Mechanical Keyboard Sound Isn't That Simple
Figure 1: I couldn't think of a more literal way to represent this article if I tried... Looking back just a few years ago, there’s no doubt that the huge influx of people that joined the hobby at the peak of the COVID pandemic were drawn to keyboards by way of YouTube, TikTok, and other audio-visual content platforms. Even as the output from these content creators has waned in recent months, their collective impact and legacy on the keyboard hobby is rather firmly etched in the history books. As a result of all of their sound tests, build logs, and opinion videos, the message is clear to any new person joining the hobby: mechanical keyboards are all about the sound. Thock this, clack that. Whether it’s keyboards, keycaps, or even singular switches, seemingly everyone new to the hobby meticulously pores over each component of their keyboard not in an attempt to figure out how it will feel in hand, but how it will sound as they’re furiously grinding their way out from...
Mar 27, 2024
Now Massdrop is making bank buying those extra 30-40 sets to get a 1000 quantity price and charging us for the 200 drop price. Pocket difference, sell cap sets for profit in a recap.
It's a no brainer where they could easily buy the 30-40 sets close to 1000 quantity to sell later in a recap. Those sets will sell, and they can mark them up $5-10 too I'd they want. They could even reopen the R3 drop for a day and I'd bet you would see those 30-40 orders get purchased by the community to hit the 1000 order.
If it's unethical to pocket the $9,700 savings ($10 drop in 970 orders) then I would say it's just as much bad practice to not buy the small number of sets (easily make their money back in a recap) and pass that savings to the consumer. We got hosed on GMK Laser Gaijin this same way missing out on a 1000 qty order and $14 price drop by less than 100 orders.
I'm just a post in discussions at this point and Massdrop doesn't have to listen to me, but you're the community's face and constantly say "At your service" so I wonder what is being done on your end to discuss with Massdrop when there are these insanely close drop points? Is Massdrop buying up to minimum quantities on sets to make sure all kits are produced? Why aren't they buying small number of sets to meet large discount quantities? What is their opinion on this, "to bad, so sad?"
When there are kits that hit a lower price point and I wasn't able to catch the end of the drop - we've gone ahead and done refunds to the community.
The next bit you bring up - yes we actually do buy up MOQs for many kits that do not hit their drop points - that's why you still see so many GMK International Kits sitting around the various Keycap Re-cap drops. That's essentially liability on our end from years ago. But we want to get the community keycaps they wanted - even if it's not always the best move for us.
For your last point - why don't we go ahead and also buy up all the discounts to pass the savings to the community. That's a precarious slope for us to stand on. At what quantity should we consider buying up the extras? 10? 20? 50? I can tell you the cost difference between 200 - 1000 is pretty minuscule (in regards to SA sets) with $1 been the high end and very rare while most are around the $0.40 mark. We'll see how the day ends but know at the moment both Novelties and Text mods are sitting at around 930 sets paid for each.
First of all, this "recap/sell later/extras" events somewhat blew out of proportion and they came with very negative downsides, community-wise, as they helped to shape misconceptions that some people, you included, seem to genuinely believe. The recap events are now something people kind of expect and think it's a norm - "Massdrop selling all of the kits, exactly like the group buy, but with instant shipping and no MOQ. Yay! It's a party!" While it's simply Massdrop's warehouse clearance - replacemet kits that were never used, random kits that are leftover somewhere, etc. It's a way Massdrop found to circulate stuff stuck in inventory and make the community happy because some kits are hard to come by, and not a multi-million practice that will sustain the company. If they step in and orders more kits, there's more risk, more inventory, more space consumed in warehouse, more fees, etc. It's not that simple.
I have done over 10 keycap set projects during my "career" as a community member and I have designed easily half a thousand kits, if not more, to this date. On every keycap set drop, several kits are offered and from the back end, the way Massdrop is designed, it's very complex for them to simply cancel somebody's order if a certain kit fails to reach MOQ. And some of the times, kits are very short of reaching MOQ, so Massdrop steps in and go ahead with manufacturing, so people don't lose their whole orders. How can a Brit use Godspeed's Base Kit without his UK kit? But what's the right amount? 5, 10, 20 kits? Where's the threshold? On top of that, a certain number of replacements are ordered so people can have marginal issues fixed, if their kits come with defects or else. A key gets sent for replacement, now the kit is broken and useless (missing a keycap, not possible to sell anymore).
At the end of the day, coordinating a drop isn't as easy middle-man work as it seems. There are costs, risks and logistics involved. You can be sure Massdrop has been improving regarding communication, methods for us to work, prices, delivery times and most importantly - quality of the keycaps. You can be sure you'll find the best designed and most affordable keysets here.
I don't have as much inside information as you think, but hopefully this helped solve a bit of your concerns. From my perspective they are doing the best they can, offering good prices and good products to the community.
At your service always!
