[GB] GMK Bentō round 2

[Jo_hannes]

At this rate we're going to be looking at 2023 for all these GBs that have been taking place in early 2021 

If this hobby/field of business (depending on the perspective you want to take) keeps growing at the rate it has in the past year (and I am a part of that Covid wave, don't get me wrong), then at some point, the market forces will kick in and the demand will bring in actors that will want to capitalize on that. And with that, I don't mean the Alibaba 30$ sets, I mean same quality and price as GMK, Keyreative, Signature Plastics, just quicker. Obviously, the demand and people with thick enough wallets for lots of 150-250$ boxes of plastic are there, and the legacy players, by completely failing on the upscaling part of the business, are inviting others to fill the gap. No need to be cheaper, just need to be quicker. I am quite sure the market forces will serve to solve this problem in the coming years.
But yeah, if I get on board with a GMK set at this time, my cautious guess is around 18-20 months to delivery. On the other hand, we are talking about luxury goods nobody actually needs, to maybe that is a nice area to learn the virtue of patience in. /Johannes

[andreiborisov]

At this rate we're going to be looking at 2023 for all these GBs that have been taking place in early 2021 

If this hobby/field of business (depending on the perspective you want to take) keeps growing at the rate it has in the past year (and I am a part of that Covid wave, don't get me wrong), then at some point, the market forces will kick in and the demand will bring in actors that will want to capitalize on that. And with that, I don't mean the Alibaba 30$ sets, I mean same quality and price as GMK, Keyreative, Signature Plastics, just quicker. Obviously, the demand and people with thick enough wallets for lots of 150-250$ boxes of plastic are there, and the legacy players, by completely failing on the upscaling part of the business, are inviting others to fill the gap. No need to be cheaper, just need to be quicker. I am quite sure the market forces will serve to solve this problem in the coming years.
But yeah, if I get on board with a GMK set at this time, my cautious guess is around 18-20 months to delivery. On the other hand, we are talking about luxury goods nobody actually needs, to maybe that is a nice area to learn the virtue of patience in. /Johannes

In principle, you’re right, but there are variables you’re not taking into account. GMK for example owns exclusive access to Cherry tooling. And Cherry is by far the most popular profile. Hence you can’t just start producing GMK quality keycaps in Cherry. You need to make your own tooling for that, which is crazy-expensive.

Also most of the recent delays are directly related to COVID, to which no one is immune to.

I’d say we’ll see GMK and others keep growing, but I don’t expect to see big companies making their own business out of producing keycaps. It’s much easier for them to outright buy/invest in GMK, Signature Plastics, or any other.

[Isaacree]

Anyone aware of the current ETA for Bento R2?
It doesn’t seem like there has been any update for a while now.

[__init__]

Anyone aware of the current ETA for Bento R2?
It doesn’t seem like there has been any update for a while now.

Discord channel says ETA December 2021.

[biip]

Quick update:

GMK discovered some abnormalities on the surface of 2.25u and 2.75u shift keycaps which imply to produce these keys again. Since it's a very large (kits) quantity, it would take some time, and GMK expect this to be done for March.

This is definitely a very sad news, but I'm sure we can all agree that we rather have hands on a set without issues even if its shipping gets delayed (again).

Current estimated time of arrival: March 2022

[ChrisJoy]

Sorry to hear the delay..again.

[biip]

Quick (and last) update: GMK sending kits to vendors tomorrow (on March 2nd)

[mr_foggy]

thanks for the update! time to save up for the extras drop