1 is completely up to the vendor. I can't imagine prices become magically cheaper solely because epeople have to wait longer. Oco made the price for skeletor as NK made the price for this.
2 wouldn't be an issue if GMK was capable of meeting demand and vendors were willing to take just a little more risk to stock product, which could change in the future from all these rumors I'm hearing of GMK more than doubling their supply chain with the incoming machines.
3 makes sense, completely. Still, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth seeing kits get canceled a week into the buy.
For clarification, what I'm worried about is that no matter the capitol vendors have, no matter how large actual supply and demand is, I fear vendors get comfortable with this process and won't be willing to budge to change. Every month has been non stop growth and eventually consumers deserve a better, less risky practice to get them product.
1 - Yes it is completely up to the vendor, but our GB pricing is nowhere near the price needed to be a sustainable business.
2 - This is a huge problem with investing capital. When GMK gets better lead times, we can realistically invest capital to have a return within an appropriate amount of time. However we are still taking more risk to order large quantities of extras to hopefully become stock. To say were not willing to take a risk is not true at all.
3 - No real comment, but I dont really like cancelling any kits at all, and have bought out many kits to make them hit MOQ.
Our goal this year in 2020 was try to skip some of the GB process and just have in stock items. Unfortunately GMK lead times made that impossible (with other items we made that possible - PBT keycaps, tons of switches, deskpads, and more). Having capital tied up for that long really impacts our growth. Trust me, I would rather not do GB's and order things in stock, but thats not completely feasible. GBs actually create their own liability for vendors. If GMK went belly up, we would be on the hook for making refunds with the possibility of not getting a refund from GMK. I also understand thats a risk for the customer as well.
I think GB's are here to stay for a while too, because as Oblotzky said it is helpful for the community and the vendor. Offering better pricing for the community, while letting vendors hopefully get a little bit more capital to throw towards that order.