Has anyone ever considered creating a keyboard loaning business? I feel like we could all benefit if we had the chance to try out a product before buying it, especially when keyboards are so expensive. You could easily pay for a keyboard collection simply by loaning out a couple popular models like the HHKB which people aren't certain that they will like.
It's a nice idea, but the implementation of the actual idea would just have too many holes for it to follow through.
I think with the cost of shipping it would probably be more cost effective to buy the keyboard and hope you like it, and sell it at a small loss if not. I can see it working as a local thing, but there probably wouldn't be enough interest.
I agree here.
My concept would be for you to set-up a local shop, set-up all the high end keyboards in that shop or just keyboards in general, e.g. 75%, 60% etc, maybe boards that you cannot test out in other shops as easily or at-all. And then that way, you can come in, test the keyboard, see if you like it, see what switch you prefer and so on.
But to be honest, even if the idea that you are proposing would work and it was already a thing, I don't think I'd ever use it, I'd say a good 80% of us already know what keyboards we like and don't like, what switches we like and don't like, so I don't really think this sort of thing would benefit the average GH user.
I've spent a lot of money on keyboards over the years, mainly in the past 3 years to be more specific and some of those I took a risk and when I realised that they weren't the KB for me, if they were rare I would hold onto them incase I would go back to them in the future and if I didn't like the keyboard one bit, then I would sell them off again, maybe at a 5% loss, which isn't that bad in the grand scheme of things really.