If they'd been open about it, there's too much chance there'd be a decent number of people who knew them from previous work who asked "wait -- don't you make all your stuff in the US?" and they'd have to justify the move to China. That's why I went with the Chinese-factory investigation first -- better chance of finding something. I don't know enough about what was going on internally to ANOVOS. The Snowtrooper stuff
tubachris85x mentioned on the previous page is just another in a bunch of contracted builders they
had been working with and pulled out to move manufacturing to China.
It seems out of character enough for them, given their prior work, that I wonder if it was a double blind-spot -- the license was demanding more money than they originally realized or something, and the armor was a new area for them and front-end development and production was more than the cloth costumes they were used to. Or something like that. I'm
pretty sure it wasn't purely profit-motivated. Wouldn't be shocked if the bill for the license showed up while they were already worried over the mounting costs for prototyping the first batch of armor and helmet offerings and someone panicked and said "we can't keep doing this domestically". And then, later, they'd have to admit they made a mistake, and I've run in to a few too many humans who would rather die than admit they were wrong.
But all of that is informed speculation, at most. A few people who have told me things, a delve through the timeline, that sort of thing... As I said, I'm not giving them a pass. Just applying my research and investigative skills to seeing if I can sort out what got us to this point. I wanted to post that I was finding some of their excuses plausible, and the breakdown then comes when they'd have to follow up with "...because we were dumbasses and didn't do due diligence". I know human fallibility, from close range. I can easily imagine them paying for the re-d from one factory, then having another try to extort them for their cargo container, and they wanted to take care of it themselves, quietly, without letting customers or Lucasfilm know, and it snowballed and now might end up costing them the farm.
I'm really curious how much may come out in the lawsuit. I don't know how much will be behind a gag order on the parties involved as part of some settlement, but I feel even those of us not involved in the lawsuit deserve to know who screwed up where.