URSA Group Buy Announcement

It has been a few weeks now that we have announced URSA to the world, and the first colorway by biip, and have been silent since. The reason is we have been looking for funding from private investors, set up meetings, met people, pitched URSA and well, long story short, they are not impressed. This has been a blow to our strategy, as we can’t afford to upfront the costs, but really wanted to have the products directly in stock. It took us a couple weeks to swallow our pride after our last hope faded away, and re-adjust our timeline and targets. Here is the new plan.

In stock Group Buy

URSA will be running as a group buy in a few weeks. If you are not familiar with the concept of group buy, it’s basically about taking pre-orders before we have products in stock. That is necessary because of the super expensive cost of keycap molds, and only then we’ll be able to make the products.

In our experience, making a new keycap profile is a bit complicated, and things don’t always go smoothly. We expect bumps on the road, that’s how industrial production works, but most importantly we will communicate them with everyone who got involved in the pre-orders. From the moment we take customers money, it is our duty to communicate updates regularly, and make sure every decision we take is in your best interest. We have a good track record on transparency and trust, and plan to keep it that way.

We will ship from both US and Europe locations. So US/EU buyers don’t bear custom fees, especially in the EU where international packages often come with an unexpected cost.

Timeline

There will be another update soon about the current state of things, but here are the big milestones ahead of us:

• Test mold: a test mold (URSA R1) has been ordered weeks ago, we have reviewed some samples already but they need to be adjusted. This mold is meant to test our manufacturer’s capabilities and align them with our quality expectations, on all fronts (stems, texture, etc.).
• Color chips: as you may know if you have followed other GBs, approving color samples is important, to make sure the final product matches the 3D renders. The first samples have been ordered already and should be on their way soon.
• Pre-orders: once the test mold and color chips are approved, we can start the GB process, and collect pre-orders.
• Final molds: Once we have the funds to order the molds, production starts. It does take some time, even if our current experience with the test mold helps shorten it. We expect ~5 months until we have approved keycap samples
• Final samples: once the keycap samples are approved we order the final set samples, including trays, packaging, and final colors
• Production done: production will be quick, as doubleshot isn’t as time consuming as for instance dye sub sets. It does take a couple weeks, and a few more weeks to ship them to our fulfillment locations.
• Ready to ship: This is where you receive the infamous email that says your set is ready to ship, and start looking for the delivery person!

Stretch goals

We plan to set 2 stretch goals :

• Black-on-White colorway
• ISO/JIS support

While the BoW colorway goal isn't such a long stretch, ISO/JIS support will require the GB to be very successful. So... there is hope!

What's next?

First, make sure you have read below about the survey results!

Expect another update soon about the current state of URSA, we have received samples of the test molds already, and are waiting for the color samples now. We'll post about those once we have something to show for.

Thanks everyone for your patience, and all your nice messages both in the survey and on Discord, it’s been great reading them and hope that you are up to participate in this GB as we need you to make it happen!