(there is an update at the end of the article about follow up from the company)

Please see this story as a general warning to be mindful before jumping in head over heels in to a project.

Before you read this, please understand I am more mad at myself for not doing my due diligence on this project, topping it with offering free advertising (to my then not that many followers, but still, sorry!). I am not in the habit of ranting (especially publicly), and I don’t think the company did anything totally bad. But the fact that the whole thing is based on not very authentic engagement still gets to me.

And also, the worst customer service ever.

In the beginning : the beautiful project

It was spring. I was starting to get seriously into watercolors after a year of dabbling and collecting paints colors. By this point, I had nice artisanal watercolors, I did not however have a nice set of brushes.

Through insta-friends, I saw this Kickstarter campaign about eco-friendly brushes. For an ok price (still 35 english pounds though, so not cheap), you could save the world by buying brushes made with ecological bamboo instead of wood, which apparently grows too slowly to be ecoanything as presented by this campaign. And of cours, the brushes had synthetic bristles because cruelty free is better.

It had a picture of a pool, artist grade mention (maybe I imagined that one), eco friendly and cruelty free features, instafriends endorsement, kickstarter aura….. I plunged into the adventure without a second thought.

My natural instinct of researching stuff first was absent that day, for some reason. You gotta understand…. my natural ways are usually to research stuff until I end up not making a decision. But the company also stated they had already sourced the materials and were ready to go into production. And they had before made other brush sets, so really, what could be the risks?

There are no risks in terms of production, we have already sourced materials and made up products samples. We’re ready to bring this to market!

From the Kickstarter project description

I even promoted the campaign on the gram (sorry for those who bought because of me!). I truly believed. We were excited together and even talked about it.

I had only backed one other campaign before at that point. Things went very smoothly with regular updates and delivery smack on schedule. Perhaps the product was easier to manufacture.

First question marks

We all thought the campaign would end up not being funded. And that point, we were bummed. We all posted on social to help get the campaign funded in those last 24 hours… it worked! In the last 24 hours, the missing 40% of the objective was reached. Yay!

Now that I look at the final numbers, it leaves me with questions…. 66 contributors with a total of 5147 pounds. That’s an average of 78 pounds each. But many of us did not pledge that much.

If you take the 62 contributions you can see on the Kickstarter page of the project, with the amount needed for the pledge of their reward tier, it totals 1940 pounds (estimate based on the minimum pledge for each reward tier). Which leaves over 60% or 3200 pounds to the another 4 contributors.

But it’s not against the rules to have generous backers in the last hours.

Slow updates

The fun of supporting a campaign on Kickstarter is that you get previews and you feel like you made that project possible, that you actually had an impact. In this case, I think we actually only made a very very early preorder.

The other benefit is that you usually have a better price because you help the project get “kickstarted”. In this case, we maybe got a few bucks off the retail price. But after all the pre-launch, free shipping and cyber monday sales that happened since then, even if we got the best price for the set, the feeling of having had a special deal is certainly gone.

And the updates. That was difficult….. the company only posted a few updates when people posted about not having any. Or after missing deadlines by a few weeks. And at some point, shipping started. Without even a mention on the Kickstarter platform. Surprise! People started receiving them before we knew they were shipped.

The product itself : not great

Well. After all. If the product is great, then all is forgiven, right? Well in short, it is not great. They are probably good craft level, maybe student level brushes.

A brush cannot be artist grade for oil, acrylics and watercolors all at the same time. That is the promise on the box. As I said, I should’ve checked first. Craftamo does not make professional watercolor brushes…. And again, they use the term “premium”, not “professional artist quality” on them. My bad.

I am not yet a pro, far from it. I cannot assess with certainty how much they are not professional. I just know that for the amount of money, considering how many small brushes there are, and how small even the bigger brushes are, I could have better spent my money.

And for many of the brushes I have received, some have crooked hairs, one had stray hairs and the sizes seem weird (look at the 0 vs its neighbors in the above pic).

But most notably, the ferrule (the part that holds the hair in place) is not centered with the brushes. That makes for an awkward position in the hand when you paint. I have made a video comparing different brands of brushes I own, but this is not normal. You can see the video on my instagram post on the brushes. You can also see my friend Rincs’ video on her patreon post.

The eco-friendly-ishness of the brushes

First of all, after all that concern with the eco-friendly positioning of the brushes, replace possible sustainable wood by bamboo, the box they come in is a statement in over packaging. Yet it is a beautiful box, but wasteful in my opinion. Especially since many of the brushes are not straight to begin with!

