5 ms·

>There are people out there doing 6 figures selling artisanal mechanical keyboard keycaps Source?

bpicolo 9y ago
The actual numbers would definitely be a guess out of thin air, but the mechanical keyboard community is pretty massive and spends a bunch of money on this stuff. Here's a drop that is currently at 88k revenue for massdrop: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-redsuns-gmk-red-samurai-keycap-set https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-redsuns-gmk-red-samu... 638 purchases @ 139.99/set Somebody has dropped 1k on a single custom made key on the secondary market. https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/keyboard_trivia#wiki_world.27s_most_expensive https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/keyboard_t... The gaming market has produced all sorts of hobbyist businesses, and that's a market actually big enough to see a few potentially billion dollar businesses. I'm not entirely sure whether something like DXRacer[0] would fall into line of a hobbyist/enthusiast business but it feels like it should to me (and I'm mentioning it because it feels like a larger sort of hobbyist business). It's definitely in that realm in terms of having a pretty specific target market and a relatively higher price point. [0] https://www.dxracer.com/ https://www.dxracer.com/
- zachruss92 9y ago
  I'm one of those people who admittedly spend way too much money on keyboards :) I don't have any artesian keycaps, but I have bough aftermarket (?) keycaps that uses plastic of a higher quality. You can tell the difference. There are also people in the DIY mechanical keyboard market selling circuit boards, plates, cases, etc... Again, it's a really niche market, but people are willing to spend a lot more money at a hobbyist/enthusiast level.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    >I don't have any artesian keycaps Artisanal. Artesian means related to a special type of water wells :-)
    - karlshea 9y ago
      ‘Artisan’ in the MK community.
    - zamber 9y ago
      `Bespoke` in the marketing community.
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    I'm there too, I have 4 $100+ keyboards now, and 1 of them is an "ortholinear" style (keys are in a perfect grid) that I built from a kit and had custom keycaps printed with names of programs on them. With some semi-custom software I use it like a physical "whole computer" shortcut pad. I now have a button that can launch a terminal window, a button that launches HN, one that does a git pull on all my current projects, etc... Like you said, it's a niche market, but it's one where most people are happy to pay the higher prices for something more tailored to their needs, and it's a rare "physical" area where a guy in his garage can compete with big companies. I just recently got a new 3d printer, and I think after I get it more tuned I will be able to print fairly good quality keycaps. If they are good enough, I might try selling custom made-to-order keycaps if there is any interest.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - roel_v 9y ago
      Where can you get custom printing on keycaps? I have an Ergodox but what I really can't get used to (even after 2 years of full time use) is the lack of labeling for the special keys. I've looked for years for ways to do custom printing or labeling but all methods I found suck.
      - Klathmon 9y ago
        WASDkeyboards offers printed singles in multiple ways. They aren't the best quality (they are UV coated ABS, I used their keycaps on another keyboard and the coating started to wear through after about a year of daily use, the text is still fine though), but they are the king of custom printing right now in my opinion. You can go to [0] to get just text on a keycap with a fairly easy web-ui to describe the text, position, and size you want it. Or you can take it entirely into your own hands and go to [1] to give them a vector file that they will custom print on to the keys. They also offer that service in a "full keyboard set" option [2], so you don't need to do a ton of keys individually if you want to do the whole keyboard (although the full sets most likely won't fit your profile, but they do fit a good number of more standard keyboard layouts) Again, they aren't the best quality, but they do a good job, and they take care of their customers. Plus the amount of customization you can do is pretty fucking insane. [3] is always my go-to example for just how customizable they are. Not only full color printing, but also individual key plastic color selection. [0] http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keycap-singles/custom-text-cherry-mx-keycaps.html http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keyc... [1] http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keycap-singles/custom-art-cherry-mx-keycaps.html http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keyc... [2] http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/keycap-set/104-key-cherry-mx-keycap-set.html http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/keycap-set/1... [3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/wasdkeyboards/28965975050/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wasdkeyboards/28965975050/
- diabeetusman 9y ago
  That set is actually produced by GMK, a large-ish German company [0]. There is a designer who gets a cut (I'm not sure the percentage off the top of my head), but it's almost definitely not enough to live off of. [0] https://www.gmk-electronic-design.de/en.html https://www.gmk-electronic-design.de/en.html
funkaster 9y ago
I don't have a source, but I wouldn't be surprised. I used to make custom fighting sticks (I even designed the firmware, which for me was the most fun part) and sold them north of $300 each. They were gone really fast. I didn't continue because it was time consuming and we just had a son :)
- insulanus 9y ago
  Why did your fighting sticks have firmware?
  - JustSomeNobody 9y ago
    Aren't all sticks made out of firmware? But I, too, am very curious to hear the answer.
  - softawre 9y ago
    Fighting sticks - like gamepads for fighting games, maybe? https://www.frys.com/product/8805412 https://www.frys.com/product/8805412
  - egypturnash 9y ago
    “Fightsticks” - joysticks for fighting games - often have the ability to program macros into their buttons, so as to make it easier to pull off the lengthy input sequences these games are built around.
  - funkaster 9y ago
    Oh... it's basically a joystick. Fight stick -> arcade like joystick that is usually used on fighting games. The firmware was basically usb-hid to behave like either joystick or keyboard. It also had some fancy de-bouncing code for the buttons.
castis 9y ago
Most of these keycap sets are kinda pricey, and this company is apparently doing pretty well. https://pimpmykeyboard.com/ https://pimpmykeyboard.com/
- Double_a_92 9y ago
  How are they not getting replaced by chinese manufacturers? From a naive point of view those don't seem to hard to manufacture.
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    Some are, some aren't (e.g. KeyCool). Lots of these have low production counts.
    - sleepybrett 9y ago
      Maxkey, Tai Hao and others in the chinese market are making their presence felt, but generally the quality just isn't there for the enthusiast community.
      - nerdponx 9y ago
        Tai Hao is really coming into their own with the Cubic keycap profile. They're doing for keycaps what Kailh is doing for switches.
  - ljosa 9y ago
    They are, but from the low end. Often the quality is not quite there: the colors are off, the legends and not properly aligned, the plastic is warped, the keys not quite aligned, and so on. It is probably because the production runs are so small that the only way to make a decent profit is to order a blind production run and ship it out no matter what it looks like. Higher-quality low-cost options are starting to appear as this new market matures. In contrast, the group buys in the enthusiast community are works of love, with multiple rounds of checks and adjustments to get it right. Sometimes facilitators like Massdrop force projects out the door because of cost even though the creator of the design wants to do more rounds of tweaking are necessary, and it shows. (Example: the recent /dev/tty keycap set.)
jetpacktuxedo 9y ago
I mean it isn't like any of these makers are sharing their tax returns or anything, but for example eat_the_food is the designer and manufacturer behind "Nightcaps" [0]. He ran an event called "Poisoned summer" where he had 80 days of "micro batch" sales, where each sale was for somewhere between one and fifteen or so caps, priced between $60-80 each. Most days the sale was only open for about one minute, and in that minute he would have hundreds of entries to randomly draw "winners" from, and then the winners would get to buy the keycaps. I'm pretty sure he hit six figures in sales on those 80 days of sales alone, and those were not his only sales throughout the year. He isn't even making keycaps full-time yet, he still has a day job. Several other members of the mechanical keyboard community (especially in the artisan keycap subsection of the community) have managed to turn their keyboard hobby into a full-time job and make a pretty decent living out of it. [0] https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79513.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79513.0

