Most vendors maintain a level of stocking that is the level of what the par is. If somebody gets on the forum and raves about some blend, then the usual suspects get hit hard and the blend goes out of stock.
This doesn't mean that a particular manufacturer is going out of business, or just selling all of their inventory to China. STC's forecast may have been off, but that doesn't mean they are throwing in the towel.
The theorizing and speculation that goes on is laughable.
Smokingpipes is probably the most familiar and popular vendor, and thus they get hit hard when these ravings and theories present themselves. There are plenty of other vendors that do have stock when SP is out of a particular item though. Putting the disparate pieces together and adding them up ( 2 + 2 = 5.3485 ) doesn't help anyone...