure, reduce costs and plan for moderate
growth which doesn't depend on you pulling in huge amounts of funding.

------
gommm
I bought some sugru thinking it'd be useful but by the time I wanted to repair
with it, it had been too long and it had hardened...

If you have kids it might make more sense but otherwise, I think it's a
difficult sell given the cost

------
mmjaa
I wish they'd pushed harder to become a key part of the Maker scene .. I
really wonder what a 3D-printer that used Sugru as its base material would be
like. Probably prohibitively expensive in comparison with the ABS materials,
but then again .. maybe they could have carved a niche in that segment that
pushed their value higher.

One thing is for sure, after seeing it adorning various devices and appliances
around the scene for a few years, I've come to associate it with "ghetto
hackers" who don't have the druthers to just 3d-print replacement parts
themselves. It always amuses me to have this thought - its a bloody expensive
material, all things considering.

The one thing I consider it really excels at, also, is preserving peoples
fingerprints...

------
maxxxxx
I put Sugru on the buttons of my camera to make it easier to feel them at
night. I was always surprised how well it works and how long the buttons would
last.

It makes me a little sad that a company with a good and useful product doesn't
survive while others who sell only junk do.

------
samstave
Sugru anecdote.

I had read about Sugru in~2011/12 or so -- I wrote to her (inventor of it) and
she sent me a packet for free.

Then the Fukushima meltdown happened and a few days later San Francisco
experienced one of the most wicked rainstorms ever - and the wind was driving
the water against my glass-door flooding my apartment (twin peaks)... there
was a hole where the sliding glass door lock should have been on the bottom of
the door and the water was flowing in through there - I grabbed a pack of
Sugru and molded it into the opening and plugged the leak.

When I discovered the leak at 1AM - I had thought my dg had peed in the dining
room...

My dog thanks you, Sugru, for not being blamed for peeing....

------
Theodores
When Sugru was a new gimmick it made a gift idea for that nephew you have no
shared interests with. I suspect that a lot of the initial sales were clueless
gift purchases, the packaging looked legit, the product was theoretically
useful and what else do you buy someone when everyone has everything
(including Blu-Tak)?

Was there any need to get tens of millions in funding? If you have a deal with
Target stores or John Lewis in the UK then you can order from your suppliers
what they need, do a back of the envelope calculation as to what you can fund
on the basis of those sales and stock accordingly.

Greed and hubris gets the better of people though. We have seen it before with
boo.com and in plenty of other examples.

Much is said in the article about the 90% lost by investors, I think there is
another 90% - I doubt that 90% of this stuff was ever opened or used. It was
gifted by well meaning mums and aunties. Then those recipients didn't rate or
use the product enough for it to become 'as exciting as cellotape'.

£2 million buys you a posh house in London, so the bank loan wasn't that big
in the scheme of things, but a lot of money if your product is neither 'fast
moving' or 'big ticket'.

~~~
jonhendry18
"Was there any need to get tens of millions in funding?"

They probably pitched it with plans of expanding into floor waxes and dessert
toppings. Or, you know, more than just little sachets of goo.

------
gwbas1c
I think this exposes the problem with crowdfunding investments. Most people
aren't savvy enough to perform proper due diligence, or don't have the risk
tolerance. (Edit) Or don't have the time needed to do the kind of due
diligence needed to invest in this kind of a company.

On the other hand, crowdfunding products, which essentially is a pre-order, is
something I love. It's well within my risk tolerance and due diligence.

~~~
bencollier49
Indeed. I'm rather dumbfounded that crowdfunded securities were greenlit by
the FCA - it opens the door to exactly this situation.

Kickstarter-style project crowdfunding makes loads more sense, though.

------
IshKebab
It was useful for a few things, but much too expensive. £7 for three sachets.
For comparison an epoxy sachet is less than a pound and lasts forever.

