Hey guys,
Decided to take a break from order fulfillment to address some points in this discussion.
As we are currently neck-deep in orders and rushing to get these critters to you, Koala-T and I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who entered for the MeowCaps V2/PurrKeys sale. Congratulations to all those who had a chance to win some keycaps. Our apologies to those who weren't as lucky
I know that missing out on a sale can be a bummer so we are hoping that we can gauge our next release a bit better to accommodate more entrants. For those interested, we had a little over 400 unique entries for this sale. Of the 400, roughly 80 participants were selected. In the end, about 1 in 5 people who entered got a keycap.
Since, I'm stuck at work and have time to kill. I put together a little sketch for you guys:
(Attachment Link)
Thanks for sharing a few numbers Kudos, that was indeed an awesome sale.
Looking at these numbers I had an insight and I'd like to hear from you two what you think:
Have you ever thought about limiting the number of keycaps by numbers like 1 or 2 caps per person? I believe that since you offer so many options, people would have to pick what they want very wisely and this way more people would be covered by the sale. I can't really see any dowsides for this model, because my perspective is that artisans are keycaps intended not only to be collected and kept as tokens, but also to be use on a daily driver. Who is even going to use 3 cats and 3 paws on their boards? Well, I don't think many people would. Using 1 or 2 is okay, but I believe that having 5 cat caps (or 5 whatever artisans) is a bit too much. Obviously some people would do this, but I think that everybody would be satisfied with a single cap or maybe two.
It makes me wonder if people who ordered a lot of keycaps are even going to actually use them. I don't know, perhaps people get too greedy and buy what they don't really fall in love with just for the sake of "winning" the raffle? Perhaps offering 1 or 2 caps per person could even estimulate the trading market, when people get tired of their feline choices and start looking for another color with fellow users.
Thanks for the inquiry MiTo. I'm sure this is a question that many have had. Not just with KeyKollectiv but for artisans in general. Though I can't speak for others, I can give you insight on our views.
Like many other niche communities, the mech world is comprised of mostly collectors. I consider myself one. Do I need 14 Topre keyboards? No. I don't even know enough people in RL to give them to. But each one means something to me. Inversely, why do people have 2 keyboards and 8 key sets? If we only limit our keycaps to only daily drivers, it may mean that their girlfriends/wives don't get one or that our fans will not have the opportunity to complete a set.
Does this policy address the market speculators or people who seek to gain profit from the after-market? Unfortunately, no. But without substantiate proof, I'd be an ******* to accuse someone of doing so at the expense of others. Despite this, KeyKollectiv maintains an active Grey/Black list for those who we suspect are engaging in practices that utilize our keycaps to take advantage of the community.
At the end of the day, there is no single method that makes everyone happy. This is an inevitability when demand far exceeds supply. The best we can do is to approach it in a manner that we feel is most fair.
As we are currently neck-deep in orders and rushing to get these critters to you, Koala-T and I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who entered for the MeowCaps V2/PurrKeys sale. Congratulations to all those who had a chance to win some keycaps. Our apologies to those who weren't as lucky
I know that missing out on a sale can be a bummer so we are hoping that we can gauge our next release a bit better to accommodate more entrants. For those interested, we had a little over 400 unique entries for this sale. Of the 400, roughly 80 participants were selected. In the end, about 1 in 5 people who entered got a keycap.
Since, I'm stuck at work and have time to kill. I put together a little sketch for you guys:
(Attachment Link)
Thanks for sharing a few numbers Kudos, that was indeed an awesome sale.
Looking at these numbers I had an insight and I'd like to hear from you two what you think:
Have you ever thought about limiting the number of keycaps by numbers like 1 or 2 caps per person? I believe that since you offer so many options, people would have to pick what they want very wisely and this way more people would be covered by the sale. I can't really see any dowsides for this model, because my perspective is that artisans are keycaps intended not only to be collected and kept as tokens, but also to be use on a daily driver. Who is even going to use 3 cats and 3 paws on their boards? Well, I don't think many people would. Using 1 or 2 is okay, but I believe that having 5 cat caps (or 5 whatever artisans) is a bit too much. Obviously some people would do this, but I think that everybody would be satisfied with a single cap or maybe two.
