SA Dasher & SA Dancer keycap sets (Completed)

zslane · 25 Nov 2015, 20:23

Muirium wrote: ↑...you could run a little GB directly?

You know me well enough, Muir, to not even ask that.

Unless it's some kind of "royal we" (and "royal you") that you're using there. In which case, I leave it to more interested parties to work out the particulars.

Muirium · 25 Nov 2015, 20:39

Ah come on, 25 kits is hardly anything! I reckon I could easily cram half that in my luggage in one go, for the inevitable DT Euro proxy…

But the question remains: have you asked Melissa about the principle? You're a DT man, uninterested in how many hundreds more copies you could sell on Reddit and GH. 25 is doable, if they are willing to entertain us!

niomosy · 25 Nov 2015, 23:24

Perhaps the sample chips might come in handy but I wouldn't see the need for getting sample caps produced.

Aside from that, what time frame is being considered for a wider promotion of this set? I wasn't positive when you wanted to open the flood gates on that and didn't want to overstep in my excitement for this set.

zslane · 26 Nov 2015, 00:24

I don't mind sending an exploratory e-mail to Melissa. I would merely be describing a GB like 7bit's, only on a much smaller scale. My SHIFT legend project was simply inserted into their production schedule like any other; I just paid my money and waited six weeks. In this case, I imagine it would just cost a lot more and take a lot longer to get through manufacturing since it's SA we're talking about here. I can't think of any reason why Melissa would object to the idea. But before I bother, it would be good to know ahead of time who to forward her response to so they can begin taking over any formal GB duties.

But do we even have 25 DT buyers ready to commit? How many SA Dancer buyers? Probably not enough to reach a 25 unit MOQ, I'm guessing.

As for the time frame for wider promotion, I think we're very close. I wanted to reach consensus among the DT community on kit composition before taking it on the road. Do we feel we've reached that milestone? I'd like to figure out how to provide for extra spacebars; do we need a SPACEBARS kit with both an extra 6.2u and 7u spacebar in it? And maybe I should add that extra 2.25u SHIFT key into the SPECIALTY kit.

And, of course, I want to improve the renders. But that involves an expensive new computer purchase that won't happen for at least two more weeks in any case.

niomosy · 26 Nov 2015, 01:03

If you do end up going the sample route, I'm not sure you would need to worry about samples of the Dancer set for the smaller purchase assuming a larger group buy is run. The Dasher set will have caps using BBJ so we would be able to see the color combination and how they work together easily enough with just the Dasher set. It's merely a change in which caps get which colors.

Muirium · 26 Nov 2015, 01:21

Ask Melissa about a realistic estimate on when a small 25 unit run could be shipped, and get an estimate on pricing at that tier. That will give you an unrealistic estimate on when to expect production to be started (double it) and hopefully a more realistic estimate on worst case scenario price. From what I gather, pricing is highly dependent on volume. That's why other GBs go nuts over promotion, even when the organisers are just plebs like us without any financial skin in the game. They simply want their GB to succeed: they want it to ship at all!

SP and is typically the bottleneck on this stuff. They're pretty well booked for SA production lately, and I wonder what their policy is about new orders for the moment. That's why it's worth asking.

If the price is bearable, then it's time to make a real interest check. Might as well get a handle on how many people here really want to join, and which kits.

If the price is untenable, then you'll need a middleman after all. Prepare for disappointment! They can always say no, too.

zslane · 26 Nov 2015, 01:57

So how do I structure the inquiry? Do I just enumerate the keys one by one, with "x25" next to each one, get the cost of each keycap at that quantity, and then calculate kit costs myself?

Muirium · 26 Nov 2015, 02:05

Dunno. But I'd guess showing her your render would do the trick.

If we really want to lowball this for ourselves, might as well ask for the whole lot combined x MOQ (presumably 25).

niomosy · 26 Nov 2015, 02:12

Out of curiosity, why would we do the 25 sets run? I understand asking the questions to get an idea on a timeline and base pricing. Is that the idea behind this or am I missing something?

Muirium · 26 Nov 2015, 02:17

To avoid all the hustle, hassle and hoop jumping of Massdrop, PMK and general GH/Reddit GB submissions. It's all a tremendous pain.

niomosy · 26 Nov 2015, 02:36

Seems like trying to handle the run yourself, even for a small one, is also a large bit of work given the need collect money and handle shipping or find someone willing to handle that piece.

There's pros/cons to each route, it seems. Not my call. So long as I can get my hands on both sets, I'm content.

zslane · 26 Nov 2015, 03:28

If I send Melissa a single render asking for a price for the whole set at x25, then that only tells us how to price the COMPLETE set, not how to price out each of its constituent kits. I recall advice to the effect of "Sell kits, not a whole set."

Never having tried setting up a drop with MassDrop I can't say how much hassle it is. It actually sounds really easy and convenient compared to the alternatives. The exercise of running a small x25-ish GB "ourselves" is really just Muirium's idea, born mostly, I imagine, from the notion that my unwillingness to run a GB could be mitigated by making it small enough. I'm willing to ask Melissa for a quote and a potential production slot timeframe, but someone else would have to run the thing. If I'm going to do it, it's going to be MassDrop or PMK, whichever is easier.

Having said that, the one advantage to a grass-roots GB that I can see is that it may be the only way to get SA Dancer off the ground. Whomever runs such a GB might be willing to pay the cost for 25 Dancer sets and sell it off over time, however long that would take. I'm not sure it would reach MOQ otherwise, to be honest. If it went up on MassDrop and got 10 orders, I'd be surprised.

niomosy · 26 Nov 2015, 06:11

Okay, I was wondering about that.

