I'd like to think that charging £200 for a device that has little better use case than being cute and quirky played a part as well.
Especially considering that you can buy a professional POS thermal receipt printer for the same price for any viable projects requiring printing in that general form factor.
They were a leading speculative design studio, not another manufacturer of printers. Coming from a different place, more similar to how sci-fi stokes the fires. I'm shocked and sad that they went under given that they had been doing consulting for years. I wonder how taking VC last year affected this.
But not shocked that Little Printer or the Berg Cloud was commercially unsuccessful. Perhaps they just bet a little too much thinking that their excellent design and particular approach would translate to enough value for enough people.
A mindset, and growing recognition that startups are failure prone or targets of acqui-hire-and-shutdown. Disposable product-services are only good for those betting on the next (first/only?) quarterly earnings report.
Especially considering that you can buy a professional POS thermal receipt printer for the same price for any viable projects requiring printing in that general form factor.