Its unfortunate that the nature of these drops tends to see massive sales spikes right at the end due to people waiting until last minute and the proxy orders going through. Had the numbers for the text mods and novelties been at the 900+ levels for more than just a couple of hours before the end of the drop I suspect they may well have tipped over 1K by themselves but I don't really see how that can be avoided.
I understand the problems with setting general precedents on this given the typically small savings at higher drop points. I think the problem in this case is that a lot of people will do the math on this drop in isolation (particularly for the text mods) and come to the conclusion that if you were to just buy up those extra 70 sets quietly without passing any savings onto the community, Massdrop would end up making around $6000 of additional profit even if you just throw those extra sets straight in the trash when you get them. The only party that would seem to benefit from you not doing this would be SP.
Now these numbers don't take into account Massdrop's markup on these sets which will obviously bring that number down quite a bit...but it will look to a lot of folks here that you'd be crazy not to do that (as, well, why wouldn't you) even if you don't acknowledge it to the community. Personally I don't have any problem with that, your running a business after all, but I can understand why some others may not be quite as understanding.
Its when we start to talk about passing all those savings back to the community that things get complicated though. I really don't see why Massdrop should be expected to do that and take on the liability themselves but in cases like this it would be great if there was some way that both Massdrop and the community could benefit from the extra sets being bought when the numbers "appear" to be so clear cut and nobody would seem to be taking any additional liability or cost on board by doing it.
As far as the buy up discounts, I know what you mean where it's this edge case. You can't really be assumed to buy up all kits to hit the next price drop, as that would set a trend. Much like how you guys are basically assumed to buy all MOQ. But maybe doing something like not having a large jump from 100, 200 and then 1000 to make that transition a bit smoother?
Back to what I was saying, and you touched on it, when a kit price chagnes by $2, not a big deal, but when you're talking like $10 for Pulse Text Mods or $14 for GMK Laser Gaijin, it's that part where you were 85% there and felt so close. I'm not sure if the 100/200/1000 is an SP/GMK thing, but it's such a strange non-linear price breakpoint. I think that would solve a lot of the heartburn of "just missing" these larger price drops it they were spread out over smaller counts like 100/200/400/700/1000 or something like that? Just a thought maybe.
Then their system needing manual updates. I feel some people might be on the fence waiting for something to hit a price breakpoint. I know what's $10 when you're already spending $100 on keycaps, but that's still $10 I wouldn't have to spend on keycaps and could use towards other items.
I still want to thank you for putting the work into these drops. Just by looking at the Godspeed and Laser sample rejections, you're not just a yes man, which is good to get the final product that matches your original vision.
I tried to explain this before, but let me try again: nonlinear price break points make perfect sense. This is because there are two main types of expenses in making and selling keycap kits: fixed cost & variable cost.
Fixed cost is constant regardless of how many kits are made. Since fixed cost is distributed evenly to each kit made, the fixed-cost portion of each kit's price decreases non-linearly as the number of kits made increases.
In contrast, the variable cost is directly related to the output volume, so it remains constant per kit no matter how many are made.
Thus the total cost per kit ($fixed/qty + $variable) approaches - but never quite equals - the variable cost alone as the quantity of kits made increases. This approach is exponential (not linear), thus the reason price break points are also nonlinear. This graph illustrates what I just wrote:
It also makes perfect sense for break point conditions to be different for different kits: the fixed and variable costs are case-by-case.
This is in response to @HerpDerpenberg and others: Yes, an automated system, would make most of these points moot but it takes a lot of work to automate these processes. It's not very easy to code these types of things all the time despite how simple the idea may seem.
Personally, I'm just happy that we received any updates at all on a Sunday night for that matter so thanks to whomever was updating this drop on a weekend evening!
But my point is... Why not go every 200 up to 1000? 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000. Sure, the price drop might not go down in some huge numbers or look as sexy as we hit those higher breakpoints, but you'd have something like $60, $56, $53, $51, $50 price change that would still fit within the trend line. So then with the SA Pulse order of 962 text mods, we're talking about a $1 price change to go from 800 to 100, instead of $10 to go from 200 to 1000. Everyone doesn't get all bummed out that we can see the finish line only to run out of steam without crossing it.
@cijanzen I'm happy they were updating it too, this was actually one of the first drops I've witnessed getting multiple quantity updates as it approached the end. It's just that when it gets close to the end, that's when a lot of people might be in or out based on having a $10 price change or not. IMO, still silly to be in/out on $10 for a $100+ keycap order, and one that you can probably flip for at the very least the same cost you put into it on the mech market. But hey, some people might not have a crazy disposable income and that $10 is what's their hard decision.
To prove this to you, I have attached a real life quote below from SP that I received back in Dec 2016 for an SA keycap set that I planned but had never fully conceived. If you are curious what keys were included in this set, it's on a GH page I haven't updated in forever (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=85790.0). Please keep in mind this quote does NOT take into account any shipping costs, labor, wages, or the processing and storage fees incurred on the one who processes these orders (in this case, MassDrop).
