Everything was going great. Our Kickstarter campaign had raked in over $117k in funds, barely halfway through and momentum was just picking up! Aaaaand then Kickstarter canceled our campaign. Yep, that’s $117k down the drain, not to mention all the time and money we put INTO the campaign. We were devastated to say the least, but also VERY confused.

Kickstarter suspended our campaign for the METEOR MINI with very little explanation as to why.

We received a notice 48 hours before that our campaign was flagged for violating Kickstarter's terms and conditions and that we needed to make some changes, or the campaign would be suspended. After trying to communicate with Kickstarter multiple times, they gave us no additional information on what needed to change. We did everything we could and went back through our campaign multiple times to make sure there was nothing that was violating any of Kickstarter's terms and conditions.

After a couple of hours, the "flag" on our campaign was no longer visible to us, so we assumed we were in the clear, but we still had no communication from Kickstarter to confirm this. At 3 p.m. MDT, shockingly to us, our campaign was suspended.

Our best guess of what went wrong was from the first notice we received from Kickstarter that they believed we were making claims that our product will cure, treat, or prevent an illness or condition. Here is the excerpt from the first email we received from Kickstarter:

"We’re writing because a recent review found that your project is in violation of our Rules, specifically our Prohibited Item against health claims. Projects that imply or claim that they can diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent an illness or condition (whether via a device, app, book, nutritional supplement, or other means) are not allowed on Kickstarter...

..Please remove any claims, implied or explicit, that your product can remove/eliminate bacteria and viruses, in your description or in images."

However, at MyoStorm we are highly aware of these types of terms and conditions because they apply on many advertisings and sales platforms. We are always careful in stating that our products can be used to "help relieve pain" and the only times we bring up specific conditions like fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis or arthritis pain is in conjunction with relief from pain associated with the symptoms of those conditions which is different than "treating, curing or diagnosing" the conditions themselves.

There have been many other Kickstarter campaigns that have made bolder claims than we do on treating specific health conditions. We actually did quite a bit of research and found dozens of campaigns that made these types of claims, so we were very unclear as to what exactly we were saying/doing that Kickstarter deemed as a violation.  We are also extremely careful to never make false claims or propagate information that is not true, as honesty and integrity are a core value of our brand as well as every member of our team. Typically, if anyone believes we are violating these types of conditions it has always been a very easy fix or misunderstanding that is very easily and quickly resolved.

After the suspension all of our backers would have received the following explanation of why our campaign was suspended from Kickstarter:

“A thorough review of your project uncovered one or more of the following violations:

Inability to demonstrate a project’s core claims or obscuring the current state of a project

Insufficient design and development documentation illustrating the evolution of a prototype

Projects focused on the creation of a prototype while offering that prototype as a reward”

First of all, this explanation was completely different from what Kickstarter originally said they flagged our account for and we are very confident that we were not violating any of these conditions. That being said, we were more than happy to make any necessary changes that Kickstarter wanted us to make in order to abide by their guidelines, but after several attempts of communication we were never given any more information or instruction on what to change to no longer be in "violation."

We respect Kickstarter's ability to make these types of choices in order to protect the community and keep the platform safe, healthy and vibrant. However, in this situation we were disappointed in the outcome as we want nothing more than to contribute to the safety, integrity and wholesome community of innovation that Kickstarter has created and are very sorry that we were not able to fully abide by the community guidelines in the way that they interpreted them or intended them.

Again, this was all quite the blow to us as we invested a significant amount of funds in advertising, promoting and preparing for this campaign which we thought at the time was all completely lost.

However, after the suspension, we received an overwhelming amount of support from backers, past customers and friends and family continuing to express their support and belief in our products and campaign. We are still humbled and extremely grateful for all of you who have supported us and believed in our brand and products enough to back our campaign! Because of this, we were still determined to make sure that we could deliver on the METEOR MINI and all of our accessories to those of you who still believe in it.

So, we kept pushing for communication with Kickstarter to figure out what we could do to get the METEOR Mini campaign back on track. After a little bit more back and forth with Kickstarter, they confirmed that the campaign was suspended for being in violation of making health claims but never really gave us any more information as to how exactly we were violating it. They still didn’t seem too interested in explaining “the why”, but after a review of what happened they determined that, although they couldn’t reinstate our previously suspended campaign, we were eligible to re-launch the campaign.

At first, we were not overly excited at this solution because it still does not “undo” the damage that was done by losing all of our previous backers with no way to contact any of them. However, after some serious strategizing with the whole MyoStorm team, we determined that this may actually be the best thing that could have happened!

We picked up quite a bit of traction on our first campaign, but throughout the campaign we were able learn a TON and make several changes that were getting the campaign even more momentum. With a second chance to relaunch our campaign from the beginning we would have a rare opportunity to give even better deals, improve our rewards, make an even better campaign page and have several more days to really spread the word!

So we are now VERY excited to be relaunching the campaign for the METEOR MINI with an expected Launch date of July 27^th. We are confident we can make this even bigger than the first campaign! But in order to make up for some of the damage done from the suspension of the first campaign, we now REALLY need your help and support. Whether or not you backed our first campaign for the METEOR MINI, we need your help to pledge on this next campaign and spread the word to as many people as possible!  As an incentive to get you to either come check out the campaign or to get you to come back and pledge we’re offering a SUPER EARLY-BIRD discount- bigger than any of the deals from our first campaign!

But this discount will be available on the first day of the campaign only! 

So in order to make sure you make it back to the campaign DAY 1 to take advantage of one of the biggest discounts in MyoStorm’s history, make sure you sign up for our text message notification list, it is the fastest way to get notified the second our Kickstarter campaign goes live. You can sign up for our text list here:

Thank you again for all the overwhelming support!