this industry is begging to be revolutionized

Most of the pics I've seen of the finished product have been consistent in showing the poor transitioning of the gradient effect from the middle row upwards. Shame, that's the primary selling point for this set... to me, at least.

just return the key sets

There are two rough threads here: the pricing (they certainly aren't cheap, but hey we get that) and the kitting. It would have been nice to offer just a base kit that is close to a basic usable ~65 layout. You could still offer alphas and tkl separately, but it would have been nice to just get a basic functional set. TBH, i love your design and set - everything about it, but when you start throwing the stuff into the cart suddenly you're at $180 for just a functional set. The novelties are awesome so throw that in and you're at $250 and then well, that stopped me and I bailed on the whole thing. I would have bought it if I could just get a basic functional kit and the novelties. On the flip side, people do need to watch what they're buying with keycaps to make sure they're covered. This hobby isn't cheap and there are a lot of gotchas.

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I totally get you. It's definitely a balancing act. Not sure if you've gone thru an exercise of configuring a few keyboard types to see what the pricing looks like.

From my perspective it definitely starts to feel like a bit of a cash grab after adding 3+ different kits at $50-70+ USD each.

Eg: I've got a Moonlander and a separate numpad, so bare minimum I'd need the alpha, numpad, ergo, and ortho kits just to provide complete (actually, not quite co.plete but close enough) coverage for a total of $270USD before shipping and taxes. Kono recommends getting their 3rd party insurance for an extra $5 USD and shipping would cost $35 USD. That's $310USD before tax, which is perilously close to what I paid for the keyboard itself shipped, taxes in, nevermind the numpad.

I'm not saying you should simply lower your prices or that you don't deserve fair compensation for your (excellent) work, but I have to wonder how much opportunity cost you're eating with that kitting setup.

Is there efficiencies lost in the low volumes? Are retailers taking a big markup? What would make your life easier?

Yup. Sometimes i see keycaps for like 30$ and itd only a few keys. And the modifiers are another set. You gotta be careful

The whole community needs to stop giving into these ridiculous pricing schemes.

Try your luck on r/mechmarket maybe someone there is selling

Hang on, when did these start shipping? I ordered some from mykeyboard.eu in May 2021 and completely forgot about it!

this is a case of the consumer not being informed.

no one who has built a keyboard would think that alphas + novelties would fill any custom keyboard.

consumer is mad cause consumer is ignorant, somehow that becomes the vendor or designer's problem.

no one said keycaps were cheap.

How are you finding the colours IRL?

Some have mentioned they look somewhat “not as good” as all the rendered photos online (understandable)

They seem to look quite good in your photo.

Can we all send u one dollar and boom a hundred people do it and ur chillin

No reason to insult OP. It’s an easy mistake to make for someone who hasn’t bought keycaps that have been kitted out like this. Remember, a huge majority of people purchase full keycap sets. Yes, it’s important to double check your keyboard to make sure you’re getting everything you need and that it all fits. But there’s no need to make someone feel bad about making an honest mistake. We were all learning new things about the hobby at some point (and we’ve probably all made purchases we regret or that were not as informed as they could have been). Ease up.

Appropriate that a specialty coffee themed set is kitted in a way that makes sense to no one but the "literati" who are prepared to lay down their lives in defense of anti-consumer pricing from an in brand.

> For once, I can actually buy the alphas, and an ISO or NorDe kit and use the damned key set without having to buy ridiculous kits I’ll never need.

you would also have to buy the TKL set too, with all of its duplicates and ANSI Enter key, unless Nordic keyboards don't use Tab, Backspace, or modifiers.

Novelities cost way more and to have those included... Nah.

But sure, it doesn't cost that much more extra for a full set of regular keycaps that the factories have molds for but then the sets would still go for alot. They would just never sell a full keycap set for the price of Alphas.

Wow, crazy coincidence! I suppose there's likely not thaaaaaaat many of us out there who worked in Noritsu photo labs though :)

As a Nordic language user, all I can say is nee-nee-nee-naw.

For once, I can actually buy the alphas, and an ISO or NorDe kit and use the damned key set without having to buy ridiculous kits I’ll never need.

The standard way of kitting only benefits US ANSI users, and nobody else. For once, you’re not getting benefits, so your complaining. sigh

The TKL kit is rather slim to be honest, I split out numpad, specialties and iso from it. Buying alphas + tkl is simple to understand (maybe not?) and it provides good coverage without wasting a lot of keys.

As you can see in this post and the comments simply splitting the alphas already got people confused, you have to find a balance between flexibility and not confusing people with a ton of options.

In any case I'm not saying the kitting couldn't be improved, but I think it's good enough and it's not anti consumer.

I get what you're saying and as an ortho-ergo user, I appreciate it.

That said, the flip side is that nearly everyone needs Enter, Tab, 2 Shift keys and Backspace.

Those core keys in their standard sizes are only available as part of a huge set containing multiple sizes for modifiers, capslock, backspace, and even Up, in addition to F-keys and everything else. IMHO this runs directly counter to your argument.

By not offering a basic set of core keys at a modest price, most customers have no choice but to pay a substantial amount for a lot of keys that they won't ever need.

For a photographer shooting digital, if they installed our color profiles on a computer with a calibrated monitor, the print output would more closely match what they see on their screen. It's just a way to try to eliminate some variance between display and output since every screen and every printer is different.

Honestly....the people commenting and complaining about how the kitting is anti-consumer clearly know nothing about SP SA kitting and pricing.

I'm the designer, wanted to clarify a few things since people seem to think this kitting is anti consumer and designed to make you spend more, while it's actually the opposite.

The alphas are split from the TKL mods so people that don't need standard mods don't have to buy a ton of keycaps they don't need, they can just get alphas + ergo kit for example. And there's no price difference, if it was one big base kit with alphas and tkl mods it would cost the same in total, just would be less flexible.

Apart from that the novelties kit is just that, novelties, is not supposed to fill out your modifiers and if I included those extra keys, again most people would be paying for keys they don't need.

I absolutely love this set but will never buy it because of how the sets are separated and overpriced.

Could you manage with the "specialties" set instead of the TKL? It's less than half price of the TKL set and comes with a bunch of modifiers.