GMK Coniferous | 30 Jan - 28 Feb 2017

This is the official group buy post for my set, GMK Coniferous. This is probably the first of this set that any of you who don't frequent Reddit or DT have seen, so I'll go a little into depth on it. Around October of last year I finally moved on from my weird handwired ortho build to a B.mini EX, and in doing so I realized that I wanted a fancy shmancy keyset for it. Lo and behold, there was basically nothing available at that time in green, basically my favorite. Drawing inspiration from sets such as Carbon, Pyro/Flames, and yes Hyperfuse, to create a nice base of beige on grey, I then just threw green at it. People showed quite a bit of interest in it, so I pitched it to GMK. After a few months of back and forth and lapses in communication for periods of time, it's finally group buy time.

So, what are the details? This set contains 173 keys in the base kit(plus 3 more in the N7 spacebars kit) that I picked to try and meet compatibility for as many layouts as I could think of. Not including ergodox, I think you can get this set to be row correct on most boards, aside from a few mismatched legends, and that's what I wanted. Alongside wanting this set to fit on as many boards as possible, I also wanted this set to be as accessible as possible, so that is why I am running the set with two proxies; one in China running the set via Taobao , and the other is at mechboards.co.uk for those that are in Europe, while orders from North and South America will be handled from my site, http://donutcables.com/coniferous.php. For our friends in Australia, I'm actually not certain which location would give you the best shipping, so I would suggest contacting the shop owners from each proxy for a shipping quote, or if there is enough Australian interest I could look at the possibility of a proxy there as well, who knows.

Now for the important part:pricing. Everyone loves when a set is aggressively costed, that's why I attempted to keep the price low on this set at $150 at the 150 unit MOQ and then $135 at the 250 unit MOQ, with opportunity for further price breaks from GMK. The N7 spacebar kit is $10 at 150 unit MOQ. This is not including shipping, which will be different from each seller. Since this set is shipped in GMK's trays, the price is higher than if it were just baggies of keys.

If you buy from my store, there are a couple different shipping options I'm offering. For CONUS, you have USPS Priority "Large Package" which the USPS site estimated at $12.75 from me to California before insurance, and then USPS Flat Rate "Large Board Game" Box which is $18.75 before insurance. $150 insurance is right around $3.75. For international locations such as Canada, you have USPS First Class International "Large Package", which the USPS site estimated at $14.73 from me to Canada without insurance. Not included in this price is the $2.50($1.50 for flat rate) that I am including in the shipping cost for the cost of materials associated with packing and shipping, such as packing tape, bubble wrap, shipping labels, and boxes for the non-flat rate orders.

How this buy will work: I currently have an order form at http://donutcables.com/coniferous.php that is open from now until Feb 28th. Once the buy period is closed, I will then be sending out PayPal invoices to all those that submitted the form. I expect the invoices to be all paid by the end of that week and the order submitted to GMK on the next Monday or Tuesday. After the payment is submitted, there is then a 10-12 week production time on the order, after which it is shipped to me and the other sellers. I expect the order to reach me no later than the middle of June, at which time I will be putting other projects on hold, mainly my cable making, and pretty much devote my waking life to processing and shipping these sets. Included in this processing is sending the invoice for the shipping costs of your set as well as confirming your shipping address at that time. I know that shipping addresses can easily change in the span of a couple months and would hate to send your nice new keyset to an old address. After the invoice is paid and your address confirmed, I will then ship out your set within 24 hours, unless it's a weekend.

What happens if there is damage/mistakes? In the event of something major, like all the sets have some pretty substantial damage or are all missing keys, I of course get GMK involved and attempt to resolve the issue. If there are only minor issues, like one set has some scratched caps cause they came loose in the tray, I am actually buying approximately 1 set per 10 orders through my store for the purpose of replacing instances of minor damage. This does cost quite a bit on my end, but it's much preferable to having to ship someone a set that is damaged or wrong in any way. And also this way there will be a chance of sets being available for those that didn't get into the buy and have had 3 months to wish they did, who knows.

I've tried to answer every question I can think of in this initial post, but there's probably at least a dozen that I haven't considered, so feel free to ask.



Severe tl:dr: $150 at 150 units, $135 at 250 units, shipping from $14-$21 CONUS, proxy in both UK and China, buy period ends 11:59pm 2/28, set ships in June.

