Wooting 60HE - Rewards and Perks

I’m excited to announce the rewards and perks that will be available during the Founders’ campaign. At the end of this blog, there’s more context to our pricing strategy and reasoning.

When you support the Wooting 60HE, you’ll become a founder and leave a permanent mark on the final product. You’ll join our journey with monthly video updates, bi-weekly livestreams, and discussions with our vibrant community.

Your voice will have an impact on the final result and steers the direction we take with software. 

In the spirit of transparency, we will show the total amount we raise during the 30-day campaign. To make it extra exciting we set a funding goal of €75.000 or else we’ll refund everybody's pledge and reflect.

Regardless if you silently support our development, or actively partake in the community; this is you with us challenging the industry. Let’s take control together and surpass that goal.

The Wooting 60HE Founders’ campaign launches Thursday, 7 October, 2021 at 15:00 CET (6:00am PST).

Founders campaign Perks

All pre-orders during the Founders’ campaign will receive the following perks:

Exclusive Discord Role
You can brag with this badge to other community members and find fellow founders. After you placed an order, you can confirm your Discord role.

€/$ 15.- Discount on Retail price
That’s almost 2 months’ worth of Netflix. Every reward already includes the discount. If you’re an existing Wooting customer or backed a Wooting project before you’ll receive an additional discount on add-ons.

Standard Edition

Retail price: €169.99 | $174.99
Campaign price: €154.99 | $159.99

Take control and shake up the competitive scene. This will give you all you need to break through that skill ceiling.

Founder’s Edition

Retail price: €209.99 | $214.99
Campaign price: €194.99 | $199.99

You’ll leave a permanent mark and in addition to the standard edition receive:

Free keyboard travel sleeve
Take your 60HE anywhere with this convenient travel sleeve.

Exclusive leather strap
In addition to the default take control strap, you’ll receive an exclusive hand-made leather strap. If you prefer vegan leather, let us know.

Your name on the box
You can choose to have your first name, last name, discord handle, or anonymous permanently mentioned on the 60HE packaging box, on every box. This will be integrated into the graphics design.

Signature Edition (60/60 limited)

Retail price: €1337.99 | $1337.99
Campaign price: €294.99 | $299.99

We feel a sense of accomplishment to have our names underneath every Wooting keyboard. We want to share that with our biggest supporters with the Signature Edition.

In addition to the Founder’s Edition you’ll receive:

Leave your Mark on the PCB
You can claim a spot on the PCB. Make a doodle, find a meme or add some nice words. Your design or idea will be on every 60HE. Not just this production, but for every production, on every 60HE keyboard. Here is a little preview of what it can look like. (there are rules applicable in relation to copyright, any type of name, or profanity)

Languages and keycaps

The Wooting 60HE will be available in an ANSI and ISO layout. Depending on your language and keycap configuration prices will vary.

EUR Prices on this page are based on ISO layout with (not pre-installed) Wooting ABS keycaps.

USD Prices on this page are based on ANSI layout with (pre-installed) Wooting double-shot PBT keycaps (new).

We will offer keycaps for the following languages:

• ANSI - US English
• ISO - UK English
• ISO - German
• ISO - Nordics

Pricing strategy and reasoning

tl;dr

The costs are more than we have historically been pricing. The increasing complexity of the business, research and development cost, and rising cost (IC parts, raw material, logistics) due to world circumstances are pushing us to price at sustainable levels and not competitive levels. We are in this for the long-term.

Intro

Product prices are an interesting subject and to get it out straight away, there’s no magic formula. Unlike what many believe, prices are not decided on logic or formula. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of theory and methods to come to a sales price. But in practice, you’ll find out that these methods are rather used to justify a sales price and not set it. There’s a lot of “human” and market involved.

If you ask a salesman, the answer is simple. What’s the most you can ask for it. If you ask a sophisticated salesman, he’ll tell you to find the equilibrium between price and demand. It’s a guessing game. How educated is your guess?

