Quoted:
Selling out batch of 100 does nothing to show if the market is there or not. If anything, it's an indication that the gun is not selling well. MKE likely has sufficient capacity to crank out as many of these as the US market could bear, and the fact that these are only coming in very low quantity means that they are not moving well. This is just an artificial way to keep the prices up by keeping the supply low, but that does nothing to stimulate the demand.
Just look at the c93, once Century flooded the market, the price went from introductory $799 down to $499...and only recently did it gain some stability after the c93 supply has dwindled.
It has nothing to do with sales, and everything to do with dealing with three impossible entities:
1. The Turkish government
2. U.S. Customs
3. The ATF
The weird thing is that the ATF ended up being the most reasonable of the above three entities to deal with for ATI.
Small companies like ATI, even with specialties in playing the import game have great difficulty in bringing in items such as this. Bring in complications such as tied-up capital and the fact that the guns really do come into the country "unfinished" for our uses it presents a very tough prospect. It is a wonder that they can do it at a profit at all. If they could bring in the 94 without the stupid mag limit, they would sell every one they could get their hands on.