Dear community members,
This thread has been a source of countless laughs since inception, thank you for that. However, now that nathan has confirmed that these new pandas are more or less the same as the old pandas and the GB pricing has been reveled, I think it's time for us to get real for a minute. I respect SuperVan's right to price these switches however he wants; whether he wants to sell them for 10 cents a piece of 10 dollars a piece that is his right and I won't infringe on that. That does not, however, imply that I have to be happy with how he has chosen to price these switches. In my opinion, anything above 1 dollar for the 10k MOQ is in poor taste. I'm going to assume that everything SuperVan has claimed regarding the molds is true, that BSUN has the original molds intact and the molds which were created by mech27 and zisb were based off of (and almost identical to the BSUN mould) are all gone and/or destroyed. If we are to believe this line of reasoning, which I do, it would then imply that mech27 and zisb had to develop tooling for their invyr panda mold, which further implies additional costs on the behalf of mech27 and zisb. Yet they were able to sell their switches at 1 dollar for a single switch or $69.99 for 110 switches (roughly 64 cents per switch) at an MOQ of 8250. Here we have a switch, which although is quite close to the original panda, but is also subjectively and objectively worse in numerous facets, being sold for anywhere from 1.5x to 2.3x the price of the original panda (depending on whether you bought single switches or a pack of 110 original pandas). Subjectively, as per my opinion, these switches do not sound as good as the original panda. On nathan's stream it is clear that these switches make a higher pitched sound. Objectively, they are more scratchy and they no longer have the holtite legs (it could however be argued that exclusion of holtites make these switches more universal for hotswap pcbs).
As I mentioned, I respect SuperVan's right to price these however he likes, however these are some things I do not appreciate and I would argue that what SuperVan is doing is not "good for the community" as a handful of members seem to suggest.
1. I agree that a lot of hate SuperVan got at the beginning of the IC was undeserved. It was catious skepticism displayed by many members, however it was poorly portrayed, as well, by many members. What I do not appreciate is, as a group buy runner who is seeking money from individuals within this community, SuperVan makes ostentatious claims that his "detractors" are too poor and need the money from panda trading to improve their life (the infamous post #243). I understand there is a language barrier, but i do not believe the intent behind his words were lost in translation.
The cost of a rumor is too low, so stupid petty traders defame me again and again because they are afraid of new pandas' coming. As same as the way they defamed me, I can say these traders are too poor. They need the money from pandas' trading to improve their life a little.
You know what you have effectively done here SuperVan? You have effectively made yourself the biggest Panda trader of all. Bigger than any trader you will see on r/mm or here on geekhack. You have taken a mold that already exists, and as far as I can tell and based on your own comments, you have put
zero R&D into improving it or redisigning it, because it already exists and as per your comments, it is the same as or close enough to the invyr panda molds. Then you introduced the switches at a 1.5x to 2.3x markup to the original pandas, which can be argued had more funds injected into the project in order to develop molds different from the original BSUN mould. As I've mentioned, I have no objections in regards to your right to do this. You are a business owner, and you can price your product as you wish, but don't come in here sitting on your high horse and hiding behind the veil of jesus pretending you're better than these "traders", when in fact, you are now the biggest trader on the market. And if your logic stands to be true, then you, too, in fact must be too poor(post #243)
Maybe I will think about providing donation for them after the GB finished.
really man? Is that necessary?
I will leave this with one last quote (post #243).
Please consider carefully before you decide to comment, for Jesus.
I hope you considered carefully how you'd be portrayed when you wrote that comment, for jesus.
