Group buys in this hobby have existed even before COVID existed, and before COVID existed, this hobby was super tiny. Group buys didn't take years to fulfill, and I've read GMK could fulfill group buys within 9 months. And then Taeha blew up with the Tfue build, and so did the hobby. And it seems like an exponential growth. GMK just wasn't prepared for that increase in demand, but continued to take on all these group buy demands because the money was just there. For a company who was only involved in making keycaps as a side hustle, all those group buys when the hobby blew up was just free money laying on the table for them, so why not take it? And so they took on more group buys one after the other, and now they had this huge queue that they couldn't even clear within a reasonable amount of time. All while COVID was causing all these employment issues. There was an issue of resin shortages worldwide as well, although not sure if that's really a big factor in this. But basically, the huge delay comes from GMK being too greedy and taking too many group buys than they could handle AND covid just fucking the whole world over.

I'm pretty sure somewhere in 2021, people were just starting to figure out that there'd be huge delays in fulfillment. 2022, it should have been for sure known there'd be a huge delay past what was being quoted on vendor sites. So I feel like the timelines on vendor sites also just added to the shitty resentment everyone has for GBs. So yea, I get how anyone would be mad when their keycap set is quoted by the vendor to finish in a year, and then only now has shown to possibly get delivered to them nearly two years later. Along with the limited communication that's very dependent on the vendors and for the most part required you to get on their discord.

And so, the supply just wasn't meeting the demand. So all these other companies like JTK, MW, DMK, Signature Plastics got into the group buy game. Its just money waiting to be made.

However, GMK did say they got a ton of sorting machines at the start of this year and they claim to be able to clear the queue of all the group buys made before by Q4-ish. And if you see how much faster they're pumping out sets this year it honestly might happen.

I think without group buys there certainly isn't a whole lot of variety in the hobby. I truly think the idea of getting behind someone's design of a board or keycaps with matching deskmats or artisan collabs is a really cool idea, and its even cooler that we as a community have access to that kind of customization. For that reason alone I think group buys are here to stay for a long while, and will only get better from here imo.

But of course it has its cons of waiting and hoping you're not part of the 1% of GBs that end up being a scam. But nowadays there's just a ton of options for instock boards and keycaps. And that's not even getting into clones and that level of quality. Theres domikey, PBTFans, Cannonkeys, Novelkeys, and a few sets from ePBT and Signature Plastics (DSA, SA profiles) that have instock keycaps.