FABRIKAT - Granular Synthesis / Sample Playback

[whoismarykelly]

FWIW this kind of sale is usually programmed to go live at the stated time. Its not like the seller gets antsy to see that $15k roll in a few minutes sooner and manually posts the item at 10:57 instead of 11:00.

[echorec]

I know Pladask doesn't want to do preorders but if he's taking the orders and delivering the pedals a month later the difference seems rather moot. Seems like this was more a web hosting issue than anything else. 50 pedals is a lot and should be enough that people there at the moment they go up for sale have a good shot as long as the web site can handle a reasonable amount of traffic. I'd be interested to know the numbers that caused the crash though? Is it 25 people refreshing once a second for a ridiculous amount of time (like starting 5 minutes early)? Or is it 200 people doing that? I was getting the resource limit errors 3 or 4 minutes before the sale time so lots of people must have been going at it early hoping that they might get a few seconds of edge on everyone else.

Is 50 a lot, when the last batch was 7 months ago? (That's just over 7 units produced per month.) Didn't Pladask have a previous sale that launched an hour earlier than announced? I can't really blame people for refreshing, when they're trying to work around site hiccups and unsynchronized clocks. (5:00 on one person's phone is 4:57 on someone else's tablet)

I'm fine with small down payments or short-term waits, but builders aren't doing themselves any favors by ramping up expectations on social media for months at a time, and then being surprised by a tsunami on sale days. If you've got 2,000 IG followers and 50 units for sale worldwide, do the math. That's 2.5% of your followers. You've got to either increase your production output or dial back your social media involvement, if you don't want to spend 365 days of the year apologizing for batch delays & site crashes.

This isn't a problem unique to Pladask or Cooper. The same thing has happened with Montreal Assembly and other builders. The community of interested buyers is much bigger than the companies' respective work forces. The companies have either got to grow, or this cycle will just keep repeating. That's not meant to be a criticism, it's just where things stand. As long as the batch output doesn't match the demand, it will only continue to incentivize the strictly-for-profit flippers.

Hopefully these builders will grow in the coming years, because the pedal community needs more Pladask/Cooper/MA, etc and less Tubescreamers & Distortion+ tributes.

[Chankgeez]

Someone, please, show small builders into this thread.

[whoismarykelly]

I know Pladask doesn't want to do preorders but if he's taking the orders and delivering the pedals a month later the difference seems rather moot. Seems like this was more a web hosting issue than anything else. 50 pedals is a lot and should be enough that people there at the moment they go up for sale have a good shot as long as the web site can handle a reasonable amount of traffic. I'd be interested to know the numbers that caused the crash though? Is it 25 people refreshing once a second for a ridiculous amount of time (like starting 5 minutes early)? Or is it 200 people doing that? I was getting the resource limit errors 3 or 4 minutes before the sale time so lots of people must have been going at it early hoping that they might get a few seconds of edge on everyone else.

Is 50 a lot, when the last batch was 7 months ago? (That's just over 7 units produced per month.) Didn't Pladask have a previous sale that launched an hour earlier than announced? I can't really blame people for refreshing, when they're trying to work around site hiccups and unsynchronized clocks. (5:00 on one person's phone is 4:57 on someone else's tablet)

I'm fine with small down payments or short-term waits, but builders aren't doing themselves any favors by ramping up expectations on social media for months at a time, and then being surprised by a tsunami on sale days. If you've got 2,000 IG followers and 50 units for sale worldwide, do the math. That's 2.5% of your followers. You've got to either increase your production output or dial back your social media involvement, if you don't want to spend 365 days of the year apologizing for batch delays & site crashes.

This isn't a problem unique to Pladask or Cooper. The same thing has happened with Montreal Assembly and other builders. The community of interested buyers is much bigger than the companies' respective work forces. The companies have either got to grow, or this cycle will just keep repeating. That's not meant to be a criticism, it's just where things stand. As long as the batch output doesn't match the demand, it will only continue to incentivize the strictly-for-profit flippers.

Hopefully these builders will grow in the coming years, because the pedal community needs more Pladask/Cooper/MA, etc and less Tubescreamers & Distortion+ tributes.

Im saying 50 pedals for sale is a bunch of pedals at a single moment. 7 pedals per month in the same format would be gone to the people lucky enough to have super fast internet connections.

