Keycult is so good!!
Pricing niche products
151–160 of 368 posts
Re: Pricing niche products
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What kind of mouse or trackpad is everyone using with these $xxx - $xxxx keyboards? Mice with holes. Your mouse must have holes. https://i.redd.it/i5s6j18i3hp31.jpg https://i.imgur.com/DSW0lvH.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14d68Wgwevs https://en.reddit.com/r/MouseReview/
That looks like a cleaning nightmare waiting to happen.
What cleaning? You just buy the new one.
Re: Pricing niche products
#153I so want to get into mechnical keyboards but most of my work is done on a 2015 MacBook Pro and I'm so efficient with the large trackpad - I rest my palms on the laptop and can reach everything with just a pivot of the wrist. I tried the Magic Trackpad, but I kept having to move my forearm and it just slowed me down too much. What kind of mouse or trackpad is everyone using with these $xxx - $xxxx keyboards?
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Re: Pricing niche products
#154I have a $600+ keyboard so I'm a part of this hobby. However, only a part of this can be explained by the expense of manufacturing at a small scale. The hobby fully embraces the drawbacks of the small scale and intentionally does nothing to try to improve it because the exclusivity drives prices up to an insane point. A typical group buy for a popular case sells out in minutes or days time after time. Clearly some of…
Am not in that league, my main board is a Ducky Shine 3 TKL, but even dabbling into that world, I bought the Cities collection of spacebars for $50. I find the niche fascinating, and regularly think about selling keycaps as a sideline - definitely agree with the notion that a lot of the designs people crave are rather quite simple. Or very similar to off the shelf ones. Fashion is the interesting one, since the keybo…
I think we'll see it grow. I started collecting old and new fountain pens a long time ago before it started to become a thing again. I've slowly watched that turn into a decently sized niche hobby. There are thousands of quality modern options available immediately. Its in a far more advanced state than the keyboard community, but I'm sure we'll get there.
Re: Pricing niche products
#155These things have become so esoteric and expensive because the mechanical keyboard hobby is undergoing a more intense version of what happens to most hobbies/pastimes; the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing". I feel like this is an outgrowth of the basic huma…
I’d say it’s more about status signalling, even if it’s kept within that small group of keyboard aficionados.
"More"? I understood CommieBobDole to be saying it was entirely about status signaling:
> the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing"
What do you think the difference is between "status signaling" and "impressing other people"?
Re: Pricing niche products
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN lambasts audiophiles every time stupid expensive audio gear comes up, yet here we are paying $hundreds for gimmick keyboard stuff. SF developers making $100k or two a year just aren't in the same money league of the audiophiles spending $thousands on speaker wire. EDIT: I'm not mad at any of the above groups I've mentioned; everybody gets their kicks from something, as well they should. I'm just mentioning what I…
The key difference being audiophiles often fail A/B tests comparing audio quality. You would definitely notice how nice an expensive mechanical keyboard feels. Whether you think that is worth luxury pricing is another story, but the quality is at least more immediately appreciable.
And you can definitely notice how nice an expensive pair of headphones sound compared to cheap models. If you meant stuff like buying expensive cables for no measurable benefits mechanical keyboard enthusiasts often spend hundreds on keycaps which won't provide any benefit beyond looking good compared to cheaper sets. Mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and audiophiles are very much alike.
Re: Pricing niche products
#157These things have become so esoteric and expensive because the mechanical keyboard hobby is undergoing a more intense version of what happens to most hobbies/pastimes; the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing". I feel like this is an outgrowth of the basic huma…
not exactly the same but reminds me of a lot of this key and peele sketch (dueling hats)
Re: Pricing niche products
#158These things have become so esoteric and expensive because the mechanical keyboard hobby is undergoing a more intense version of what happens to most hobbies/pastimes; the purpose of the hobby has transitioned from primarily "making/using the thing" to "obtaining and displaying ever more extreme versions of the thing to impress other people who know about the thing". I feel like this is an outgrowth of the basic huma…
Very much signalling, you want something that sets you apart from other users and if that means custom CNC'd cases, with harvested switches that have been lubed using the finest tears mounted on a custom plate. So you have something to ogle and show off to the others. And that's before we get into the scarcity territory that sees secondhand TGR Alices going for over 5K.
It's weird, a good chunk of people buy my Georgis [1] and _don't actually use them_. It's a strange feeling to have something bought only because it's different and to be collected. I think keyboards are to be used, not hoarded personally but in this community it's very common to own at least a dozen boards.
It's very weird.
Re: Pricing niche products
#159I hate to nitpick but I assume you want to know: "I cannot understate the benefits of knowing the demand curve." I think you mean "I cannot overstate the benefits of knowing the demand curve." Because you seem to imply that it is a good thing to know the demand curve.
Why, on a seller standpoint, would it be a bad thing to know the demand curve ? For me it is actionnable marketing data, I cannot see a way in which it’s not good. Even if you not use it directly, it is still data on your customer base that can help you understand them more...
> Why, on a seller standpoint, would it be a bad thing to know the demand curve ?
Dunno, but it only makes sense to use “understate” if you think it is a bad thing. The comment is about a wording mistake.
Re: Pricing niche products
#160When eBay first started, I loved the idea of auctions as a way to set market prices. From an economic and game-theory perspective, it is so optimal! Clearly as later examples like Amazon have shown, auctions don't make sense for most product categories. I believe this is mainly due to psychological reasons. Decision-fatigue is a real thing. People dislike having to think hard. In a fixed-price sale, the buyer just ha…
eBay shows the top bid, which apparently is enough to induce a significantly different "sniping" strategy as optimal: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~inet0118/pdf/itterative.pdf
eBay's done some things with "bidding agents" to attempt to ameliorate this but I don't think it worked since eBay is now 80% fixed price: https://tamebay.com/2017/02/are-ebay-auctions-a-thing-of-the...
Amazon has seller-side auctions with its third party system. Presumably this results in a little bit of competition to lower prices, but there aren't really enough third party sellers to make it happen.
Treasury bills are probably the largest auction held regularly and they seem to work well. But consumers all place non-competitive bids while the competitive bidding is left to expert financial firms.
If I had to guess I'd say the real issue is people don't understand economics and would rather buy something at whatever price than spend the effort to identify a good price. Certainly my roommates at college never bothered picking out what was on sale, or even looked at the flyer. And I think the rest of the populace pays more attention to the size of the coupon than the price of the item.