I pay a reasonably well built rubber dome keyboard something like 3.5 €, here in Italy. After the shipment cost, the import fees, and anything else...
So , I presume that one of those keyboards doesn't cost more than 40/50 cents at the origin.
Considering that feel free to add more restrictive tolerance, better plastics, better quality control, the metal spring and so on a topre keyboard should fit in the 5€ price range, if built in china.
I suppose they are built in Japan so you have to multiply that number by a factor of 4 or 5, so probably the raw cost of a topre keyboard is around the 20/25 euro mark.
The rest is just marketing.
Totally false. Realforce marketing is extremely little, so that price is negligible. The high price comes from the low production run of these boards. Think about it...would an individual spring cost less if you build 500 a month, or 5000? What about 500,000? Now what about the rubber domes themselves...the example you used was probably a rubber dome that came as a generic keyboard, with a run of some 500,000 a month. The more keyboards built, the less you will have to pay per keyboard. That SAME exact keyboard, if built in a specialty factory that only makes 500 a month, will end up costing over 100USD easily.
The difference in prices comes from production runs, not just quality.
Now lets look at differences in quality... cheap plastic used on the generic rubber dome boards may cost something like $5000/ton (for example). The plastic used on the Realforces costs much more than that, let's say $15000 a ton. It's the same concept as real vs. synthetic leather - one costs much more because it is of better quality using higher quality ingredients and production methods, while the other is much cheaper to produce due to easier production and much lower quality ingredients.
All those things you listed make it much more than $5. An actual Realforce, taking all marketing/production/quality control/fixed and variable expenses/etc will probably cost somewhere in the ballpark of $80. Could even be more.
Look at the keycaps that imsto sells from KBC. They have free marketing, free distribution channels, no fixed costs, low variable costs, and still $40 (assuming their profits on each set are very low, this is a high cost product). If KBC pbt keycaps cost $40, imagine how much they would cost Realforce, who then needs to move them to their factory and put them into a board containing MUCH more high quality plastic than just keycaps, as well as then pay for marketing, all expenses, for the rest of the product's parts, etc etc etc.
Stop Realforce bashing man, it's obvious you don't understand how 'high quality' and 'luxury' items work. If you're *****ing so much about Realforce price point, just keep typing on your Cherry board and leave everyone else alone.