This also doesn't take into account the fact that there are almost always some problems with manufacturing. Sometimes a couple keys get damaged when being produced (damn spacebars!) or scratched in shipping, sometimes all of them do. Customs can do stupid stuff with your packaging for example. For reasons like this they try to predict any possible problems and buy extras to try and replace keys/sets for people who have problems. But it is physically impossible to predict all of the problems you might have with any particular kit/set. So it's a complete guessing game that MD has been working hard to try and nail down. They do pretty well for the most part, but nobody is perfect.
As far as them making a huge profit for buying a few extra sets though? That's just absurd. They may be able to save a little bit of money in some reasonable situations where it would be almost absurd not to; but it almost always gets passed to us at the reduced price when they do. And that kind of action can save us a lot more in the long run. People really seem to like to hate on MD but these guys actually tend to do a pretty good job.
TL:DR; No, MassDrop is not making bank by buying 30-40 kits to hit a 1000 MoQ price. Nor are they pocketing a ton of money from kits with low MoQ's. They have to deal with a lot of logistics issues that you the consumer almost never have to deal with. MD takes their small cut, passes some of the proceeds to the artist(s) who created the set, and then they pass on all of the products and savings to us. Without them advertising these sets there are a lot less people buying, which in turn costs us a lot more.
If you wanted to personally have one a custom set made it could cost you thousands of dollars. Even if you bought 10 for the minimum MOQ price break, it could cost an upwards of $2500 just for 10 full TKL kits, not including novelties or other custom configurations. But there we have far more strength in numbers, which is why we have MassDrop. :)
Your example of "The price difference between 750 to 1000 is usually around less than 50 cents per kit, and almost never more than $1 less". Then looking at your chart, yeah that's true for the direct SP pricing. But you it's not a direct compare SA Pulse R3 Text Mods 750 to 1000 as the breakpoint was 200 to 1000. That gave a $60 to $50 price drop for 200 to 1000, or a 16.6% price drop. Go to your chart for modifiers, $36.54 to $30.81 is 15.7% price drop from 200 to 1000, so that matches in line. But why did Massdrop go 200 to 1000? There were 250, 500 and 750 breakpoints in between there. That would give more frequent price drops. Doesn't match with your "but it almost always gets passed to us at the reduced price when they do" point either.
In all cases, it benefits Massdrop more to do a 200 to 1000 and ideally they want 999 kits sold, so they don't hit that price drop and cut into profits. Go back to your SP chart, yes I know there are still factors for errors, shipping/handling, profit, but that's simply just + X% to each kit. 999 kits sold at 200 quantity price ($36.54) is $36,503.46. The actual price from SP is 999 kits at 750 quantity price ($31.51) or $31,478. So there is a profit of $5,024.97 by not going to 1000 kits price. Now, is that really a profit? Probably not because it can help offset the cost of MOQ buyout to get all kits made. But you would be downright bad a business sense to not buy 1 extra kit to make 1000 quantity pricing as well and save another ~$670.
One of my questions to Mito was who sets the quantity breakpoints, and from your SP chart, it seems Massdrop does. I already addressed my concern to YanboWu. I just think it would be nice to see quantity price drops in line with the SP pricing chart you showed at. That way we're not barely missing significant price drops in kit quantities.
EDIT: GeekHack link - https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86123.0
" Without them advertising these sets there are a lot less people buying, which in turn costs us a lot more."
And with this I mean that these keycap sets wouldn't receive nearly as much publicity doing it on their own as they would by running on MD. Even the famous KB artists like MiTo wouldn't do as well if he was only advertising on Reddit and GH. There are a lot of different people who visit MD each day, and they aren't all looking for mechanical keyboards. So they really did most of the work for that money IMO. Sure we are all going in on the purchase together, and we should receive savings too, no doubt. But they are the one who fostered this community for several years and all of us have made it what it currently is. So I believe it's in our best interest for MD to at least make some money so they can keep running these buys. Not saying it's okay for MD to price gouge us on everything, but they need to at least be able to stay in the green and pay the bills. ;)
@dvorcol Love the charts! It is pretty interesting to see all of the data plotted like that. You can really get an idea for how important each price point is. The cost to produce each kit is clearly nonlinear. Some kits drop in price quickly while some of the others don't drop nearly as fast. I could imagine the cost of the mould can vary drastically depending on how many keys are needed in that kit. There is probably an ideal cost to key space ratio that could be used to reduce the price of these kits. But one of the lessons I learned was that GMK is doing it right IMO, and the more kits you have the more expensive the entire run could potentially be.
@ProtonDecay Check out the GeekHack thread that dvorcol just posted to see what keys were planned to be included in each kit. It is possible I may have changed one or two of the kits after the quote, but I am almost positive the quote was for the exact same kits you can see on that thread. (https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=86123.0)