deskthority

Right, last time we worked it out that it's better if I send the individual orders. With marking the customs forms as goods with DE origination and a particular value I believe the majority skated by without extra costs.
If people would rather have me group up orders and have them sent to a person for remailing thats fine too.

IvanIvanovich wrote: It's a big problem to please everyone. I really tried, but always there is nothing but complaining.
....
How can I win?

You are right, it is impossible to please everyone. Latch on an international crowd and you have quite a dilemma where it seems that people don't want to pay GMK prices for caps they have no use for.

If pleasing everyone and making everyone happy means you win, it is going to be difficult. Now, if making some people happy is good enough, see how orders go for a couple of weeks. If the numbers are too low, re-evaluate the sets being offered. I think people would be okay with this. There are interest checks, and there are true interest checks where people put their money down. Dealing with GMK is still a fairly new thing around here and with their high MOQ and pricing, GMK group buys may require a bit of revising to how the usual group buy system works around here.

Yes you are right. But this is the catch22. To make the high MOQ we need to get international participation, and that means more than US ANSI. How far can we strip down the language specific keys without making them too compromised? It seems like this is the biggest hot point and what is making the cost most increased.

Ok, I understand the problem. But still need all 4 sets, to build one tkl keyboard? That can't be the goal either way.
I still could not understand why you build this kind of sets? And I did not get answers to my question.

Is there are minimum price per set to make a GMK Order?

Trim the fat! One bigass alphanumeric set with some compromises to reduce the keys as much as possible while still keeping all languages proposed.
Thoughts?

I like the more complete packs, I don't mind paying a bit more but getting all keys with 100% correct legends.
I'm not sure if I like this trimmed down version. Because the keys that I have to look at the legends most are those which have the third layers

Remove spacebars from modifier set. And just add a set called SPACEBAR PACK. (You will hit spacebar's moq anyway.)

I have realized a positive thing with having a large language pack and that is that you have a bigger market if you want to sell a set later.

So you all will order all 4 packs?
Than we could make only one pack

I would like to know what people order for what? Please let me know, thank you.

Trim:
numpad off
R1 with Numbers only off (you get your R1 Numbers in the lang. packs)

If the packs remains as they are now i'll buy
Alpha base set + MODIFIER pack + NAV pack
or
3x DE/DK/ES/IT/NO/PT/SF language pack

If you make something like this

I won't buy anything

Please rearrange MODIFIER pack and NAV pack, you can't please everybody and you won't please anybody if don't reach the MOQ

@pasph
so you have double F-Keys and R1 with numbers only...
and missing a lot of symbol keys, even for an ANSI layout. Make no sense to me...

you are right, i said if the pack remains as they are and i have no other choice
i really hope for a MODIFIER pack with also the basic nav Keys and maybe an extra nav pack with all Others oddities like double F-Keys.
Now OR i buy alphas without regional symbols (no legends are better than wrong ones) OR i buy only lang pack and try to add those Keys to the sets i already have
I'm ok supporting each Other spending more but can't really bear those prices.
Mixing regional with blanks and row with only numbers really makes no sense to me

I'd like to mould the person who came up with the horrible amount of ISO variations.

//e
btw what would happen if you combined langpacks and threw out _all_ layer 3 legends?
I guess a regional number row is something a lot of people would want. And from a quick glance it should already cut a ton of double and similar keys.

call me crazy, but for the sake of simplicity I would make just one big pack

Exactly! Who doesn't like «ÒÔÓÌÏÅÛÇÊÊËÈÆ»? That's your MOQ right there. ISO and ANSI for all!

What's the reason for not going with a Dolch color scheme? It's popular, not available and have never been done with this caps in these languages before (right?). It could help reach MOQ.

It would be good to have the packs go better together by having a better color combination and not so many overlapping keys (F-keys, number only row 1). It would be a more compelling offer as you would only need caps from this GB to replace all caps on a keyboard and get a good color scheme.

I'm all for the big language pack. It's a lot of keys but many people is going to want it anyway to get there layout right. The leftovers can be kept to increase the second hand value.

I'm generally positive to this GB as it hits the two first point on my wish list: language pack, GMK

Edit:
In short

* Keep language packs as is.
* Change color scheme. (Dolch maybe?)
* Remove redundant keys from alpha set (F-keys, number only row 1)

matt3o wrote:call me crazy, but for the sake of simplicity I would make just one big pack

+1!