In terms of time differences, knowing what the equivalent time to Pladask's time is on the buyer. If you don't know if you're on EST or EDT at any given time then figure it out and set an alarm. I cant imagine holding Pladask responsible for people not knowing what time it is in another country. I had no problem figuring out that time on the last sale and getting one.

[codetocontra]

It's only a problem for customers not the sellers. The hype generated from small batch releases only fuels hype for the next batch that will sell out too. Then the flippers get involved...

Dont get me wrong, if I made and sold pedals I would do the same thing too. There is much less excitement over wait lists that guarantee a pedal at a fair price.

[echorec]

Damn it. Why would anyone ever listen to me?

https://pladaskelektrisk.com/fabrikat-lottery-sale/

[Paul_C]

Heh - I was just about to ask if you would all stand aside for a minute at 11pm so I could get one after missing out on the last two, and then this happens.

I've sent my email, but I don't do well in lotteries as a rule - nevertheless if you don't enter you definitely won't win.

[whoismarykelly]

On the bright side now getting one is completely based on luck.

On the down side now getting one is completely based on luck.

[echorec]

It's only a problem for customers not the sellers.

I would say it's a fairly substantial problem if you're a part-time, limited batch builder, because you end up spending more time answering e-mails and addressing rumors/speculation on social media than you do actually building pedals. The more requests you get via online communication, the more strained your time is for designing and building.

That being said, having overwhelming interest is a much more desirable problem than having a shortage of interest.

[echorec]

On the bright side now getting one is completely based on luck.

On the down side now getting one is completely based on luck.

Did you really feel like skill was going to be the deciding factor in besting the field?

[whoismarykelly]

On the bright side now getting one is completely based on luck.

On the down side now getting one is completely based on luck.

Did you really feel like skill was going to be the deciding factor in besting the field?

Based on like 15 years of buying stuff in similar situations I can say there is some amount of skill in knowing what makes things faster. That also depends on the infrastructure working. There is a big difference in firing an email off into the void and crossing your fingers and making the actual moves to buy something in the moment. In the moment is certainly a lot more fun.

Dont get me wrong, if I made and sold pedals I would do the same thing too. There is much less excitement over wait lists that guarantee a pedal at a fair price.

It's hard to have this kind of response to your gear be a planned situation from the start. You can't just decide to be an extremely desirable brand and artificially limiting production doesn't benefit you unless internet hype pays your bills. Any situation where artificially limiting supply seems like a benefit at this level (small pedal builders) is a situation where simply meeting demand would make you a lot more money in a shorter period of time. 12-18 months ago this specific market was very underserved by builders. Now there are at least half a dozen pedals on the market that do similar things so a lot of customers will go to the thing they can easily get and not come back for yours. See the Red Panda Tensor blowing up the glitch/time stretch/microlooper market that used to be limited to super obscure and hard to get pedals. Having built pedals as a brand years ago I can tell you that a lot of success in the market is based on luck and being at the right place at the right time. On the other hand, lots of these guys are building as a hobby on the side and maybe they aren't in it to build and sell as many as possible. That's the internet hype balancing act.

[echorec]

Based on like 15 years of buying stuff in similar situations I can say there is some amount of skill in knowing what makes things faster.

What was the hot ticket item you were gobbling up in 2003?

[UglyCasanova]

Your mom

[whoismarykelly]

Nailed it.

But also eBay has been around a long time and that was the original second to second scramble.

[codetocontra]

It's only a problem for customers not the sellers.

I would say it's a fairly substantial problem if you're a part-time, limited batch builder, because you end up spending more time answering e-mails and addressing rumors/speculation on social media than you do actually building pedals. The more requests you get via online communication, the more strained your time is for designing and building.

That being said, having overwhelming interest is a much more desirable problem than having a shortage of interest.

Pretty easy to just post updates once in a while that answer the basic questions of when and how much. Not doing batch sales means doing wait lists and I am sure that generates more email if you think about how many messages have to be sent back and forth regarding getting on said list, asking about specifics, payment, shipping info, etc. Plus it takes time managing the list. Seems much easier to say "should be ready in x month" and then closer to the date announce the day and time. I don't fault any builder for doing batch sales because of this.