NA/SA order page, http://donutcables.com/coniferous.php
China proxy, https://world.taobao.com/item/544742307995.htm?fromSite=main&spm=0.0.0.0.gcdwSs
UK proxy, http://mechboards.co.uk/gmk-coniferous/





More

Important update space : We have hit MOQ on the main kit!

2 days until the end of the buy and we need 10 more orders to hit MOQ. We are getting close!


It is currently 1 week until the end of the buy and we need 44 more orders of the main kit in order to hit MOQ. Unfortunately the China and UK proxies aren't pulling orders like I thought they would at this point so we really need to pull together to get this into production! I am fully devoted to this and am willing to float as many orders as I am financially able to in order to see this hit production, but I still need you guys' help. WE CAN DO THIS!



One of the sticker designs that I've commissioned from my good buddy @Ashenai on the Mech Keys West Discord just for this set, the Mighty Conifer:

There is also a second sticker in the works, but you'll just have to wait until MOQ to see what it is

These stickers will be available sometime before the set is shipped, and I'll have a special deal for those ordering stickers that also ordered the set, even if you didn't order from my site.

Renders!

These renders were done up by an awesome dude that goes by kolruds over on Reddit, and just give a great feel for what this is gonna look like. I'll have some more ready for you soon, but hopefully this will get some excitement and orders going to push us down that home stretch

More

At this point in time, it would appear that PayPal is done trying to help me. I have been told that my release amount will not be adjusted by them, and I will have a chance to be evaluated for a release adjustment in 30 days. Currently they are holding over $12k of the funds from Coniferous that are actively needed in order to submit the payment to GMK, and these funds will not be released to me until 21days after the invoices are paid.

What this means is that we are looking at approximately March 26th before I can submit my payment to GMK, which contains the bulk of the Coniferous orders. This would also mean that if the original production time estimate were still true(10-12 weeks) that I would be looking at late June as the earliest point at which I would have my hands on the sets, and a highly likely early July ship date.

I am quite upset at this whole thing, probably more than I need be, and I'd love nothing more than to let PayPal know how I actually feel, but I realize that will do nothing in my favor. This is also another severe blow because I cannot at this time spend any money from my PayPal(material costs, shipping costs, other group buys that I had previously discussed) because of the "staggered" release of the funds from each payment. This means I will be relying on a credit card in order to finish shipping my current backlog and that reopening of sales may unfortunately be delayed as well.

At this time, I am honestly not certain how to proceed. Waiting is not ideal at all but appears to be the best choice I have. I am prepared for drops as I can certainly understand you not wanting your money in "purgatory" for that amount of time, but I am still hoping that we will still keep the majority of people to keep the set at MOQ. Any suggestions and comments are more than welcome.

Good news everyone! As of 2pm this afternoon I have wired the main payment to GMK and am currently awaiting confirmation of payment from the proxies as well as confirmation of receipt by GMK. As this point in time there's a whole lot of waiting until I can start preparing to receive the shipment from GMK.

In other news, PayPal has finally increased my release amount by a substantial number, so this should not be an issue in future buys like it was in this one.

More

Update: Got an email from GMK yesterday that sets are currently being sorted into trays and should hopefully ship to me this week, so a slight delay from the original receipt date of 7/5.



Now that we've hit the invoicing stage, I've collapsed the rest of the info in order to make current and relevant information easier to be found.


Schedule - adjusted for PayPal issues

1/30-2/28 - GB period - Complete

3/1 - GB period is over and invoices are being sent

3/7 - Expected date of mass payment to GMK and order placement - PayPal Purgatory

3/31 - Payment sent to GMK

3/27-6/16 3/31-7/5 - Packing materials are bought and prepared, sticker designs are finalized, matching cables mini-GB happens <-- we are somewhere in here

6/16-30 - Expected dates of production completion and payment for shipment from GMK to me

6/30-7/30 7/5 7/10-7/14 - Sets are received by me, inspected for order correctness and damage, orders are packaged, invoices for shipping costs are sent as well as shipping address confirmation, orders are shipped. When this point is reached, I will be adding a more detailed list that will be updated as I reach each stage and will include individual invoice number statuses.

More

UPDATE:

Update: All shipping confirmations/invoices have been sent at this point. If you've got any questions or concerns, please contact me BEFORE paying the invoice, less work that way.

All of the orders have been shipped besides a few people that appear to not want to pay for shipping. At this point, I will have the very few extra kits I have available up for grabs on Monday at my site https://donutcables.com/ at 1500EDT/UTC-4. OOS


Pending any major issues, it's about time to mark this GB complete and successful.