Well we had more dealers and resellers, but then manufacturers started selling direct (and undercutting the dealers) and kinda killed off a lot of 'em.
Aye, that they did. Thing is, to paraphrase what was said in the BitFury link above, the Pulbic can be a ravanous mob when things don't go exactly as planned. AM, AMT/Bitmine.ch, BFL and others showed that very well and publicly. By not selling ready to run rigs to the public BitFury avoided all that pain and kept it to themselves and their private investors.
For now at least the only one standing from all that and willing to sell ready-to-run rigs to the Public is Bitmain. Why? Without getting nit-picky about it, a. They don't do pre-orders (with the public at least) on chips/rigs that don't exist outside of a lab yet like the others did. b. They don't start drumming up interest in upcoming miners before really ready to ship. And along that, also bleeding dry the last stock of chips they have of a family step.
Put the two together and they (Bitmain) are freed from forcing a product out the door before it has a decent chance of working as-advertised. Yes they have DOA's from time to time but considering the huge # of miners they build per run, I'll give them that.
