This is exactly the reason you shouldn't wait till the last minute if you were considering joining.
But why not wait until the run was scheduled to finish? Seems a little odd that they would give folks a firm deadline, but cancel mid run. No harm in waiting until the end of the scheduled window as far as I can see. You'll be refunding folks regardless
In 2018-2019 handarbeit, GMK forge (the original red and black version), coniferous, and then high voltage ran for a month and got canceled as they didn’t make it.
2019 as things got busier, Sparta, Forge (orange), Rocket, Matcha Mocha, retrowave, GMK Poker (lol) and recently pepperoni and incognito and others all were canceled before the month was up and some within a few days only. Less people to refund, less losses w credit cards / PayPal on refunding (either the vendor or the buyer is losing a fee here, this isn’t "no harm"), less ad space, less social media work for promotion, less people clamoring for a set or child kit to be bought out when the set won’t hit high MOQ and sell extras well which can turn a considerable profit. Around this time the day 1 bonuses began to happen in an effort to buff early numbers: GMK Honey alt alphas were ~3$ off on day 1, drop has taken nearly 10$ on several sets, bushido’s descendant Honor was 5$ off, others had deskmat deals. Mekibo recently had a buy 2 kits early on get 5$ off to help child kits to MOQ. These make the dvorcol graphs look successful and seem to bolster confidence in buyers and possibly to vendors.
It’s been recommended on mechgroupbuys for a year plus on sets of possible borderline interest that those really into it buy early. For Novelkeys set of the month it matters less, but for Kono’s 4th offering that month or the like it makes a difference.
