Another aspect I haven’t seen anyone bring up yet is production capacity.
Yup. This is the thing folks are completely missing.
There are limited production slots available, and priority flat-out goes to larger, more profitable runs. The largest demand for carbon fiber stocks is the wind energy sector, and the rapidly increasing demand in this area has led to capacity shortfalls in other areas, like bike frame manufacturing. There simply isn’t enough capacity to make everything, at least not in the time frame people want to see it arrive onshore.
Yes, the molds may be paid for (maybe not, though; the last project I worked on, our mold costs were partially amortized via a decreasing cost per production cycle incentive scheme, something that probably isn’t happening these days due to scarcity of resources, but definitely was at the time the Shiv came out) but the sunk cost fallacy is very much in operation here; pump more money into a product at the cost of other, more profitable lines, or just walk away?
I’ve been on the losing side of this argument, and while I didn’t agree with the conclusion at that time, I’m pretty sure that in the current production environment I would.