类型: IC
作者: fkcaps
发布时间: 2019-06-18 02:02:49
更新时间:
2019-06-18 02:04:42
原链接:
https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=101238.0
Hi,
First post here, I hope this falls in the “Interest
checks” category I was not 100% sure…
I have discovered
the amazing mech keyboards community last year and have
loved the whole experience, digging deeper and deeper in the
rabbit hole that seems to never end!
Having started
with an UHK, after programming the different layouts, I
wanted to upgrade the keycaps to a nice set such as the ones
I see on Reddit. I stumbled on a major pain point being
non-standard keycaps size… I couldn’t believe it was so
difficult to find its
weird keycaps sizes
and how expensive it was to get these small pieces of
plastics…
The developer/entrepreneur in me was telling
me to start something to fill this gap, but I wanted to make
sure I was really solving a problem, so I have watched
silently the whole keycaps game for months and came up with
a solution that I would like to propose to you all today,
and check your interest in depth with a quick poll.
Problem(s)
“Classic”
keycaps group buys (where a designer proposes a set and
matches with vendors and buyers to make it happen) have a
few flaws that could be improved :
Time sensitive: Buying in a GB can be missed for so many reasons. Also
the time from an IC to the actual keycaps delivery is way
too long for impatient folks like myself for are
used/addicted to Amazon Prime (one may argue that
good things come to those who wait and would
probably be right).
Aftermarket is
supposed to be the solution when missing a GB, but this
system has been abused recently, and tbh watching constantly
r/mechmarket to look out for sets is not a great experience
imho.
Custom layouts and additional kits: the UHK for instance (and many custom layouts out there),
never matches any base kit, so I would need additional kits
if I wanted to get a full set. Prices add up, and I end up
with a ton of keycaps I don’t use and can’t really resell as
it would dissociate my keycaps set. This is frustrating and
very costly (if I ever get my hands on a kit that
exactly matches my layout…).
GB process: the GB process is quite complicated and even though GMK
has made it much easier, it is still complicated to run
China-based GBs so we are basically stuck with ABS Cherry
(which are very nice, but some design diversity could be
nice right?). It is also stressful for the person running
the GB, and for the buyers that may worry when the GB runner
is not responding for too long…
Solution?
On the
design/customization part of things, I am an experienced web
developer, and building a customization platform is an
awesome challenge that I am happily taking as we speak.
On
the production side, I have teamed up with a friend that has
worked in the sublimation and customization industry (not
keebs related), and we are setting up a shop (in his
basement for now!). We have looked into the different
plastic injection and keycaps production processes and have
been experimenting with the machines necessary to
industrialize dye sublimation. This experimentation is still
in progress but by the time this IC is over we will
hopefully have our first trials finished successfully.
We
are aiming to provide a
dye sub service to produce unique, custom keycaps sets
with no MoQ. Anyone would design his/her own custom keycaps set on the
website, to match a specific layout and colorway,
cherry-pick novelties or even use a specific virtual layout.
This is challenging in so many ways, but we have been
dedicating time and money to this idea for a few months now,
and won’t stop until we have something out there. This IC
intends to clarify for us what the community needs,
especially regarding:
- favorite keycaps profiles (we will probably start with only one, to extend later on)
- the weird keycaps sizes you can’t find and are desperately looking for
- the weird virtual layouts you are looking for too (I used to type on French ISO, and this is actually impossible to find)
-
the designs and designers you would like to see
featured
Well it’s all in the poll, so please take a few minutes to let us know your needs!
Concept and core values
Quality is the first word that comes to
mind. We want our product to be the best (who doesn’t?) and
have started in this mindset by carefully selecting blank
keycaps suppliers. From what we have seen, ePBT sets are the
best quality (for PBT, ABS can’t be dye-subbed anyway so we
don’t even look into it), but we haven’t been able to find
their suppliers (yet) so we will either find the supplier(s)
(PM if you have a contact!) or produce our own moulds (we
are in contact with a great manufacturer). The latter would
be costly but ultimately worth it since we would be in
control of the keycaps quality, production and prices.
