Keycap availability

[Merranza]

I bought my first mechanical keyboard about 5 years ago and been interested in keycaps for the last year and a half I'd say.

There's something I quite don't understand in this whole keycap market though regarding their availability.

I often browse Drop and sometimes other sites to buy new sets of keycaps. Many rounds often sell in days... if not hours. A few days ago, SA laser popped up on Drop and many components were gone in matter of hours. Then people go crazy on comments and ask for more of that set so they can get their share...

I've followed GMK laser for the last few months. Drop publishes this has more than 10.4k request and once this goes live, it will probably sell in minutes. Same thing happened to GMK red samurai...

Why are these so scarce? Why do rounds of these take sometimes 2-3 years to come back? Is it simply a question of controlling supply and demand to overhype these on purpose and bring them to a "luxury" level so they become a rarity and can be sold at a higher price (even though, I am 100% sure with more sets available, they would still sell at their original price point considering how badly people want them)?

I understand the whole manufacturing process can be a bit complicated sometimes and these sets are considered quality keycaps but... 2 years to have a new round? It's high quality plastic but still... it's plastic. Just got that feeling sometimes it's easier to build a 30 stories building than to create a round of keycaps

I'm pretty sure there's something I don't get in this and I'm willing to understand if someone could give me some insight on that whole market.

[Chubbs856]

So I am new to this scene, so if I am wrong please correct me. I believe because the custom keyboard market is small and niche; it's probably a money thing. Since most of these vendors are small businesses. I'm sure if they had a chance to make more money by making more keycaps they would but it's being sold to a small group of people. Not only that but GMK keycaps are quite expensive I'm sure most people especially starting out wont drop that much on caps.

 That's just my take of googling for maybe a week straight trying to get parts for my first build at the worse time possible. (COVID 19)...

[Pylon]

Most GMK keycaps (and a lot of PBT keycaps) are done through group buys. Generally a group buy is open for about a month and collects orders and payments, and then the group buy runner submits one big order to GMK. These days, due to high demand and a long production backlog it takes about 6-9 months for keycaps to arrive after the group buy order is placed. Usually vendors will place orders for a limited number of extra sets, and resell those at a higher price once the group buy is over, and I think that's what you're referring to with Drop. GMK sets are usually $110-$130 for a base set when done through a group buy, and ~$180 when buying extras from a vendor after the group buy period.

Group buys are run because setup costs are high, and there isn't a ton of capital for vendors to buy large stocks of keycaps at once. With injection molding a lot of the time and cost is in set up (mixing the plastic and dye, getting the color correct, setting the machine up correctly, etc.), which is why there's minimum order quantities (generally 150-250 for GMK, depending on if custom colors are used), and which is why orders are done in batches. Popular sets re-run when the demand for them is high (Usually pretty apparent when used prices for sets hit well above their original price).

[Sup]

The designers choose if they want to rerun a GB if not then there will be not a R2 simple as that. It's not up to GMK or other Vendors to choose to run a R2.