if i can't buy them, a lot of people can't. what's that mean then?
demand is high, we should raise the price.
somebody gets it.
There might be room for some price increase. However, I feel that forcing people to go through resellers will help to build out the distribution network, which will be good for the longer term health of the company. Dealing directly with small, retail customers is an unnecessary headache for friedcat.
we don't have to raise the price, we just have to maximize profit.
Supply shortages means that we are failing to do that. So either we raise the price, or we increase supply.
It has nothing to do with the resellers, they cant get them either (see btcguild 2-3 week backorder).
Mmm.. I think classic manufacturing models are hugely accelerated here in that each production run will sell for a lower price than the next due to a series of difficulty increases. Thus, it is probably in shareholders' interests if AM/FC does not hang onto excess inventory between supply runs, and sells for the most he can. If that means we have a break of availability in between each run it is not the end of the world, as that also provides some justification for the earlier purchasers to have paid the higher price, and provides a cleaner transition to a lower selling price point.
That said, one could argue that we left money on the table from our last run, but I think since it was our first decent sized production run, with sales in mind, there was a lot of guesstimation on the demand side. As time goes on forecasting should get better.
-helixone