Usability
is the biggest challenge we have ahead of us. The website
development is really complicated, and I have high standards
of UX. I want/need to make your keycaps customization
experience modern and satisfying, by avoiding as much
frustration as possible. The website has to make it easy for
anyone to use an existing board layout, or make his own
layout, and apply a keycaps design to it. It should also be
easy for designers to prepare design kits/themes, I can
expand on that in another post but if you are a designer and
would like to jump in, just PM.
Beautiful designs
are of course mandatory, the keycaps have to be beautiful,
but also match your tastes, as weird as they may be (we
don’t judge!). We will work hand in hand with designers to
provide what’s best out there. We would also like to propose
existing designs, if the author is OK with it.
Price
and greed
While we want to run a viable business, we
won’t let greed set our prices. Keycaps are very expensive,
way too much imo, and we would like to
ultimately offer them at a lower price point than
what is actually out there. It is possible in theory, and I
say ultimately because we will have a few things to
figure out first:
- Investment is quite costly. We are investing the bootstrap money to get the idea tested and produce our first sets, but will probably buy the rest of the equipment by running a first batch, crowdfunded by the community (just like a GB basically).
- In this customization business, automating processes is the key to low prices. Once everything runs well (the website is bug-free, the order process is flawless and the production tools run smoothly) we can have a good estimate of our actual costs and adapt our pricing to this. It should hopefully take 6 to 12 months.
-
Production will start in France, moving to Asia would
definetely help us lower the price, but we have to make
sure the quality is perfect, and have sufficient volume to
open a shop there.
This won’t happen overnight but we have managed to allow ourselves some time and money to get things going and hopefully if we get support from the community we can get this thing running.
We also plan to set a designer fee on each keycaps set. There are so many talented people out there, and we intend to give them a fair reward for what they do. I have been in touch with one of the main designers out there (I don’t know if he is okay with me quoting him so I won’t), and am looking forward to hear from other designers to test out the platform that will be soft launched to designers only.
What’s coming up?
Here is how we plan to make it happen:
Currently
- Keep looking for blank keycaps suppliers. If you have any contact/information, please let me know. We are focusing on Cherry profile for now, unless the poll proves us wrong. We could also set an MOQ to produce our own moulds, so take the poll to vote for your favorite!
- Prepare the website
- Set up production shop and processes
Phase 1: Soft launch
- Open up an alpha version of the platform to designers and adjust the design tooling to fit their needs
- Make sure we have enough designs for the public launch
- Add as many keyboard layouts as possible
Phase 2: “Batch zero”
The first batch
will be called “Batch Zero” and will allow us to bootstrap
the business by paying up for the investment costs we have
had, place our first keycaps order, and make sure my friend
can quit his job to work on production full time (he has a
back up plan if this fails!).
We will take our first
orders at this point, cash them in and place our own blank
keycaps orders. Depending on the number of orders we should
be able to produce them in 2-4 months as soon as we get the
keycaps (which could take 1-3 months depending if we find a
reliable source or need to make our moulds).
Phase 3: store is open!
Once all “Batch Zero” orders are fulfilled, we are in
business! At this point the website will start taking
regular orders and we will be in a permanent improvement,
until we manage to have smooth production processes and
orders.
If we ever reach this point, /our dream has come true/: we can work on our hobby full time. It is going to be a
tough ride, but we have had some tougher ones, and the mech
community is so full of loving and caring people, my bet is
as soon as you get your hands on those beautiful custom
keysets, it will be only rainbows and unicorns.
Answer
the poll
Again, please take a few minutes to
answer the poll!
Btw we won’t use your answers and email addresses
for anything else than making sure we deliver the best dye
sub service we can.
Thanks for reading all of this,
sorry it came out way too long, but there was a lot to say!
We hope to hear from you and drop any questions right here
