A walking enigma

WHEN was the last time you were introduced to a product by a friend, thought the world of it, and then promptly ordered it for yourself? Mine was last week, when I laid my hands on "the world's best travel jacket with 15 features". Created by Washington product design firm BauBax, the jacket is the highest-funded clothing project in the history of crowdfunding. It raised US$9.19 million on Kickstarter, over 450 times its humble target of US$20,000!

The evangelist was a colleague, BT's deputy digital editor to be exact, who had the good taste to buy it off Kickstarter for about US$159 last year and was generous enough to let me tinker with it for a week. He says: "The BauBax is everything I want in a jacket and then some, plus it doesn't hurt that it looks good as well."

He says this even as his jacket was delivered to him four months late, arriving only in February this year. Backers worldwide were less forgiving (notably those who had purchased multiple jackets as Christmas gifts or for their year-end travels), taking to social media to vent.