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The Seedo Grow Box Shipping Date Is?

Way back when we first started looking at investing in nanotechnology, we noted how prevalent over-the-counter (OTC) stocks are. Wherever there’s an exciting technology, there’s always an OTC company sprouting up that claims to offer a pure-play opportunity for retail investors. We’ve shown countless times how risky it is to get involved with any of these ventures. Whether the directors of these firms act with malicious intent or not, you will very rarely see any success stories. What you will see are numerous examples of investors who are caught holding the bag while their worthless shares go to zero on the back of broken promise after broken promise. It’s just like an ICO except that it takes a bit longer to lose all your money.

Then there’s crowdfunding, another platform we’ve warned people to stay away from. The idea is that – similar to an ICO – you commit to spending money on something that hasn’t been built yet. In many instances, you’re purchasing a product that will never make it to market for whatever reason. Again, you’ll observe broken promise after broken promise. Eventually, people get tired of emailing the company for updates and everyone forgets about the whole debacle. In all cases, what we’ve learned over the years is not to trust people who constantly break their promises. This brings us to today’s topic which is a publicly-traded company called Seedo (SEDO).

We first came across Seedo when researching a piece we wrote on the best marijuana strain ever. Long story short, we have some seeds from an amazing strain of skunk bud that we want to grow and need a simple way to do it. What we’re looking for is an automated grow box that you put seeds into – and like Ron Popeil says – set it and forget it. Turns out there are at least four companies that offer such a grow box.

Four grow box vendors
Four grow box vendors – Source: Postscapes

We’ve already talked about Grobo. The company behind LEAF took in $2 million back in 2016 to develop their grow box which is available for pre-order and “will be scheduled for shipment in Q1 2020.” Then there’s Cloudponics, which claims to be the “first-to-market automated grow box.” And lastly, we have Seedo, a company that’s the subject of today’s article. Seedo is unique in that they’re now a publicly traded OTC stock. Let’s talk about that briefly.

Seedo Stock

The story starts with a private Israeli company called Eroll Grow-Tech Ltd which we can’t find much information about at all. If they ever had a website, it’s nowhere to be found today. In 2015, GRCR Partners was incorporated as “a provider of risk management and asset protection (“RAP”) services,” and in September of last year they changed their name to Seedo Corp and performed a reverse merger with the aforementioned company, Eroll Grow-Tech Ltd.

Skip the glossy investor relations deck and go right to the company’s filings – like this 10-K report – to learn more about what’s under the hood. Spend some time going through their filing and see if you’re able to substantiate the company’s $56 million market cap. (Pay attention to the shares they’re issuing as these will dilute existing shareholders.) Regardless of what conclusion you reach, the one question everyone will come away with is “when will Seedo ship the 3,000 units they have pre-sold and record the $7.2 million in revenues on their books?”

The Seedo Grow Box Shipping Date

The first hint that Seedo’s shipping dates keep slipping is this ad being run by their competitor which justifiably attempts to capitalize on the situation.

A Google ad from Grobo
Source: Google Ads

From what we can tell, pre-orders for Seedo have been coming in for a while. In October of 2017, an article was published by InsideHook that talked about how you could pre-order a Seedo grow box. This led to a topic being created on Allgrowers.com titled “Does anyone own a Seedo machine” which is an interesting read. (We’re the first to say that you shouldn’t trust what you read in chat forums, so take this all with a grain of salt.)

About five comments down you’ll see a reply from a certain “bjorn” who appears to be Bjorn Dawson, the co-founder and CEO of Grobo. His comment in March of 2018 is that he has “seen LEAF but have never seen or heard of anyone using a Seedo system.” Here’s a comment he made about the LEAF system which implies that he met with the CEO of LEAF, Yoni Ofir:

All I can say is that it’s surprisingly big and I honestly wouldn’t have space for it in my apartment. I was meeting with Yoni and respectfully did not go poking around their system (resisting the urge to look inside wasn’t easy!), so that’s really all I can confidently say right now.

Then in June of 2018, someone posts a screenshot of an email from Seedo stating they’re “inches away from launching Seedo” and that they’re “so glad that you’ve stuck with us for the entire ride so far.” The remainder of the thread shows quite a few people talking about slipped dates, having to jump through hoops to get a refund, and overall poor communication. Note that in this thread there is active participation from Grobo’s CEO, CTO, and Marketing Lead who engage by asking questions and answering them. It’s surprising Seedo hasn’t joined the conversation in a similar manner, something that would go a long way towards instilling some trust in their current and future customer base.

In addition to the above thread, there are also some threads on Reddit with similar themes. This thread talks about how the Seedo app is available, but the company is said to have run into customs issues as one user claims below:

A Reddit thread on Seedo
Source: Reddit

Another thread on Reddit talks about problems with refunds, more slipped dates, and more unhappy customers.

Regardless of the merits of these “complaints,” it’s 2019. When your customers talk smack about you, engage them in dialog. Seedo doesn’t appear to be doing that in public forums, so we decided to see what their website says about release dates.

The Seedo Website

On Seedo’s nicely manicured website, we found a few things of interest. Firstly, this timeline which claims they’re shipping already. (A press release issued by Seedo says they shipped 50 units to people in California.)

The Seedo timeline
The Seedo timeline – Source: Seedo website

That same press release states that these are “the first of 3000 systems that are expected to be operational by the end of the second quarter of 2019.” That’s June 30th, less than 60 days away.

Since so many people are asking about shipping date in public forums, we thought that maybe this would be a “frequently asked question” on Seedo’s website. Perusing through all their FAQs and we see nothing about shipping dates. What we did come across was a comment about how they’re going to get people to pay for these grow boxes once they start shipping.

Seedo FAQ entry
Source: Seedo website

What they’re saying here is that when they ship the product to you, they’ll then ask you for your credit card info again and charge the remaining balance. We can’t say we’ve ever seen such an arrangement before, and it just seems odd. Nonetheless, right now you can order a Seedo grow box with $499 down and delivery slated for September 2019. You can cancel that order at any time. They are supposed to have said last June that they’re “inches away” from shipping so another four months ought to do the trick. Right?

Pre-order a Seedo with a September 2019 delivery date
Pre-order a Seedo with a September 2019 delivery date – Source: Seedo website

That screenshot taken from their website says, “estimated delivery September 2019.” We’ve drawn the line in the sand here, and now we’re expecting to see Seedo start shipping some grow boxes and recording some revenues. We know that they’ve built something, because there are videos of their cool-looking grow box. Here’s a video with a bunch of useless “celebrities” checking out the box at some “launch party” that no doubt cost loads of money to put on. Here’s a video of some people “reviewing” the grow box which feels more like a bad commercial. And here’s a pretty solid video that shows how the grow box works. Dated November 9, 2018, the video starts by saying, “it’s the moment you’ve been waiting for, your Seedo is finally here.” Seems like many people are still waiting.

Conclusion

Whenever we write articles like this one, we’re usually criticized for having ulterior motives. In the spirit of full disclosure, we’re going to spell out very clearly what dogs we have in the race here. Firstly, we’re not short Seedo stock. We would never try and short the irrational cannabis market where you need lots of capital and pain tolerance to be a successful speculator. We’ll leave that to the Citrons of the world.

As for Grobo, we signed up for their affiliate program. Order a Grobo machine and we get a kickback. It’s called affiliate marketing, and it’s how this site can offer free content and still be able to pay the bills. All we’ve done here is list out information that’s available in the public domain that anyone can access. Do your own due diligence, make your own decisions, just make sure you hold people to their promises. We wish all the best for Seedo and will check back at the end of the year to see what those revenue streams look like.

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