...Aaand I'm in. GMK could really start lowering their prices a little with all the action they're getting these days, but I bit the apple and placed the order. Scratch off another NorDeUk kit as well. Come on, guys. I don't want to be left without ÅÄÖ on my board! Let's do this 
I haven’t been advertising this, but the kits really are good value. Child kits are basically sold at cost, and base has barely any profit. It might not be enough for me to even cover render costs.
That's incredibly noble and nice, and as respectable as that is, doesn't change the fact that GMK charges as much as they do for it. I'm sure it's a lot of work for them too, but it can't be _that_ complicated at this point, or use that _that_ many resources.
Maybe I'm just being naïve or ignorant... or maybe my soul just hasn't gotten used to spending this much money on bits of plastic yet
There’s actually a great reply from GMK Andy on Geekhack explaining why the labor put into their kits is more than we imagine. It changed my perspective.
have a link, I'd love to read it?
Found it. https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=102466.0
That whole thread was very interesting, and I admit, I vastly overestimated the scale of their operations, it seems. I thought their production was part of an industry that was still going strong, but perhaps it should be compared more with vinyl record plants, in that they work a lot with small batches and towards either extremely specific industries or the hobbyist group.
One thing that was weird though is their MOQ. If they work that slowly and at that small scale anyway, why is the MOQ so high? I get that they _want_ it to be high, because it benefits their business, but surely more kits being made _at all_ sounds like a better deal than having a steep limit where kits don't get made at all?
Also, as someone asked in that thread, I hope they do a video tour of their factory, would be extremely interesting to see.
The reason for the MOQ is cost. The setup cost is fixed, whether they make 10 sets or 250. So dividing setup cost by 250 kits is way less per kit than dividing it among 10.
Setup involves installing and tuning the tools for each keycap, mixing the resin colors, purging the tools and equipment of previous color resin, etc. Once a setup is up and running, making more keycaps is only a fraction of the cost. Of course, each keycap requires time, material, inspection, sorting, and packing, so keycaps are not free.
This is why price drops get smaller and further apart as kit quantity increases.
Edit: Adding a graph. Why didn't I do this before, right?
Variable cost remains constant for each kit, so it increases linearly for the full production order as the number of kits in that order increases.
Fixed cost remains constant for the full production order, so it drops per kit as the number of kits in the production order increase.
