I'm talking about 2007 releases of M1A1 and M1A2. To my knowledge they're the best kits of the subject.

they were re-released early this year..or was it late last year but your right, the best Abrams kits available..they did a short run of them it appears then they stopped coming.

According to another topic written a few days ago: https://armorama.kitmaker.net/forums/211602&page=1 the kits will be released again in 3-4 months or more. So be patient!

That's right. They are not "Discontinued", if you take a look at Dragonusaonline, you'll see them as "Backorder", this means that they will be re-released in some months
Just be patient...

It's an odd deal, like Tamiya's approach with their T-55. Instead of a steady run or retiring them, they chose to release them periodically and it kind of creates a frenzy because modelers don't know what's really going on with the kits. Be patient, they're definitely worth the wait

Hardly a rare business method.

Most plastic kit manufacturers do a 'production run' when they first release the kit. They don't (can't) keep a kit in production continuously. In the case of Airfix for example, they might typically do an initial run of 10,000 units.

Assuming that the kit is successful and they 'sell' those 10,000 units (to the wholesalers), then they will have made their money on the initial investment.

They can then choose to run off another batch immediately (if demand is there from the wholesalers for more units), or wait a few months/years until the existing stock is exhausted.

If the initial stock sells slowly then the company may never release a second production run.

If it sells well, then they will choose when to run off a another batch. Remember - most companies rent production capacity from moulding companies rather than manufacture kits themselves. Therefore, they have to do fixed runs of each product. This will also shape the size of the production run (balancing the volume of kits they can afford to run off against the best 'per hour' rental they can get from their moulding company).

They will balance their product line/popularity/profitability etc to ensure they make best use of those production runs. This means they will rotate the moulds and not keep everything in production. Consistently popular kits will be run off much more frequently than niche interest ones.

For second, third, fourth etc production runs, the most expensive element of the kit will be the packaging and the instructions - the bits of plastic inside the box are the cheapest part of the package.

This is where they make the big profits - no development costs, relatively low cost of packaging and minimal cost of plastic = high profit margin.

It is rare that companies deliberately massage the demand. Their choices are based on hard-nosed business trends. They won't want to stockpile lots of kits (because stockpiled kits are 'dead' money). They can't swamp the wholesalers because the wholesalers don't want dead stock either.

Ultimately, if the wholesalers keep asking for more units to satisfy their customers, then the manufacturer will do more of them. If the wholesalers come back and say 'nah, that one don't sell', the manufacturer won't bother to do more.

Regards,
John

I agree John, and that's why it helps (in a small way) to move things along by ticking off "notify when available" with a merchant.

The other thing is that even if the initial production sold out fairly quickly, the manufacturer has no idea about what percent of demand it satisfied, so would still be quite hesitant to have another 10K made up right away on that basis alone.