2. This will be split into parts a & b. The focus here is on arguments being made that what SuperVan is doing is "good for the community" and is the main focus of this letter. I would strongly argue against this statement. I do not believe what SupervVan is doing is good for the community as a whole, in fact I think it is setting a poor precedent. I do however believe that in the grand scheme of things what SuperVan is doing is good and likely benefits many community
members, but not the community as a whole. It cannot be denied that the price SuperVan is offering these switches at is significantly less than what they are going for in the secondary market. This provides an opportunity for many enthusiasts to experience holy pandas at a much more affordable price point. I think this is great for community members, however here are a couple of reasons why I believe this sentiment cannot be echoed as being great for the community as a whole:
a. It is, in my opinion, clear as day that SuperVan is nothing more than an opportunist. He saw, what I think to be a truly unique phenomenon that we will likely never see again in the aftermarket switch market, where a seemingly undesirable switch (as sold in stock configuration) was being sold at
significantly higher prices. This as everyone in this thread knows is because of the potential invyr panda housings have to create a very unique tactile experience when combined typically with halo stems (holy pandas). Due to the hype around these frankenswitches and supply/demand economics, the price of invyr pandas rose as high as $6 or $7 dollars per switch/switch housing. Now for whatever reason the original designers of invyr pandas were unable to bring them back to market for R2. The actual reason doesn't matter and is a moot point because it doesn't impact my argument. SuperVan, however, was able to (as far as we can tell from reviews) replicate these switches and bring them to market. I will give credit where credit is due, SuperVan announced a product, which was met with high skepticism and so far he has delivered. I will also give credit to SuperVan's business acumen; I understand that he is not running a charity. Thank you SuperVan for making the panda switch more accessible to members within the community. Although even at this price point there are many members it will not reach, it will reach a larger portion of members nonetheless, which it did not reach before. As I mentioned, this is good for community members, but this is, in my opinion not only setting a poor precedent for the community as a whole but is also on the verge of predatory business practice. This new round of Pandas is nothing more than an asset flip, plain and simple. For those of you involved in the PC gaming community, which I suspect is a large proportion of you, I'm sure you've heard of the current debacle that is fallout76. Fallout76 is an asset flip, a product released in the past, repackaged with a new "skin", combined with marketing to develop consumer hype and resold to said consumers as a new product. If you ask me, these new pandas are a bigger spit in the face of our community members than fallout76 was for its community. How can anyone sit there and tell me that releasing a product, which as i mentioned, while close enough to the original is still subjectively and objectively worse, at 1.5x to 2.3x the price is good for the community as a whole? What if other vendors and group buy runners started following the same business practice as SuperVan. What if Yuktsi decided to offer Jane V2 at $800-900 because of the prices Jane V1's were fetching on the secondary market? Don't get me wrong, people would still buy the Jane V2 at those prices if Yuktsi decided to sell them that high, and the same applies here. People are still going to buy these R2 pandas at $1.50 a switch (or 1.20 or 1.00 depending on MOQ), but that doesn't mean we are all going to be happy about it. What if massdrop started selling their halos at $0.75 (or more) a switch instead of $0.50 because they saw an opportunity in the market to make more money because of the holy panda frankenswtich. This forum would have a field day and rise to arms against massdrop. How are SuperVan and Massdrop any different? They both have exclusive distribution rights and/or access to a particular switch, one company (Massdrop) has kept their switches at a very respectable $0.50 for what they are out of the box, and the other is charging 1.5x to 2.3x for a switch that can be argued wasn't even worth the $0.64 it was sold for in the first place (out of the box). So we come back to the same question, how is this good for the community? Now before you reply with, "Massdrop is a large company and SuperVan is just one person" or "Massdrop has more capital than SuperVan", and while both those statements might be true, my reply is: so what? With the hype garnered around holy pandas, and as I just learnt that these switches were sold to the Chinese market as well, do you really think SuperVan will have any problems reaching MOQ numbers that make money a significant issue? I don't think so, but I am open to having my mind changed. Also, it is not like Massdrop is sitting on a warehouse full of halos either. They are not a switch vendor like cherry, they have no reason to sit on excess stock because it hurts their bottom line. So regardless of how big they are and how much capital they have, Massdrop functions in what I believe to be a very similar if not identical pattern to SuperVan as a one time switch distributor. Once you've gotten over the hype of having access to panda switches at prices lower than those on the secondary market, I challenge you to sit and critically think about this scenario, and offer me an explanation of how this is good for our community and isn't a borderline predatory business practice that sets a poor precedent. What if other vendors and GB runners began adopting this type of business practice?
b. I will preface this by saying that I'm not trying to white knight for any vendors that I'll be mentioning...
