Hi everyone, HoffmanMyster here with some news to share about the recent/ongoing saga involving Project Keyboard and their incomplete portion of the GMK Sumi group buy.
TL;DR: My wife and I have purchased the GMK Sumi inventory that Project Keyboard abandoned in their warehouse, and will be shipping it out to unfulfilled customers of PK from both the initial group buy and any extras purchased since. If you are one of the folks left hanging by Project Keyboard and have not successfully charged back your purchase with your bank, please reach out at gmk[dot]sumi[dot]salvage[at]gmail[dot]com with your order information and proof of order (see below for more details).
We will pack and ship your order, asking for a nominal per-kit fee to offset the cost of acquiring the keycap sets (more on that below too), as well as help cover the costs of shipping and our time. This is the “Unfulfilled Order Pricing” referred to later on. In addition, you can opt to include a Designer Tip of any amount, of which 100% will be passed to FaKe_VirTual, the designer of the set.
Some backstory and a longer explanation: According to Project Keyboard, they had initially stopped shipping orders in early 2023 due to water damage at the warehouse. They claim to have requested replacement keycaps from GMK, which would have arrived sometime later, though GMK was not able to corroborate this story and has no record of replacements being requested or sent. It’s unknown whether PK shipped any GMK Sumi sets out to customers after this point, or how many unfulfilled orders there are, but we do know that many GB purchasers still have not received the product they paid for.
After the warehouse management company took ownership of the abandoned inventory (the legal process in this situation), they sought to recoup some of their losses by passing the inventory to someone in the mech keys community. This is great because it means the sets are not simply tossed out or sold to a liquidator, but it does mean that the inventory came to us at a cost.
The process: If Project Keyboard did not fulfill your GMK Sumi order and you have not successfully charged back the order with your bank, send an email to gmk[dot]sumi[dot]salvage[at]gmail[dot]com with a complete screenshot of your order. We will use this order information to confirm and ship the items out to you.
After receiving your email, a PayPal invoice will be generated and sent to you. Confirm the items on the invoice, as well as your shipping address in PayPal. Once payment is received, the keycap set and any other items will be shipped out to the provided address from PayPal.
Pricing: Base Kit - $25
Hiragana Kit - $13
Novelties Kit - $10
Spacebars Kit - $7
Extension Kit - $8
Desk Mats - $5
RAMA Artisans - $10
Designer Tip (optional) - 100% passed to FaKe_VirTual; specify in email how much you would like to add
Shipping (base kit + 1-2 small add-ons) - $8
Shipping (base kit + hiragana kit + small add-ons) - $10
Shipping (desk mat) - $8
Timing: From now until January 31, 2024, there will be a
Period of Exclusivity where nothing will be done with the GMK Sumi inventory aside from shipping out the unfulfilled orders left from Project Keyboard. After that time, we will begin listing GMK Sumi sets for sale to attempt to further recoup our costs and get the keycaps into circulation (and out of our possession).
There is no end point for claiming your unfulfilled order from PK, only an end to the period of exclusivity at the end of Jan 2024. If you reach out at any later date with a valid unfulfilled order from PK we will honor the Unfulfilled Order Pricing, provided enough units remain.
Replacements, returns, and other vendor responsibilities:Because we are not a vendor and are simply salvaging a group buy that was initially run by a vendor, there are some important things to note.
- If your keycap set arrives with missing keys (sometimes a set will have two ‘6’ keys and no ‘5’ key, for example), a replacement can be sent out for a minimal shipping cost. We do have units on hand that can be parted out for replacement keys. Note that we will eventually run out of sets and eventually be unable to replace individual keys like this.
- We cannot honor return requests or reimbursements for items damaged during transit. Please treat this transaction like you would a purchase on the aftermarket, other than point 1 above. We unfortunately are unable to absorb any other costs that a vendor normally would.
Answers to anticipated questions: Why should we trust you?
- I am a longtime community member with the community’s best interests at heart. This isn’t the first time I’ve done something like this, and possibly won’t be the last. Also, many of you out there know where I live and will come after me if anything goes south with this salvage effort, so there is some real accountability at play for those of you untrusting of the sentiment and promises (rightfully so, to be honest—if you’re here, you’ve already been burned at least once).
Have you ever taken on a project of this scale?
- Simply put, no. I
have salvaged a couple group buys in the past (
Phantom and
GH60), and am prepared to take on the volume of work here, but it will be a lot. I will be providing updates regularly in this thread as we work through fulfilling the outstanding existing orders that PK failed to fulfill.
Why didn’t a vendor take over, like has happened in the past?
- There are no other vendors in the area, and shipping the items to a vendor would have added considerable cost to the salvage efforts. This is the leanest way to make unfulfilled customers whole.
How quickly after I email about my set will you ship it out?
- This is not our (mine nor HoffmanWyfster’s) day job, so communication may take longer than 24 hours as we work through everyone’s emails around our regular jobs. I would anticipate that there will be a pretty large influx of emails in the first few days, after which the load will become more manageable and response times should decrease. Shipping also takes time—we will do our best to provide estimates, and will update publicly what our current backlog is to give an idea of how long that might take at any given time.
I already paid for this keyset—why do I have to pay again?
- Unfortunately, the warehouse company did not hand over Project Keyboard’s inventory for free. We had to pay a non-trivial amount for the items, logistics, storage, etc; the costs asked here help offset the amount we have already paid to begin this process.
I’m not prepared to take action on this right now, do I have time?
- Yes. The “period of exclusivity” mentioned before ends at the end of January 2024. During this entire time, there is zero risk to waiting before reaching out. Nothing else will be done with the keycaps until Feb 2024. After that time, you can still contact us for the same “unfulfilled order pricing”—the only thing to note is that as time goes on, the chances that we no longer have the keycap set will go up.
Are there any other unfulfilled group buys included in this effort?
- Not that we are aware of. There are no units of GMK Astral Light present, for example. We are assessing the remainder of the inventory to determine if anything is from an active and unfulfilled group buy.
