More kits seemed to be priced at 250 MOQ, with some beating MOQ on the first day. Thousands of sets sold yet remain priced at a entry level MOQ. Sumi, Ishtar, Shoko, Bento.
I find my buying trends have changed. If there is a set I like, e.g. Red Dragon, I’ll only purchase the base and opting out of space bars and novelties. The novelties are sick btw; however, imo, I’m already spending what I perceive to be an extra $20 for the base.
There’s a surge in popularity and I get it, strike while the iron’s hot. Just feeling particularly grumps tonight I guess.
Most of the time, the “250 MOQ Pricing” isn’t the true 250 MOQ Pricing. Many vendors who are able to sell sets multiple hundreds over 250 MOQ (or even through 4 digit sales numbers), price their sets under the assumption they will hit a higher MOQ. So often the “250 MOQ” price you see, might actually be the 500 MOQ pricing, etc.
This is the usual reason why you won’t see any kind of price reductions.
A very large secondary reason is price changing, and GB commitments. In older GBs, prices would fluctuate based on MOQ. This often meant it vendors couldn’t send out invoices until the GB was wrapped up. This means people had a second chance to completely cancel and possibly mess up MOQ price targets if enough people didn’t commit.
On the other hand, if people paid upfront right away and the prices were reduced, the vendors had to take careful considerations on who to refund and what amount based on which MOQ was met.
All of these reasons made business difficult for vendors in the past. Fortunately with our community’s growth and consistency in hitting decent purchasing numbers, many vendors can put an upfront price with the assumption an MOQ pricing farther along the way will be met.
Of course this is only one way to see all of this.
It would be true that if vendors are pricing for a higher MOQ and it isn’t met, they might be barely breaking even or losing money depending on how they value their time/labor.
On the other hand, if they hit an even higher MOQ than expected due to good marketing and good public reception/perception, than they gain to profit much more than they may have anticipated which helps them immensely.
I think compared to 8 years ago when the average price for a GMK set was $150+shipping, we’re doing pretty good today
It would be nice, if we could just get to the point, where high volume sets are kept in stock at around $100, with out having limited compatibility (Looking at you Drop.com).
FWIW, I defiantly saw a price drop going form Pulse SA R2 to the Jukebox group buy, that MassDrop hosted. Pulse SA cost me around 250-300 and the Jukebox set cost me around 300, with the addition of two extra base kits. (bought everything, except for ISO and language / not qwerty kits.)
It’s probably the amazon effect, but but I can’t justify the desk mat prices. To me, $10+$5 to $15+$5 is what I could justify, if it’s a 2-4mm thick desk mat with an ok surface. If it’s documented as 5mm thick with a premium surface and soft stitched edges, you might get me to go to $25+$5 to $30+$5.
Deskmats are a really tough thing to ship; shipping them in a tube makes for fairly stable but kind of weird costs because of the inconvenient shape, putting that tube in a box makes for weird costs because of dimensional weight.
And, yeah, Amazon got a lot of folks used to bizarrely low (loss-eating) shipping rates and it’s really tough to unscramble our brains from their norm of “we just lose money on this because we can make that money elsewhere due to our scale”.
Deskmats in general weigh more than most keyboards (Average deskmat packaged and shipped is 3-4 lb / 1.5-2 kg). If the price is lower - it means the deskmat is being subsidized and the shipping price is hidden into the product price somewhere.
i feel y’all. im saying im cool with GBs putting that cost into the upfront mat price as needed, perhaps giving me a slight shipping discount for the fact that im buying the mat up front. also, don’t the companies running group buys have some kind of bulk corporate shipping account? just curious maybe someone out here knows.
The volumes aren’t that high so there is maybe some discount but it’s probably not that much. also ime the real good discounts are to business addresses and not people’s homes
I get what you’re saying, Huey. Why list it as 250 MOQ if it’s priced at 500 MOQ? The tiered pricing model that Drop used to do seems like ancient history and I don’t think anyone is expecting it. I personally do not want it make it more difficult on vendors; however, this is their job. Also, I decided against buying Red Dragon. Afterthought is why did Ren switch to Canon when his past “Avatar” sales were all Dixie? Also sitting out Noire at $140 for the base kit. No!
Deskmats… TKC charges $25 + shipping while most other GB charge $17 + shipping. Depending on loc you may get hit a little harder. With NK_ I get shipping and taxes. Still under $25 and still better than Kono…
Truthfully, at this point listing MOQ only creates the appearance of a moral obligation to purchase.
People who are “in the know”, will know a set will make it. People who are newer, may look at it and their heartstrings may be tugged to think, “oh, I better help this set make MOQ so it will be produced!”
Displaying that there is an MOQ is mostly an ‘old habit’ so to speak from back when there weren’t as many dedicated vendors and many sets were run by folks in their living rooms. Nowadays with dedicated vendors, it’s pretty hard to imagine sets not making MOQ aside from the couple of exceptions that exist.
Ultimately it’s only a matter of time before vendors start dropping the MOQ numbers from the pages and have the GBs for keysets listed as their flat price. The MOQ doesn’t matter anymore (to the customer at least), just the GB price of the set IMO.
Definitely true, and as it is their job, they want to make their job simpler as well. Just like with any business that orders in scale, wholesalers may offer various bulk rates for retailers, but regardless of which bulk rate the retailer gets, they’ll be charging the same amount to the customer for the end item. The keyset GBs of today practically work the same way. The only exception is the rise of pricing due to scarcity and the inherent risk gone.
Deskmat shipping prices . It’s a harsh reality I think we’ll have to accept until shipping prices can somehow drop (maybe with the eventual end of covid-like conditions someday).
. It’s a harsh reality I think we’ll have to accept until shipping prices can somehow drop (maybe with the eventual end of covid-like conditions someday).