You know what is actually good for the community? Innovation. Lets look at Zeal for example. People (not everyone) love to hate on Zeal for his prices. It's a meme within this community: Zeal tax. I agree, his none GB prices and prices for a couple of other products he carries (lube and stabs) are, in my opinion, inflated to varying degrees. My intention is not to derail the argument as to whether zeal is overpriced or not, I have listed the specific items that I believe carry inflated zeal tax to show that I'm not against calling out other vendors and that I have no inherent bias against SuperVan. Want to know why I'm okay with Zeal tax though? Why I will gladly support him even if I believe his prices are priced a little too high? Because Zeal has provided this community with countless innovations, and he has continued to improve on early revisions of his products, and by doing so he has, in part, driven the growth of this community through his numerous product releases. Lets look at another vendor, Mike @ NovelKeys. I'm not going to go through Mike's complete history, but I was fortunate enough to join this community right before NovelKeys began making a name for itself through new box switch offerings. Lets look at Mike's newest offering, the cream switch. I think it is more than fair to compare R2 pandas with cream switches. I think it is particularly apt to compare the stock and out of the box experience of both of these switches. To compare the potential that R2 pandas have to become a very desirable switch after switching the stems, to me, is a very unfair comparison of the merits each product presents on its own. I wont go into significant detail because no one has experience (other than Mike) with the final versions of the cream switches designed following feedback from reviewers such as nathan. In one corner we have a brand new switch being brought to the market by mgsickler (mike) and in the other corner we have R2 BSUN pandas. Both are linear switches and both have POM housing, and as far as I know, this is where the similarities end. The cream is a brand new switch being offered to the community that offers unique characteristics that are either completely new or less heard of in the switch market.
These characteristics being:
1. self lubricating stems as a result of the formula used to develop the POM.
2. A switch with complete POM construction (I believe this is completely new? I don't think R1 pandas had POM stems, but don't quote me on that).
R2 Pandas are literally R1 pandas being sold to the community at 1.5x to 2.3x the initial R1 offering. I will have to wait until force graphs are provided by manofinterests to firmly state this, but as it stands based on nathan's impressions, I can, with enough confidence, state that R2 pandas show no significant improvements over R1 pandas. As a linear switch they are more scratchy, and don't sound as good in my opinion. Lets not forget to mention that mgsickler is offering cream switches at $0.55 pre-order and $0.65 after pre-order pricing. As far as I know, cream switches are exclusive to NovelKeys. Does anyone think mgsickler has access to a significantly greater amount of principle capital than SuperVan does in order to develop a
brand new switch, with new tooling, new molds, new plastic (POM) formula and still be able to offer them at the prices he's offering in order to recoup his investment? However, I do believe mgsickler has been around long enough and has been successful enough to accrue more capital to reinvest than SuperVan. I'm not basing this on any factual information, I don't have access to either of their finances, but even if I'm wrong and SuperVan has just as much or more than mgsickler to invest, that makes this whole situation even worse. I'm not going to go into depth about the Chinese GB prices at $0.60 a piece, which was just reveled. Oldcat, as I mentioned, I have no bias against SupervVan nor anyone else, which is why I'm comfortable naming you here. Please do not take this as a personal attack, I truly do appreciate the work you do with Alf and the offerings you have provided and continue to provide to this community, but don't sit there and tell me that the $0.60 price in China was a promotional offering as if it's okay to charge 2.5x more in the Western Market. I'm not in tune with the Chinese MK community, but from the little I know, I suspect that:
1. They know about holy pandas
2. the community prefers linear switches.