It makes me wonder if people who ordered a lot of keycaps are even going to actually use them. I don't know, perhaps people get too greedy and buy what they don't really fall in love with just for the sake of "winning" the raffle? Perhaps offering 1 or 2 caps per person could even estimulate the trading market, when people get tired of their feline choices and start looking for another color with fellow users.
I actually mentioned this over on reddit. I know before I got lucky and picked I was salty to see people posting up 6 or more. It would be really cool to set a limit and then ask for a list of what you would like in order of importance. That way even if your favorite isn't available you might still be able to get a secondary choice
This was something we really wanted to do. With our current format (Google forms), it would be incredibly convoluted to sift through a form with 3 choices comprising of 12 different designs/colors in 2 formats (MX/Topre). Your idea is definitely something we want to implement in the future once we find a better method. Thanks!
Personally, I thought the snackkeys sale format was better.
Maybe that's because I got in on that one.
But it's also like - you're probably only going sit there F5ing if you really care about getting some. Maybe some speculators are going to care enough if the artisan is underpriced relative to what it'll garner on the trade market later on. Of course, it's tough to do this in a way that no one has time zone issues, work issues, etc etc. But it's just a lot easier to throw your hat in the ring for a free raffle and I would guess that leads to more entries that just have future trade/sale in mind. Just a guess, of course.
Maybe some combo of the two would be better for next time? A round of raffle, a round of F5 mashing, repeat...
SnacKeys was a disaster from customer service standpoint. We caught a lot of complaints as people felt it favored certain time zones or people running scripts. At the end of the day, the question we needed to ask ourselves wasn't "how do we make everyone happy?" but rather, "how we do minimize the amount of upset people".
We felt the raffle sale gave everyone sufficient time to enter. The randomization would remove bias from the equation and we purposely staggered multiple rounds to give as many people a fair shot as possible. The rounds also served the function of giving us time to work through orders so that people wouldn't be waiting forever for their keycaps to be fulfilled.
My Rules.
1. Artisans should run the sale however they want, because they have to deal with how it goes.
2. Never get mad or upset in the slightest when I don't win. And I've lost out on many sales
3. Enjoy caps I do have.
Fair enough as a personal philosophy, but I don't think this needs to mean people can't give feedback on sale formats. If you don't want to, cool. But I think there are better and worse ways to run things from a buyer perspective.
KK sales have all been great, super fair, and I suuuper appreciate all the effort kudos and koala put into these. Like, so much! But I still think people should feel free to say whether they liked or disliked how a particular sale was run. I'm hoping to get into casting caps soon and I would be really sad if no one gave feedback on how I ran things - I would take that as an indication that they don't care, which is discouraging.
Thank you. I've always valued criticism as long as it's constructive. It is what drives us to be better. If someone hates our work, tell us we suck. But tell us why so that we can improve. Those who view feedback as an insult cease to develop as artists. Ego is armor for the insecure.
As a side note. It sucks to choose entrants randomly. I can't tell you how many times, I scrolled past someone I knew who would love our work. Someone who has been with us since the beginning. We wanted to pick them over people we didn't know. For all we knew, it could be someone just looking to turn a profit. But we have to remind ourselves that fairness is more important than personal preferences.
Would we love to only sell to people we like? Sure. Would be love to sell to people who are active in the community and will plaster photos of our work all over websites? Absolutely. But maybe one of these unknown people who win will one day be a huge contributor to our community. Maybe, they have a friend of family member that they want to share their passion with. Maybe they will one day be life-long KeyKollectiv fans. After all, every one of us was, at one point, an unknown.