When is the next meeting of the Grand Council Of Who Is Allowed To Be In The Bicycle Business? I'd like to attend.

In all seriousness, I respect both your right to express your opinion and the scepticism behind your points. It is a shame you seem express them in such judgemental terms.

But then I may be slightly insane.

I don't require approval of how I express my opinions. I've been very consistent for a very long time that this situation was hinky, and I've seen nothing to change my mind yet. You may continue not liking that opinion, and I will continue to hope I'm wrong. I get nothing from being right about this. A man who wanted to build a bike will not have built one, and a lot of people will be after him for money. That would suck.

Is the 50% deposit non-refundable in case of cancellation of order? I thought it is refunded on cancellation. Be good to check that and have it in the discussion. If so, then no risk. The KS backers carried all risk.

Fully refundable, no questions asked. What I mean is, is that if the company fails, the money would be gone, notwithstanding the refund commitment.

I dont understand what you are saying ... if the company goes broke you get the refund ? I doubt that

No. If the company is fine, but I choose to back out e.g. following poor reviews from backers before delivery, I get a refund, no questions asked.

Clearly if the company goes under then all bets are off.

Hey Joe, not suggesting you do, just making an observation. Also don't dislike your opinion, just don't share it, based on my own reading of the information available, your many posts included.

I'll unpack my view separately, for those that are interested.

Gibsonsean, I like your style. We should go for a long ride sometime. Hopefully on our Helixes (Helli?)

Would love to. Am in China for a while this year but usually based in London, UK. You? Helices, I think

Left Coast, USA.

Sounds like a road trip might be in order for one or both of us after travel bikes arrive?

Have bike, will travel.

When Helix eventually arrives, will travel with bike!

I lived in China for a year once before myself... How sweet would these Helixxes...ices..es be eh? Granted, I'm comparing them to the local upright beaters that everyone rides.

I had that hope once! Got a cheap but lovable noname fixie for pootling around Shanghai. The terrifying bit is all the bikes, e-bikes and scooters on the wrong side of the road, at night, no lights, being ridden towards you with no regards for pushing you out into traffic!
Fun if you enjoy a game of :chicken:

Just noticed the helix website has had a minor refresh. Mostly just replacement of KS prototype images with images of updated version.

No status update. Good to see some movement though.

Be interested to see what the deposit Comm on 20th includes.

Interesting.

I had no idea Kickstarter took that much money right from the start. I also did not factor taxes into the equation since Kickstarter never mentions them at all. Is it true Kickstarter withholds 40% or more from every dollar raised? Does Helix have to withhold this amount? Holy Cow!

Under Slickginger's assumption, the company receives far less money than what you actually paid. Therefore, a $1,500.00 hundred dollar donation will cost the company about $720 dollars between fees and taxes! In other words, to break even, Helix has to produce your bike in under $800 dollars!

It is not that simple. At first, Kickstarter charges 5% fees plus (depending on the country you are in) ~3% + 0.20$ from each pledge as payment charges (though the payment fees may sometimes be as high as 5%). So you end up with 8.something % less than you collected (with bad luck up to 10.something %). Btw: Shipping cost also count towards the funding goal and therefore also towrds potential taxable income and kickstarter-fees.

Regarding taxes this will be massively dependent from the country you live in. Typically taxes are based on your positive income on a yearly basis. As you have cost involved as well you typically won't have to pay taxes on the whole sum. The problem is that you have the income upfront whereas the cost will rise only later, after you got the money.
Obviously the easiest thing would be if you manage to produce and ship the goods within the same year that you collected the pledges in as in this case the cost and the income show up within the same fiscal year, therefor lowering your taxable income. If you do not manage to do so (as the Helix did) things start to become a bit more difficult - you may be able to shift income to one of the following years taxwise or to safe for expenses that will happen in the following years or to make use of expenses that already happend in the years before. Or you can make use of two or more different companies - one that collects the pledges that pays another one to create and deliver the goods. And so on and so on. What is possible or useful fully depends on the laws in your country and the creativity of your tax advisor if you have one. In some countries you may i.e. be forced to pay VAT on the pledges (which can be a fortune).
So in the end: Yes, the pledges are taxable income. No, problably you won't have to pay taxes on the whole lot. Therefor the 40+% off for the pledges are probably wrong in most cases.

As for the Helix: They collected 2.26 Mio CAD which today equalled roughly 1.7 Mio US$ if I remember correctly. Minus 8.x% for Kickstarter and payment fees would be something like 1.56 Mio US$ left for 1136 bikes in various specs, including (expensive) worldwide shipping to various countries in most cases - on average 1370 US$ per bike including shipping. What amount of that goes to the tax office and when we don't know (or at least I don't).

One early Kickstarter-founder here in Germany did a writeup on his bitter experiences with the tax-office. As over here we probably have on of the most complicated and awkward tax-legislations worldwide it is probably more easy in every other country... The writeup is in German and hard to unterstand even if you are German, so I add it here for reference-purposes only:
https://www.magniclight.com/index.ph...4-crowdfunding

Helices.

-i plurals for Latin 2nd declension nouns, which usually end in -us. Helix derives from Greek.

Thanks for this useful post! I am only familiar with it from the US side of things, here is a link of the research from when I was getting serious about starting a KS campaign.

Shipping not included in price (Canada 50$, world 150$)

I've been eyeballing this project for a while. Did NOT contribute to the KS campaign, because I had grave doubts. Ti at that price is hard to do for a big manufacturer. This guy is a startup, and even if his folding idea works, I have doubts about his ability to machine and weld the thing in Ti.

That being said, I want it to work. It looks great, and I would love a good alternative to Brompton. Something that has as elegant a fold, but not all the weird and quirky one-off parts.

No deposit email on 20th. Anyone else get one?

Nope. None here either. I hope there will be an email update or something though.

Website's been updated to say email on Jan 23rd now.

I understand the latest update to backers last week has a high level timeline showing production readiness running through to March, production commencing in April with delivery to backers running from May through July.

A more detailed update was promised for this week.

This just about supports the continued forecast of pre-order deliveries in July.

Website updated again to say deposit will be required May 1st.

At first that's what I thought tonight, as well, and I laughed and said goodbye, Helix. But then I realized May 1 is when the BALANCE is required; they are now accepting 50% deposits although I did not get the promised email today announcing that. What to do, what to do...

Mike