Just don't read what I've written, it's not worth it.
Okay, since it seems that Mike would prefer to come on to this interest check and try to obfuscate what I said in my server instead of approaching me directly about the entire situation, I suppose I will respond here then too.
The following screenshot shows when Nephlock (or Riley, creative director of NovelKeys) mentioned in the groupchat with myself and NovelKeys' render artist, Fresh, that NovelKeys needed to make changes to the set. As you can see, this came as a shock to us, as it was just over two weeks before the group buy was scheduled to begin. This was surprising as well for the fact that, prior to this bombshell, we had already put together renders for updated kitting that included a number of changes highlighted by community feedback and just natural additions that I thought were great for the set overall. So no, I was not consulted about the decision.
This set was personally challenging for a number of reasons, and I would like to emphasize that up until this news, Riley was a massive help in the overall design of the set. The set would not have looked the way it did without his help. But to put things straight, there was no discussion with me about the decision to cut the set down beyond which base kit to keep. Given that this news was handed down due to immediate financial reasons, this was also not really much of a choice if I am being completely honest.
The main issue with this decision is that we had intense discussions in roughly July-August 2022 about how many kits to kit for overall, including child kits. Being completely transparent here, Riley and Mike were pulling for just a single base kit at this time given the overall downturn in GB performance over the past year. But at the end of it all, the set did not feel complete to me without the option to mute out the theming slightly and just have a simpler version of the overall concept/theme behind the set represented in the general colorway. Not to mention that when the two base kits were combined, one could actually have chosen one of four alphas+modifier combinations with the available keys (essentially packing four base kit combinations into two base kits). So, I campaigned hard for two base kits at the time and this is what we had all agreed to move forward with. To avoid the victim card here, I was very headstrong in these discussions to run with two base kits, it really was important to me to design the set the way I had envisioned it, but I am aware that in some way I probably should have seen the cut coming from the beginning. Regardless, in my opinion, this was the time to make decisions about the kitting, and not months later after I had finished designing the set and especially not weeks before the group buy. I understand I do not have a complete knowledge of the underpinning financials that allegedly drove this decision, but I do think that this could have been planned out far more carefully.
I would like to clarify that I am not coming from this in an entitled way and I am still very grateful for the opportunity to run this groupbuy with NK. I wasn't even going to talk about all of this if it were not for Mike making the above statement. I just personally think that this crossed lines of how designers should be treated by vendors in this hobby. An important point here is that at no point was this set the intellectual property of NovelKeys. Therefore, it was never in their jurisdiction to make a decision to alter the set. Not to mention, there were many things that were not even considered before deciding to cut the set down, such as exploring whether the other vendors would be interested in buying out a share of the MOQ of that base kit so that it could still be made at the 1000 MOQ that NK chooses to buy base kits out at, or perhaps buy each base kit at 500 MOQ (instead of one at 1000 MOQ) and market them both at a slightly higher price so you're not as cashstrapped that way. To be clear, this is not financial advice, I'm just presenting the concept that there were avenues to discuss and that there were no discussions with me about it from Mike's end. Without doubt, NovelKeys definitely contributes a majority percentage of sales in any groupbuy they are involved in, but to not even ask if it's a possibility or explore other possibilities just seems very unsensible given how many people were upset by this change. Of course, I could have replaced NK with another US vendor last minute, but this was all so sudden and rushed that I did not have enough time to react in such a way, and I don't think it would have been fair to do that to any vendor so last minute. Which leads me to my next point, which is that I also think that this decision showed an overall disregard for the opinions of the community that directly support vendors like NK, and demonstrated that these opinions may be an afterthought, or not a thought at all, anymore. Yes, we are all aware, you made a server to connect with the community. Regardless, the proof is in the pudding.
There are probably a number of things I could continue talking about, but it's just not worth the time since the decision is already made and life goes on. For the sake of keeping the ensuing pile of BS manageable, I will also not be responding to anything else on this thread unless it is directly related to fulfillment or some other much more important details than what I've just been waffling about. So if you would like to continue this discussion further Mike, let's talk privately, thanks.
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Thank you to everyone who has supported this group buy, I really appreciate all of you and your kind messages. The base kit that was cut from volume 1 will be run in volume 2, and volume 2 will be run with a different US vendor.
