Jawbone, once a company thriving in the wearables market, has taken a huge turn downhill. Jawbone filed a trade secret lawsuit against Fitbit, alleging that its wearable trade secrets were taken from the former Jawbone employees over to Fitbit. Unfortunately for Jawbone, Fitbit won the trade secret lawsuit, and, with the financial factor in favor of Fitbit, is able to move on with its bright future. The same can't be said for Jawbone, whose financial problems are becoming more and more pronounced by the day.
We'd already heard that Jawbone was selling off its inventory, but a new report says that Jawbone has nothing available at its website. Every product is marked with "sold out," hinting that, in Jawbone's case, it's sold off its inventory in order to raise funds. The same report details what could be seen as a comprehensive look at Jawbone's financial decline as a whole and how it's impacted everything from its inventory to its investors and even its employees.
Jawbone has run out of inventory on its fitness bands, but the company has also had to end a relationship with fellow partner NexRep, a customer service agency that has been known for sending out replacement Jawbone units to Jawbone customers who report their unit is faulty or defective. NexRep sent an email to its employees stating that the company was "struggling financially," and that Jawbone was "fighting hard" to raise more funding. "Jawbone is not able to pay us for past services, and their ability to pay us in the future is uncertain at this point," the employee email concluded. This would explain the sold out inventory at Jawbone's website (it sold off inventory to pay debts). NexRep ended its relationship with Jawbone on September 9th, just two weeks ago.
There's also the issue of employee departures. We reported to you the departure of Travis Bogard to Uber from Jawbone just last month, but Business Insider says that "several people are leaving the company each week." Add to this the sale of its speaker and Jambox Bluetooth speaker businesses (part of the Bluetooth speaker business has been sold), it's easy to see that the company is desperately trying to raise money to stay afloat.
With all of this evidence in the way, is there a case that Jawbone will emerge with a new product? Actually, yes. The company is looking at mid-2017 to launch a new product, provided the company can secure investment from an Asian company CEO Hosain Rahman says is in his sights.
At this point, though, Jawbone has had to sell all its product off in order to stay slightly above water, and, even now, is finding its financial decline hard to escape.
