I mean you could be right, this could be about getting the foot in the door of the Effects game and, if this is successful, they can then go on to target more game changing ideas. Other than the slight curiosity with the clean section, this is very much part of an unchanged game, and as someone says it simply seems to be a whitelabelling. I can't envisage people getting excited by it though, I really can't. The Cog circuitry used, unless modified more than it seems, has been around for ages.
I think when a company has the finances to back a new project, it needs to jump straight to game changing these days. Look at Darkglass; nailed the pedal game, had no experience building amps whatsoever. Built an amp with their tech built in; game changing. Despite having no foot in the door, they sold like crazy and I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the best selling and most used Class D heads out there right now. However, they also built somespeakers or, more accurately, effectively whitelabelled another cab builder. Not ground breaking, just standard high quality cabs with no particular features to shout about, other than the Darkglass badge. Did they do as well as the heads?? Not even close. I have hardly seen anyone use them. And I feel that will happen to Barefaced too, unless they do something different.