ok
just wanted to make a post to briefly go over a few points when i was sleeping
firstly, thanks for the huge support this gb has had, to say that this is essentially an original IP (i know i did it with sp, but what i mean is its a totally new set for gmk, not a rerun of a popular cherry colorway) the support has been outstanding
with regards to people wanting to know numbers, the truth is it isnt over yet, what i can say is itll land im sure somewhere between 250 and 350, there is actually a price drop at 400 sets, i never though for a second we would get there, but if for some reason we magically do, ill use that extra money (roughly 8 - 10 dollars a set i think) to include extra keys on top of donations, i dont think we will get there unless some insane surge happens but thats the plan if we do, and if we hit that, trust me, ill be exceptionally open about it as ill be over the moon
i dont wanna go in to my gb method too much here, because me and sent are planning to record a blog/;pod-cast all about gbs this week so most of it will be covered there, but i do want to touch on the nice post about how i guarantee gbs get made etc, this applies slightly less to gmk and mroe to sp but i use the same model for everything
with gmk its easy to set the price, because realistically we will always be at the 250 price tier if these buys end up getting made, but i get lots of questions about why i dont offer price tiers (mainly with sp), the truth of that is, they cause far more problems than they are worth, through doing so many gbs, i can just look at a set we do and know 95% of time exactly what tier it will sit in, and there are huge benefits to an upfront price structure when running gbs
when people used tiered pricing, many issues come up, from the start, its hard to get initial orders when the prices are high, secondly, it makes certain parts of sets that arent as popular massively over priced, and you cant invoice until the end of a gb, which cause an entire new set of problems, you assume you have hit x price tier, but when you come to invoice, x amount of people end up dropping out as they have found something else or changed their mind at that time, then all the other invoices you sent out may not be at the tier you are now at, meaning you either have to delay and reopen orders or redo all the invoices etc, then end up having more people drop out as its no longer at the tier they agreed to
what i do, is guarantee a price point, by doing that i assume a large amount of risk, no matter what we sell, you pay that one price, and the set gets made whatever, for instance, miami twice didnt quite hit the price tier i wanted it to, i ended up having to order about 12 extra sets, to get it to about $91.75 (before anyone starts complaining i charged $95 and am now making profit, i have to pay stripe fees on payments, which is about 2-3%)
on the other end of that, is sometimes something may be m,ore successful than i thought (once we hit those higher numbers, the price drops arent huge, but i may end up paying a few dollars less per set here and there) when this happens, we can do things like add a couple of extra keys, get things like stickers for packages etc, little niceties to make the gb better for everyone
with guaranteeing hyperfuse, i had every faith we would hit this MOQ, but im so passionate about this colorway i would have made it happen no matter what, and with gmk buys, there is very little at risk, there is always huge aftermarket demand for gmk sets, and im sure between the time this buy ends, and the time this buy finishes shipping, ill get hundreds of requests for an extra set
lastly id like to have a little rant about PBT
i see this more and more at the moment, this idea that just because something is made out of pbt it is better, or if something is abs it is somehow an inferior product, its such a naive and ridiculous opinion and it really bothers me because people are both missing out on great things and investing in garbage because they are so misinformed
firstly, its all personal preference, and if your preference is pbt and you make your purchasing decisions based on that, that is totally fine
as with all things, there are quality well made versions, and cheap trash, with pbt in particular, this is more true than anywhere else in keyboards, the tolerances with casting anything in pbt are very different to abs, and as a result there is a much bigger gap between good quality and poor quality pbt products, good quality pbt is rare, really rare, if you can pick up a nice original cherry pbt dyesub set, it really is glorious, bsp is great quality, but its hard to get and even then, there are compatibility and profile issues for many layouts, other than that, i would take gmk abs over any other pbt manufacturer, because the truth is, its the quality of the keycap that makes them great, not the material, people should be looking at the manufacturer, and the quality and results of their keycaps, and not making decisions based JUST on the material alone
and before someone chimes in about shine and abs, i can show pics of some insanely shiny pbt sets i have that got a lot less use than some abs sets i have that get far more use