I think Sugru might have even put the price down - I remember them being even
more expensive.

~~~
anilakar
Yup.

 _“The challenge of explaining the vast potential of mouldable glue and how it
can be relevant to any given consumer has proved to be a lot harder than
anyone imagined,” said ni Dhulchaointigh._

That was never their problem. Most of my tech-savvy friends knew the product
by name and had multiple uses in mind. Literally everyone also agreed that the
price just was not worth it.

~~~
DiabloD3
It wasn't the price. It was the fact that it expires.

I have a packet that lives in my fridge forever, as a reminder, behind my many
mustards. The mustards may live forever, the Sugru won't.

~~~
jonhendry18
If it's in your fridge it's probably still good. Might need to warm up a
little first.

------
darkstar999
Sugru is just overpriced thermoplastic. Search Instamorph, Polymorph, Moldable
Plastic for cheaper options. It comes in dry pellets that don't dry out like
sugru.

~~~
implements
Well, technically it's an air-curing silicone rubber ... but you're right,
actual thermoplastics like Polymorph are cheaper, don't expire and can be re-
melted if you're not happy with a first attempt at something, or you want to
reuse the material in a different project.

~~~
darkstar999
You're right. The end result is very similar though.

------
aurizon
I would like to see what the cost of all the chemicals needed to make it. I
have seen a few companies fail because the vastly overpriced the product they
made, thus killing their market. Would sugru have met with success at a lower
price? I for one(of many I see) put off by the huge cost.

~~~
ConceptJunkie
I agree. I wasn't even aware of the expiration issue. I was too put off by the
price to ever try it.

------
phyzome
I bought some many years ago, entranced by its promises, but then somehow
never managed to find a concrete use for it.

This does not say good things about the product's viability.

------
krallja
Bad headline. Crowdfunding isn’t what killed it, the failure to meet bank loan
requirements was.

------
beojan
Since they've been acquired, hopefully it'll get considerably cheaper now.

------
forcer
I suprised and sad that they failed. I guess the product may still be
available from the acquiring company ?

Having kids who damage toys all the time, Sugru was really universal repair
tool for us.

------
dhunzike
I'd be interested to know whether they qualified for EIS
([https://www.crowdcube.com/pg/eis-seis-tax-relief-
overview-43](https://www.crowdcube.com/pg/eis-seis-tax-relief-overview-43)) or
not. It'll allow to deduct parts of the losses made against your taxable
income and therefore the overall amount lost could be much less than the 90%
quoted in the article.

------
zafka
I heard about Sugru when it first came out. I bought a few 6 packs and gave
some to my engineer friends. I think I was the only one who got pretty exited
about the possibilities. Since then, I have lost several packets to age, and
learned to keep any I bought in the fridge. As several people have said, I
would love to know a place to get the raw materials. It is much nicer to work
with than silicone caulk.

------
nepotism2018
I was minutes away from investing £5k to sugru back in 2014...I was convienced
the product would be popular like sellotape or superglue :(

------
optimuspaul
I love Sugru, it works great. I don't care that it expires because I only buy
it when I need. I know people that buy it in bulk because they use it very
often. The loan out audio/video equipment and use it to reinforce cables and
fix things. I've also found that it lasts well past the expiry, it is
definitely a conservative date.

------
rconti
Wow, I had no idea it was still around.

I checked my GMail, and I ordered 2 "Smart Hacks Super Packs"(multi-color
multipack of sugru) on 21 October 2010. I'm pretty sure most of it is still in
my freezer. Well, by that I mean, it survived 2 moves and is now living in its
3rd freezer.

I guess, ultimately, I just don't have to mend that much stuff.

------
djrogers
The ridiculously high cost and short shelf life put me off sugru, but looking
in to it did lead me to a handy and cheap DIY alternative - clear silicone
mixed with corn starch. I don't know how the 'rubbery' property compares to
sugru after it sets up, but it worked nicely for my needs.

~~~
eythian
Its shelf life is advertised as something like 1.5 years if you keep it in the
fridge. Just the other day I used some that must be about three years old and
it worked fine.

