If you are going to limit the total number of orders, that really should be spelled out clearly in the OP. I'm also not following why you have chosen to close it early. If every order were made in the pre-order fashion by requirement (thus requiring more and more money to be fronted by yourself for each additional order), I could understand, but why not allow these people to enter at this point and pay in full? There is no additional money required from yourself, only additional orders. Can you please explain your reasoning in greater detail?
It is a fairly well-documented fact that the vast majority of orders for group buys come in during the first few days and last few days of the purchase window, so "slow" orders is not a good indicator of a lack of interest, just FYI.
It's my bad for the confusing info about the MOQ in my OP.
There's definitely a limited number to produce, what I initially meant was that there's no need to worry about not hitting MOQ as I will top up the remaining to hit the MOQ of 150 (I personally feel 250 is a bit far-fetched at this period of time)
The GB for this doesn't quite follow the usual pre-order fashion that we are familiar with. I'm trying out something new, the deposit payment is something new, but it has it's pros and cons, kind of like a double-edged sword. At this point, it feels quite risky if people starts asking for refunds and wants out, that's why I wanted to "end" early and pay GMK with whatever funds I have received from the orders thus far to secure those orders.
Like you said, people will start ordering as it comes nearer to the end of the deadline, so I figured if I could "close" the order, and from there I can see how many more people are actually interested in it. Moreover I see some comments saying (not from this thread) that they won't ever join GB anymore or somewhere along that line. So that's why I thought about getting the proof of purchase from GMK early to gain back the trust from the community. By doing so, I get to secure the existing orders, get a peek to see if there's actually more interest in this keyset, get proof of purchase from GMK, get more orders, get our set made earlier seeing there's other GMK GB going on at the moment and one of my personal goal is to get the sets done with as little delay as possible. I didn't like to wait for almost a year or over a year for my keysets, and I certainly don't want my groupbuyers to wait that long either. Lead time from GMK will take about 2 months assuming if GMK don't have any other big orders in hand. If my orders reaches GMK late, there's a high chance it might be overtaken by other GB.
I didn't mean to cause so much frustration to the community, but I hope my reasoning and explanation here make sense as I am typing this at 2AM in my local time.
If there's any questions, I'll only be able to answer them tomorrow (my local time is +8 GMT) as I need my rest now.
