Laughingman wrote:edt wrote:for the same reason movie theaters sell popcorn. profit.
Okay... Then why not make all of the parts more accessible for purchase? I'm sure it is a money maker but if we could reduce the price of bars and change the buyers mentality to only buying one or two bars,the kite companies could sell more kites... Which IMHO will likely be more profitable then having to invest in r&d, mold building, and an entire purchasing line which is not needed to build a kite.
manufacturing has changed since I was a boy. When I was young, when you bought a car, every additional part, air conditioning, power steering, radio, power locks, cruise control, power windows, every single thing was added at the factory after the base model was built so you paid extra.
Today there is so much robotics and mass production that it is cheaper to offer the exact same model car with all the add ons, and if you want a car without air conditioning it costs extra to buy one without.
Even ten years ago you could buy lids from the Thermos company to replace old ones you had lost but a few years ago they quit offering it because for them it was cheaper to manufacture a complete set of both thermos and lid instead of just the lid.
Making separate parts for purchase by the customer is a big expense now for companies, it's cheaper for them to simply make extra bars and then if someone needs a part take apart an already completed bar and take out the part from that.
Companies that like providing parts for their product do it for a lot of reasons, for a car, you need it otherwise the customer would not buy the product because it couldn't be fixed it broke for other companies it's something they do at cost for one reason or another.
I don't pretend to know much about manufacturing I have just noticed this trend away from providing parts direct from the manufacturer and instead providing entire units, and if something breaks you buy a whole new unit instead of fix it with a part.