GMK CYL Delta Round 2 - We need your feedback! (WS2 replacement color)

Context Around Price Drops

Historically, when individuals and older custom keyboard companies like Massdrop (before they became Drop) ran GMK (or SP, or anything) group buys, the sets were advertised at a certain price, and if a certain quantity of sets was reached, savings were passed on to the customer. Typically, the manufacturer provides price drops at certain MOQs (minimum order quantities), and the concept was to use those price drops to also drop the price for customers.

But as the hobby progressed, vendors started moving away from price drops. There are many possible reasons for this, and I can't speak for every vendor, but I can explain why CannonKeys hasn't historically done price drops.

First, price drops were difficult to implement. Some people took approaches of using a google form to collect orders, then separately invoiced each participant based on how many orders were collected on the form. This had the downside of some people failing to pay their invoices - putting the whole group buy at risk. Others ran storefronts like CannonKeys - but faced the potential of having to manually process hundreds to over a thousand refunds. Massdrop had the best system for price drops - they would collect credit card information, and only charge participants at the end - but this was a highly custom solution which even today would be hard for many custom keyboard companies to implement.

Today - CannonKeys has a team of 20+ people, which means if we end up having to manually process hundreds of refunds - we have the capacity to do it. Before, this wasn't the case.

Second, as interest in the mechanical keyboard hobby increased, it became possible to price keycaps at higher MOQs by default. For a lot of newer customers who weren't familiar with price drops, a lower list price looks more appealing. As soon as one vendor started pricing their sets at higher MOQs, competition encouraged other vendors do the same. As an example - someone new to the hobby looking at GMK Voyage might ask why GMK Olivia was so much cheaper, for the same number of keys, and wouldn't necessarily understand that one set had price drops implemented and the other didn't. And while designs aren't the same, someone might like two designs and use price as a tiebreaker - so a lower list price can make a big difference.

Unfortunately, many companies made the wrong bet. They priced keycaps at higher MOQs, but those sets didn't hit those MOQs. Many of them ended up buying those sets out, counting on being able to make the money back by selling extras. In the worst cases, we can see how that worked out for them.

Now that CannonKeys can implement price drops, it's less risky for us to price a set at a 250 MOQ and provide refunds to customers if we hit 500 MOQ compared to pricing the set at 500 MOQ to begin with. And with the departure of many vendors, and lower volume of GMK CYL sets being run - there isn't as much competitive pressure to risk pricing at a higher MOQ by default.

Finally, implementing price drops also required vendors to post sales numbers of each set. This doesn't seem like a big deal - but it does put vendors that post sales numbers at a competitive disadvantage compared to those who don't. And while GMK quotes, designer payouts, and other sensitive pieces of business related information are supposed to be protected under NDA - word still gets around. So basically, if you post sales numbers, other vendors can see how many sets got sold, how many extras you bought... and get a pretty good estimate of your revenue and sales. This allows them to adapt their plans accordingly. I forget which vendor initially stopped posting numbers - but once they did many other vendors (including CannonKeys) followed suit.

All of this is still true today - but the market for custom keyboards and keycaps has expanded to a place where we're not all so reliant on GMK anymore. From 2019-2021, if someone knew your GMK sales numbers, they probably could probably deduce a lot of information about your business. As we've diversified and as GMK has become a smaller part of everything we do, the impact of other vendors and competitors knowing our GMK sales number isn't as great -- which opens up the possibility of price drops.