- F1-F12 should go into a FUNCTION key kit with a lot of extra function keys, maybe along with cursor keys.
- All modifiers should go into a MODIFIER kit, maybe along with cursor keys.
- All language specific keys should go into the LANGUAGE kit.
- Separate NUMERIC kit with all the numpad stuff and some extras in that direction (parenthesis keys, numrow with mumbers only etc)
- A-Z plus the ANSI-layout alnum keys should go into the ALPHA kit.

Make the color just white on grey for all keys and not this grey/black nonsense. It does not look right!!!

If we go unified on the alpha pack like I suggested it has the same amount of keys as alpha base + EURO pack.
That is what it looks like when we throw out all the keys with the 3rd legends more or less. The only double that is left is the *+ with ] only because I don't think the ÉÈ exists without [.
If we exchange the plain numrow for least amount of numbers with shifted punctuation legends we exchange 10 keys for 23 (I think?) still without any of the near duplicates with 3rd legends.
White on black mods+nav idea is people can buy those to adapt white on black sets that already exist that have wrong size/profile keys.
White on grey is what won the voting during the IC phase.
No matter what kind of packaging of keys occurs or what is offered there will be people that think it's a dumb combination/packaging and won't like it.

You right that it's impossible to please everyone and that it has to be a compromise but I think taking away the third legends is a bad choice. I rather pay some more to get them.

I would rather pay more to have everything be proper as well, but it seems less people agree with this and would rather it be cheaper.

Another trim: prn scrn, scroll lock and pause with all keys under move to the mod pack. So tkl users could get off the nav pack.
Otherwise make only 2 kids with only lang. differs. That would be consistent.

I might be completely wrong, but as they are now I doubt the language packs will ever reach the 400 MOQ. Anyway thanks for organizing this. I'll try to get all the sets.

7bit wrote:Make the color just white on grey for all keys and not this grey/black nonsense. It does not look right!!!

Agree on that.
I think combining a WoB set with dark grey mods would look nice, so it would still work for the WoB people looking to fill in gaps.

My feeling is that Ivan put more thought into this in the last months than all the complainers on GH together.

Especially, to me it makes no sense to listen to those people that are content with Sherry packs anyway. This GB has never been designed for these people, but has been designed from the ground up to reach MOQs in a marketplace where many pure ANSI people are already content with what Originative offers. This GB is for people who want more -- be it international layouts, special layouts, differen colours or whatever. Even though the prices turned out higher than I hoped for -- these people are ready to pay more,

Maybe combining the GB into only two sets (alpha+lang and mod+nav) could help, I don't know. Maybe some languages really don't have enough interested people to warrant including their keys. But these are minor points that won't change the total price much. All in all I vote for keeping most things as they are and see how orders go. I'm all against the premature big compromises that some people on GH propose.

7bit's ideas seem to totally ignore GMK's MOQs.

I'm going to push for this to be the one and only alpha set option. I think I've made it as small as possible while bringing in the shifted punctuation on the numrow. Can we live with this for usability? All the languages are still in, just many of the 3rd legend otherwise redundant keys are gone. Price will still be a factor but otherwise?
If it's still too high, I suppose we will start down the path of cutting languages that have the least support from userbase.

IF it comes down to cutting it so much that it starts looking like US ANSI only 87set, I'm just going to walk away.

I think matt3o's idea is the best:

one kit only, containg EVERYTHING.

What a few keys more than once?

If (and only if) orders is very close to MOQ, people can start to buy extras. The MOQ order must be fully paid before this is allowed, so nobody can jump off anymore.


ps: No, I did not take any drugs, I seriously mean this!

The above "one alpha set for all" is cool. But pls dont walk away if it doesnt work out, as there are still the BoW mods, which hopefully make it.

I can only speak for me, but I would miss the third legends on the num row in DE layout on 7890, because the brackets {[]} are needed a lot in programming and not that easy to remember where they are. I don't care much for other 3rd-order-legends like ²³~@€| because they are much easier to remember.

The more fundamental question is if this really brings costs down so much that these compromises make sense. I'm afraid that many people that are complaining now about the price won't buy anyway, so the compromises won't help that much in reaching MOQ.

I think, too it should be done right, as long as 7bit-layout is supported.

The price per key seems to be around 0.5 and 0.6 EUR, so 400*0.6=240 EUR per key order. Maybe some of us can sponsor some keys ...

Offering all keys also as blanks would be also nice, especially for the modifiers, if it is not possible to have at least Hyper and Super.

What about square, triangle, circle and diamond for modifiers (1.5 and 1 units only)?

These would go well with all the other symbols on the other keys.