If I am right about both of those things that implies:
1. you do not need to sell R2 pandas at "promotional" prices to garner interest.
2. if the community prefers linear switches, the only way to sell what I consider to be mediocre linear switches to a community of linear enthusiasts is to price them very low.
I think it is clear that SuperVan has good business acumen, so even at $0.60 a switch, he is not losing money. So again, after the hype about new pandas has worn off, let this sink in for a second and consider just how much we, as a community, are getting price gouged on these switches. Many will compare $1.50 to secondary market prices, and in doing so, of course it looks like we're getting a deal. However, lets look at this product in absolute terms, we are paying $1.50 for a switch, that out of the box is going for $0.60 elsewhere, and we can't even take full benefit of the switch until we spend more money on halo stems (or zeal stems or outemu or whatever). This is good for our community how?
I am not the type to just provide criticism and leave it at that. I think it is healthy to be critical of ones' self and those around them, but criticism on it's own can be misinterpreted as being "toxic". For that reason, I often strive to provide solutions as well, and this is not an exception to the case.
I was reading through the whole thread again and happened to stumble across a post by hhbkp2 (post #160) who has known SuperVan for almost two years now, and is comfortable with referring to him as a friend.
I knew SuperVan since early 2017. As a friend, I know he's a keyboard enthusiast and he usually wants to try some new idea to play/make keyboard stuff. Several weeks ago we chatted about the switches. He asked me whether I'm interested in Holy Panda switches. You know, I'm kind of old school(or out of fashion to be honest) on installing switches in my keyboards. Till now I only use Cherry Blue and Clear for my keyboards. I ranted to him about the expensiveness of the Panda switch aftermarket prices. As for Holy Panda switch, IMO it's bloodily wasteful to buy two expensive switches, take out one piece of each to make one switch only and then give rid of the left like rubbish. SuperVan said he planned to give a try to change this, by producing Panda housings and some tactile stems like Halo stems, assembled right in the production line, so that regular users don't have to do this expensive, wasteful mod. The first step of his try would be to produce Panda housings and he already contacted the factory to get some samples.
SuperVan, I don't know what happened, the solution, the ideal situation was proposed by yourself to hhkbp2 in your discussions. As far as I can tell you do not plan on producing new tactile stems in the future. This is based on the fact that you have not once mentioned in this IC the desire to do so. Let me know if I'm wrong. I don't know why chose to go against your initial idea. I have a gut feeling, but I'll leave the speculation off the table and let everyone else come to their own conclusions as to why you'd go against this initial plan. This right here, this proposed idea to hhkbp2, this would have been
good for the community. This would have been a new offering, innovation, a holy panda or a very close clone at a fraction of the price. However as things stand, this IC, this GB, is nothing more than an asset flip, one that I believe sets a poor precedent, and contrary to what many supporters seem to think, is
not good for this community.
I don't expect many people to read those whole letter, in fact, I'd be surprised if the majority don't just skip past this post. When I started typing, I did not imagine it would get to this length, but here we are. For those that do read, and for those that agree and those that disagree, this is an open letter. I am open to discussing the matter, and I am open to your individual perspectives. I ask, however, that you keep discussions productive and civil to not only respect the guidelines here at Geekhack but also respect the OP, SuperVan. I have done my best to do so here and I have no ill intent to one individual or another. I apologize if anywhere within this letter it may appear so. Lastly, for those that will just comment with "don't like the price, don't join the GB", I have very little to say other than you've missed the whole point of this letter. I want the best for the community, I want it to grow, I want it to prosper, and I want to share my passion for MKs with those around me.
Kind Regards,
Oh_Chesteroni
PS: For those that choose to reply, I will be away volunteering for the next 4 hours. I will be back later in the evening.