The actual numbers would definitely be a guess out of thin air, but the mechanical keyboard community is pretty massive and spends a bunch of money on this stuff. Here's a drop that is currently at 88k revenue for massdrop: https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-redsuns-gmk-red-samurai-keycap-set https://www.massdrop.com/buy/massdrop-x-redsuns-gmk-red-samu... 638 purchases @ 139.99/set Somebody has dropped 1k on a single custom made key on the secondary market. https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/keyboard_trivia#wiki_world.27s_most_expensive https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/wiki/keyboard_t... The gaming market has produced all sorts of hobbyist businesses, and that's a market actually big enough to see a few potentially billion dollar businesses. I'm not entirely sure whether something like DXRacer[0] would fall into line of a hobbyist/enthusiast business but it feels like it should to me (and I'm mentioning it because it feels like a larger sort of hobbyist business). It's definitely in that realm in terms of having a pretty specific target market and a relatively higher price point. [0] https://www.dxracer.com/ https://www.dxracer.com/

zachruss92 9y ago
I'm one of those people who admittedly spend way too much money on keyboards :) I don't have any artesian keycaps, but I have bough aftermarket (?) keycaps that uses plastic of a higher quality. You can tell the difference. There are also people in the DIY mechanical keyboard market selling circuit boards, plates, cases, etc... Again, it's a really niche market, but people are willing to spend a lot more money at a hobbyist/enthusiast level.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >I don't have any artesian keycaps Artisanal. Artesian means related to a special type of water wells :-)
  - karlshea 9y ago
    ‘Artisan’ in the MK community.
  - zamber 9y ago
    `Bespoke` in the marketing community.
- Klathmon 9y ago
  I'm there too, I have 4 $100+ keyboards now, and 1 of them is an "ortholinear" style (keys are in a perfect grid) that I built from a kit and had custom keycaps printed with names of programs on them. With some semi-custom software I use it like a physical "whole computer" shortcut pad. I now have a button that can launch a terminal window, a button that launches HN, one that does a git pull on all my current projects, etc... Like you said, it's a niche market, but it's one where most people are happy to pay the higher prices for something more tailored to their needs, and it's a rare "physical" area where a guy in his garage can compete with big companies. I just recently got a new 3d printer, and I think after I get it more tuned I will be able to print fairly good quality keycaps. If they are good enough, I might try selling custom made-to-order keycaps if there is any interest.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Where can you get custom printing on keycaps? I have an Ergodox but what I really can't get used to (even after 2 years of full time use) is the lack of labeling for the special keys. I've looked for years for ways to do custom printing or labeling but all methods I found suck.
    - Klathmon 9y ago
      WASDkeyboards offers printed singles in multiple ways. They aren't the best quality (they are UV coated ABS, I used their keycaps on another keyboard and the coating started to wear through after about a year of daily use, the text is still fine though), but they are the king of custom printing right now in my opinion. You can go to [0] to get just text on a keycap with a fairly easy web-ui to describe the text, position, and size you want it. Or you can take it entirely into your own hands and go to [1] to give them a vector file that they will custom print on to the keys. They also offer that service in a "full keyboard set" option [2], so you don't need to do a ton of keys individually if you want to do the whole keyboard (although the full sets most likely won't fit your profile, but they do fit a good number of more standard keyboard layouts) Again, they aren't the best quality, but they do a good job, and they take care of their customers. Plus the amount of customization you can do is pretty fucking insane. [3] is always my go-to example for just how customizable they are. Not only full color printing, but also individual key plastic color selection. [0] http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keycap-singles/custom-text-cherry-mx-keycaps.html http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keyc... [1] http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keycap-singles/custom-art-cherry-mx-keycaps.html http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/printed-keyc... [2] http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/keycap-set/104-key-cherry-mx-keycap-set.html http://www.wasdkeyboards.com/index.php/products/keycap-set/1... [3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/wasdkeyboards/28965975050/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/wasdkeyboards/28965975050/