And if you google “Is bamboo more sustainable than wood“, you find there it some debate. Especially since the rush towards bamboo seems to have created some less than desirable effects in some places. But again, those are questions I could have asked before throwing myself into this adventure.

The worst customer service ever

In good faith, I raised my concerns directly to Dan Worthington (or Dan Worthy on his travel account), founder of Craftamo and apparently a nice guy.

He tells me he is happy I reached to them first instead of “going public”.

After a few exchange, he told me only 3 of other people had issues of all the people they sent the brushes to, which make me the 4th. Weird, that I happen I know 3 others who are not happy plus two people from Kickstarter whom I dont know. And then we saw others on Instagram.

Anysway, Dan told me that he was “going to share the videos with our team”. Even asked me to tell him exactly which brushes had issues. I thought this sounded promising and that they were looking into the issue. And I wildly thought I might get others brushes.

Dan then asked to write an email to support. I thought it was to better follow the issue. I obliged. That was on December 17th. I thought I would let the holidays pass before following up.

At the end of January, I reached out again. And a few times since then. There are no more answers on instagram….

I went to check the status on my support ticket today. I found out the support ticket had been closed…

… two months ago!

….

And an instafriend who had been through the commenting on their products found out she was blocked from their instagram! Wow! She only politely reviewed the product.

Since then, Rincs wrote a Patreon post on this! She finds it hilarious. I guess that’s how you have to take it! And by the way, Craftamo, in a very mature response, has blocked her from seing their account on Instagram! For simply writing an honest review on a product.

So I’m not holding my breath on hearing back from the company.

Word of the end

Beware of the power of marketing.

That is all. From a company with a strong social media presence and what seems to be genuine engagement and concern for artists and the environment, well, I expected quality brushes and an honest exchange with the issues. Because after all, shit does happen. How you deal with it is where you see a difference. Here, Caftamo just hides it instead of addressing it.

I leave feeling like an idiot for falling into the trap of an ordinary product clothed into marketing wohoo and a beautiful shiny box.

Coming from a company who “advises” artists as how to market themselves to companies (and then sells them exposure!), maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise.

So this long piece helps put this behind me. I have said all I needed. I am not angry anymore (I think, I’m trying really really hard!). This brushes are being sent to somebody who might enjoy them for what they are and I will not be sad every time I see them in my home.

More info on Craftamo

I leave these with you. These are simply for your information. They are not to be taken directly as the cause of the failures of this adventure. However, all taken together, they reinforce my belief that this company is marketing first, quality of product, well, much further down the list.

• Dan Worthington‘s travel instagram account (15 months traveling non-stop…. congrats! might explain a few things. To be fair though, some people make it work the travelling while working)
• Craftamo’s Advertising page… for artists who want to advertise to be featured on Craftamo’s socials and website! (yes you read that right, artists who want to pay Craftamo to be featured, not Craftamo sponsoring artists)
• The Kickstarter campaign for Cruelty-Free, Eco-Friendly Bamboo Brushes for Artists

Edit 24 hours later

So, after posting the link to this article on Instagram, and I guess seeing all the people commenting of similar issues with customer service, and an intervention by Vanessa from The Sprout Creative and @vanessa_paints_ on Instagram, I received an email, a refund on Kickstarter and DMs in Instagram.

This is the email I received from the Customer Happiness department.

The company representative has told me that they would resolve any issues with people who addressed the issues with them. So even if you are still waiting on an answer, the best course of action might be to write to them again to verify that your claim/request is taken care of. You can fill out the form on the website or write directly to support@craftamo.com.

I still think this is the way Craftmo has acted since the beginning of this project: acting only when people are getting frustrated publicaly. Good customer service is to be proactive about issues your customers have, and not simply react when there is bad press.

Edit a few weeks later

Actually, I’m writing this at the end of May. With COVID and all, I totally forgot to update this more.

In the end, the follow-up from Craftamo where kind of crap.

• They issued a refund to my Kickstarter pledge, after I wrote a bad review for their product on the product. Then, they asked for their product back being sent at my own expense, though I had written in this exact article that I had sent to someone else….
• Among the people who contacted me, a lot were offered discounts on future purchases, instead of refunds or discounts on the purchase the person was not happy with.
• Most were told that if they had tested their brush, they could not be returned for refund because they could not then be resold. I think the company is missing the point between defective product vs not liking the product.