Instock? GMK White on Black regularly hits $79-89 on sale and comes with an entire numpad in the base kit (not to mention R3 control).
GBs? Mictlan came with more coverage for $99 than this set delivers for $127.
This is a very nice set and it compares favourably to the 250-500 MOQ offerings of late. But it is a distant runnerup when put next to other sets with MOQs in the thousands.
I am a numpad in the base kit enjoyer as well., and I thought about this for a bit too, specifically kitting and MOQ.
Mictlan did over 3K units in its GB with both kits combined at $99 GB price. Black Snail at 3K MOQ at $79 GB price. Honestly, pretty comparable.
Drop (I just know Drop since I frequent US vendors mostly, but maybe there is another vendor that sells WoB in-stock at better pricing) does sell GMK WoB on sale, but the $79-$89 pricing usually is the pre-order pricing or like you said, sale pricing. I've seen it at $99 to $110 as an in-stock retail price quite commonly as well.
No idea how many WoB sets Drop usually buys, but I'm sure that given it being WoB, it certainly matches 3k units if not more each time Drop orders WoB. If you get it on pre-order or sale pricing, then sure, it's a better deal if you live in the US (I'm not sure what international shipping pricing from Drop is though versus Black Snail that will be available from many vendors across the world), but I think unless we know how many WoB units Drop orders, Black Snail is competitively priced. Maybe Drop does a 5,6, or 7K unit order each time they re-stock on WoB.
I think the most accurate way to compare Snail is to other TKL base kit GMK sets, and while prices when on sale definitely is a factor, I feel like retail-to-retail pricing should be considered versus retail-to-sale pricing since a lot of GMK sets on sale compare favorably to their non-sale counterparts.
For example, there are currently a tremendous amount of GMK in-stock units on sale at the moment from Oblo's website to Omnitype to NovelKeys, but we usually don't quote those sets at sale price when discussing them and instead compare them at retail.
GMK Minimal's base TKL set did 5k with extras, and was priced at $100 for the GB pricing, so I feel like TKL-to-TKL base kitting is more fair of a comparison versus TKL base kit to numpad base kit.
If I were to guess, I'd say Geon's trying to alleviate two things that people have issues with when it comes to GMK and GBs, but I have zero idea what his ultimate goal or vision is since I'm not Geon of course.
1. Lead time being 3-6 months between GB or Pre-order to In-stock sales versus longer lead times for GMK, although I feel like it has gotten better recently.
2. Pricing versus other TKL base kit sets
I feel like in-stock pricing at $89 for a beige-on-black TKL base kit is one of the lowest prices for a TKL base kit at 3K MOQ, not taking into consideration any sort of sale pricing. It's still in IC, so things can definitely be changed around. I definitely am interested to see what the final details of the set will be.
Also, maybe based off of the conversations Geon had with designers, GMK, or hobbyists in general prior to posting this IC and details, TKL base kitting was thought to be more preferred/will sell better at a lower price than numpad included base kits at a higher price even though we see many comments about numpads in base kits (a "minority voice is louder than the majority" type deal).
Edit: grammar