As for Dancer, I agree that it's likely not going to be as popular as the Dasher set. It's really a wait-and-see. I could see it doing reasonably well, though. I might be heavily biased, but I've seen some cyan PBT blanks do decently well. A nice SA set with BBJ for the alphas might bring people in enough to consider it. If nothing else, Dancer fails and it ends up run as a separate buy later where it can be the star and wallets have been refilled.

niomosy · 10 Dec 2015, 02:05

We've been quiet for December. Meanwhile, it looks like it will be March for me to finally try out SA profile caps. Should be fun.

benburton · 11 Dec 2015, 15:53

What's the size on the bigger R4 shift in the specialty kit? Just joined matt3o's WhiteFox drop and I would love it if it fit the 1.75u shift on the right...

7bit · 11 Dec 2015, 16:01

I can't read the whole tread, but if you want to know how it works best:

- Make a simple TKL kit.
- Make some kits with parts of the TKL, like F1-F12, cursor, modifiers, alphas etc.
- Add some special purpose kits, like function, modifiers in 1.5 units, UK or other language kits, ISO-layout kit etc.
- Maybe add a numpad kit.
- Sell all space bars separately.
- Ignore people who want blanks!

Price quotes:
Ask for prices per color and keyshape for 25, 50, 75 and 100 keys.

LeandreN · 11 Dec 2015, 16:18

7bit wrote: ↑I can't read the whole tread, but if you want to know how it works best:
- Ignore people who want blanks!

haha!

niomosy · 11 Dec 2015, 19:56

7bit wrote: ↑I can't read the whole tread, but if you want to know how it works best:

- Make a simple TKL kit.
- Make some kits with parts of the TKL, like F1-F12, cursor, modifiers, alphas etc.
- Add some special purpose kits, like function, modifiers in 1.5 units, UK or other language kits, ISO-layout kit etc.
- Maybe add a numpad kit.
- Sell all space bars separately.
- Ignore people who want blanks!

Price quotes:
Ask for prices per color and keyshape for 25, 50, 75 and 100 keys.

Ahhh, helpful information from the master. I'm taking notes for whenever I decide to put a design forward.

And, yes, definitely a numpad. Plenty enough full size boards out there and a fair number of separate numpads as well.

zslane · 11 Dec 2015, 20:42

benburton wrote: ↑What's the size on the bigger R4 shift in the specialty kit? Just joined matt3o's WhiteFox drop and I would love it if it fit the 1.75u shift on the right...

It is 1.75u.

benburton · 12 Dec 2015, 19:39

I would love to use this with the WhiteFox Aria layout with Mac keys.

The only problem is that the up arrow is Row 3 instead of Row 4. Ahh so excited for this set!

zslane · 12 Dec 2015, 20:04

Don't forget that the ARROWS kit supplies arrow keys in all the row profiles!

benburton · 13 Dec 2015, 17:07

zslane wrote: ↑Don't forget that the ARROWS kit supplies arrow keys in all the row profiles!

Maybe I'm looking at this wrong... but I don't see a R4 profile up arrow?

7bit · 13 Dec 2015, 17:30

To have all options, you need something like this:

You can have:
all row 2, 3, 4; up key row 2, or row 4, while the bottom row is row 2, 3 or 4.

zslane · 13 Dec 2015, 17:35

benburton wrote: ↑
zslane wrote: ↑Don't forget that the ARROWS kit supplies arrow keys in all the row profiles!
Maybe I'm looking at this wrong... but I don't see a R4 profile up arrow?

You know, you're right. Good catch. Let me put that on the list.

That's a helpful diagram, 7bit. Thanks!

Halvar · 13 Dec 2015, 18:53

2 moody shots for motivation:

: IMG_20141227_155645 (Large).jpg (236.9 KiB) Viewed 4151 times

zslane · 13 Dec 2015, 20:55

Here is a new render of all the kits. I've added the necessary keys to the ARROWS kit. I added a 2.25u Shift key and a set of R1 blanks to the SPECIALTY kit.

: dasher_complete_set_wood_bkgd_02.jpg (997.05 KiB) Viewed 4137 times

I'm still struggling with the lack of photorealism in my renders, but I have my new computer now and will work on lighting experiments over the holidays.

zslane · 16 Dec 2015, 19:48

BTW, I figure I don't need to put extra spacebars up in these renders. I think we can just assume that any GB for this set will include ala cart spacebars as a "kit".

Do we feel that these five kits, as shown, are ready for taking out onto the campaign trail?

7bit · 16 Dec 2015, 19:52

zslane wrote: ↑BTW, I figure I don't need to put extra spacebars up in these renders. I think we can just assume that any GB for this set will include ala cart spacebars as a "kit".

Do we feel that these five kits, as shown, are ready for taking out onto the campaign trail?

Yes, except that what you call a TKLBASE is actually a TKL. TKLBASE would be just everything without the alnum keys (mainly the dark blue stuff).

Also: You should swap WIN by SUPER.

zslane · 16 Dec 2015, 19:57

Ah, I see. Thanks for the tips, 7bit!

Elrick · 17 Dec 2015, 00:20

7bit wrote: ↑Also: You should swap WIN by SUPER.

CORRECT, you should listen to the 7bit master, we don't need anymore "WINDOWS" obscenity on our future keyboards.

Time to start using keyboards, with no reference to Redmond Central

.