diabeetusman 9y ago
That set is actually produced by GMK, a large-ish German company [0]. There is a designer who gets a cut (I'm not sure the percentage off the top of my head), but it's almost definitely not enough to live off of. [0] https://www.gmk-electronic-design.de/en.html https://www.gmk-electronic-design.de/en.html

funkaster 9y ago

I don't have a source, but I wouldn't be surprised. I used to make custom fighting sticks (I even designed the firmware, which for me was the most fun part) and sold them north of $300 each. They were gone really fast. I didn't continue because it was time consuming and we just had a son :)

insulanus 9y ago
Why did your fighting sticks have firmware?
- JustSomeNobody 9y ago
  Aren't all sticks made out of firmware? But I, too, am very curious to hear the answer.
- softawre 9y ago
  Fighting sticks - like gamepads for fighting games, maybe? https://www.frys.com/product/8805412 https://www.frys.com/product/8805412
- egypturnash 9y ago
  “Fightsticks” - joysticks for fighting games - often have the ability to program macros into their buttons, so as to make it easier to pull off the lengthy input sequences these games are built around.
- funkaster 9y ago
  Oh... it's basically a joystick. Fight stick -> arcade like joystick that is usually used on fighting games. The firmware was basically usb-hid to behave like either joystick or keyboard. It also had some fancy de-bouncing code for the buttons.

castis 9y ago

Most of these keycap sets are kinda pricey, and this company is apparently doing pretty well. https://pimpmykeyboard.com/ https://pimpmykeyboard.com/

Double_a_92 9y ago
How are they not getting replaced by chinese manufacturers? From a naive point of view those don't seem to hard to manufacture.
- bpicolo 9y ago
  Some are, some aren't (e.g. KeyCool). Lots of these have low production counts.
  - sleepybrett 9y ago
    Maxkey, Tai Hao and others in the chinese market are making their presence felt, but generally the quality just isn't there for the enthusiast community.
    - nerdponx 9y ago
      Tai Hao is really coming into their own with the Cubic keycap profile. They're doing for keycaps what Kailh is doing for switches.
- ljosa 9y ago
  They are, but from the low end. Often the quality is not quite there: the colors are off, the legends and not properly aligned, the plastic is warped, the keys not quite aligned, and so on. It is probably because the production runs are so small that the only way to make a decent profit is to order a blind production run and ship it out no matter what it looks like. Higher-quality low-cost options are starting to appear as this new market matures. In contrast, the group buys in the enthusiast community are works of love, with multiple rounds of checks and adjustments to get it right. Sometimes facilitators like Massdrop force projects out the door because of cost even though the creator of the design wants to do more rounds of tweaking are necessary, and it shows. (Example: the recent /dev/tty keycap set.)

jetpacktuxedo 9y ago

I mean it isn't like any of these makers are sharing their tax returns or anything, but for example eat_the_food is the designer and manufacturer behind "Nightcaps" [0]. He ran an event called "Poisoned summer" where he had 80 days of "micro batch" sales, where each sale was for somewhere between one and fifteen or so caps, priced between $60-80 each. Most days the sale was only open for about one minute, and in that minute he would have hundreds of entries to randomly draw "winners" from, and then the winners would get to buy the keycaps. I'm pretty sure he hit six figures in sales on those 80 days of sales alone, and those were not his only sales throughout the year. He isn't even making keycaps full-time yet, he still has a day job. Several other members of the mechanical keyboard community (especially in the artisan keycap subsection of the community) have managed to turn their keyboard hobby into a full-time job and make a pretty decent living out of it. [0] https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79513.0 https://geekhack.org/index.php?topic=79513.0