09/28/2020 Update. Easter Egg Hunt #2!

Hey all!

We hope you've had a good week so far.

We are very excited to provide with you an update on everything that’s going on behind the scenes after we launched the Series 00 IC. Once again, we thank you for taking the time to support our project. 

We have been poring over the feedback from our IC form submissions and general feedback over Geekhack/Reddit. Within 24 hours, we received hundreds of responses. We thank every one of you for your submissions, whether they were critical or positive! Keep them coming. We’re always listening. 

We can't necessarily address each feedback explicitly as details may shift, but we will try our best.

1. Easter Egg Hunt

🥳🥚We have Easter Egg #2 hunt live on the website right now. Winners will be entered into a raffle to receive an esc lab care package filled with exclusive products and prototypes that will never be on sale.

Hint: Early birds that try different URLs may get the early worm..

2. Pricing

We cannot reveal concrete prices yet until we receive our prototypes to ensure they meet our quality and your expectations.

However, you can expect the price to be competitive with existing premium metal artisans. Note that pricing may differ depending on the material + finish + coating. Different CMF (color, material, finish) uses different manufacturing methods, thus a price discrepancy. With that said, while esc lab designs premium products, we do want everyone that wants them to get their hands on them, so we will not set a price that neglects those that want them! Our unlimited GB for Series 00 also means anyone that wants one, will get one. However, do set your alarms though, as the Series ID sequential numbering that’s engraved on each Series 00 artisan IS order time based. If you want the #1, #2, #3, etc numbers, you better be fast. Or maybe you like the #69 or #420 ones?

3. Prototype + manufacturing

Cubic is currently communicating with our vendors about Series 00. Due to a national holiday, the feedback and reviews will take longer than expected. 

4. Design (color, material, and finish)

It seems this cubic and boxy silhouette is a little polarizing! The people that love it, love it. The people that don't like it, believe it to be incomplete or not fitting existing profiles. We were totally expecting this! We are happy that Series 00 makes a statement and is unique from existing trends. Not to say we are trying to be different for different sake, but we genuinely design for what we would put on our desks, and the Series 00' silhouette is definitely something we are proud of. There were asks about profiles for other rows, and ones for 6.25u, 2u, and 7u keys. These are all great feedback, and we will absorb this internally.

There were also asks about the “esc” engraving on the side of Series 00, and what about if people want to put them in non-esc key locations. This is terrific feedback, and we will discuss with the team about this.

People also do not like that Series 00 is 0.5 mm taller than a typical R1 Cherry profile. We hear you loud and clear.

There were concerns on finger prints and oils especially on the polished versions of Series 00. We hear you, and we will definitely discuss this internally to see what we can do. 

There were an incredible amount of requests for different colors, finishes, materials, and remixes of the Series 00 design. All we can say is, stay tuned :)

Oh, we will be sure to make sure Series 00 won’t cut you. We know those renders look.. sharp. Ba-dum-tss.

Fun fact, those edges are known as “safety fillets” in the manufacturing world. 

5. About esc lab

A little more about us -- our founders are hobbyists and tech nerds that enjoy good design, manufacturing, and minimal things. 

I (the guy writing this update) am a product manager by trade, so I have experience handling the various parts of building + managing a team and product. For esc lab, I handle the majority of the marketing, social media, higher level conceptualization & design, website building, branding, community outreach, and basically whatever a stupid PM does.

Cubic is an industrial designer by trade. He has much manufacturing experience and relationships with factories. He also has won a number of industrial design awards. 

We decided to start esc lab because we saw that there wasn't really a big presence in keyboard designs that fare towards minimal and brutalist themes, a design language that both Cubic and I love. We also love how open source and collaborative the MKB community is, a trait we both share. We made the decision that our products will use premium materials with high quality manufacturing methods, and we will do our best to QC our products so you get a premium experience.

That is not to say we won't make mistakes! We will. But we will learn from each mistake so each iteration will be better than the ones before it. 

We appreciate you coming along for the ride and trusting us.

6. Surprises

Due to a popular… ahem… request, we have taken steps to create a new SKU for our supporters. You will have to find out in our next updates ;).

We will also have more easter egg hunts available so you can get your hands on a sweet care package with esc lab goodies.

Congrats ow****@gmail.com for being the first winner of our care package drop, by the way!

Finally, 

Our survey showed us that many of you will be first time owners of artisans. We thank you for trusting us with your first experience. We aim to provide for you a premium first artisan experience.