I’m going to leave the economic models, psychology, and philosophy behind pricing there. I opened up this conversation to simply say that pricing is a mother ducker. But regardless of the price, you always have to calculate back and make sure you can cover all your costs and leave enough on the table for growth. That’s it, that’s the strategy. Let me delve into this.

Competitive pricing

If you look at our pricing in the past, we were very focused on hitting a sales price that wasn’t too far away from the competition, so that it was easier for people to consider us as an alternative. We’ve never been the cheapest, but we’ve also never priced in everything. We were running shoe-string budgets fund operations and paid ourselves below minimum. We had to get market share for a product that nobody (really) asked for, while competing with existing offers. We were at a cost disadvantage with more expensive hardware and had to deal with a lot more research and development cost paid in cash, sweat, and tears.

We had zero budget left for marketing and relied upon our wits and the good graces of others. Real startup vibes here.

Every year going forward (since 2016, the Wooting one Kickstarter) we kept growing, gaining experience, and getting better at what we did. We were fortunate enough to have people (repeatedly) believe in our work and willing to support all our developments. Not just with thought, but with action by placing pre-orders, patiently waiting out the journey, and trusting us to deliver. There’s also a list of community members that have been around with us for years, closely involving themselves with what we do, and helping others that join the community. This is our stronghold.

As we kept going forward, the complexity of our product and business also grew…. at a faster rate. The startup graces started to fade, customer expectations were growing, and maintenance got more demanding. We couldn’t keep running as we were running anymore. We had to grab a moment we were the strongest and make sweeping changes to how we operated.

We found that opportunity in 2019. The Lekker switch. This was not just a technology development, it was the sweeping changes moment.  The Lekker switch completed Wooting keyboards, solved a lot of manufacturing issues, and cleared a path to the future. 

The Wooting two Lekker Edition (first Lekker switch keyboard) was the most challenging project we had completed. Not only did we have some near-fatal turns in development, but we were also switching to a new keyboard manufacturing partner. A strategic move we made in preparation for the Lekker switch roll-out and long-term goals in mind. You should read the project blog when we had to also change switch manufacturer.

2019 was also the year we added Kevin, industrial designer, and not long after Simon, programmer, to the team to address the growing complexity of the business. We couldn’t have completed the Lekker project without their skill and determination. But it also came with more operational costs. The bottom line was fighting.

The pandemic

When the pandemic struck in 2020, we were fortunate that consumer electronics were still in demand, and we didn’t have to face grave consequences. No additional loans, no subsidies, or support programs. Still shoe-string budgets with full confidence investing in our product(s). Now the after-effect of the pandemic is seeping into the world and markets, not something you can ignore.

There’re clear signs of product inflation and no forecast that it’s going to get any better. All the raw material prices have gone up, labor cost is further increasing, and logistic costs have skyrocketed. To be more concrete, here are a few examples:

1. IC part (hall sensors) increased cost by 15%. There’re 108 of them on the two HE, 61 on the 60HE. A significant cost increase.
2. IC part (multiplexers) had to purchase at 100% premium due to long lead time.
3. Logistics costs more than doubled for cross-ocean freight within months time and transit to Europe has become unreliable.

Then there’s the forecast of increasing costs going into 2022. China is having power outages due to the surging demand for electricity. Two of our factories only operate with unlimited electricity 2 days a week. This means they only have 2 days for electricity-operated machine work. The winter will demand (even) more electricity, and costs will naturally rise. In other worse, it’s not going to get any easier.

These are clear signs that it's time for us to move to the next phase and further mature as a company.

Sustainable pricing

This is why we changed our pricing strategy to what I’d call sustainable pricing. The price represents the true value and covers the true cost. No more shoe-string budgets, startup operations, or ignoring development costs. The Wooting 60HE and all the features we provide are truly unique, game-breaking, and a result of years of development. The goal? Wooting to do what Wooting does for a longer time, increasingly better.

 I hope this long piece gave you more insight into our operation and where we’re heading.

<3,
Calder
Co-founder and CEO