> It's not as simple as "insert amount of sets" per month.

You're right but we can only base estimates off information we have and historically this is what they have been averaging. I'm not going to delve into MOQ comparisons for 150+ sets and figure out which ones will be completed faster, nor do I have information about production numbers for anything not on that sheet. Another factor to consider is that when moving to smaller MOQ sets, this requires more downtime to rotate molds, plastics, clean machines, dial in settings, etc. and leads to lower output. This is something Andy has already detailed on. Moving to smaller sets does not mean faster production.

>I don't want to put blame on anybody, but 6 months for one sample round is most certainly an anomaly

Like I said, upwards. While I don't know this specific designers' history with working with vendors/GMK, I was referencing community sets in general. Depending on the designer this stage could potentially take a very long time. The case with Rensuya is definitely an outlier, they seem to have a very specific vision for the sets and will take as many color matching samples as it takes to reach it.

>Also AFAIK, none of GMK's manufacturing relies on China.

I don't know where GMK sources their raw material from, the majority of the worlds ABS resin is produced in Asia (S. Korea/Taiwan are big ones). If they do use any of these supply chains, there could be slow downs. They have said they secured a large raw materials allocation that is good for several sets but warehouse space costs money and I highly doubt they hold years worth of orders in raw material. If there's anything we learned from covid, everything relies on everything, direct or not china is likely involved.

>So you are so well versed in GMK's manufacturing line that you know exactly how long a "snag" takes to sort out? And what do these snags look like?

I never claimed to know anything about GMK manu other than publicly stated information. I also said "chain" which means everything from designers having personal problems or running out of material to shipping times increasing again if half of china decides to catch covid and halt all it's ports.