ESN was Donic.. they sold Donic and kept the factory.. why bother to make their own models?!
They make more money producing for several TT brands than just for their own.
Well, to be precise, ESN was founded by the same guy who many years earlier founded Donic (
Doctor Georg
Niclas). ESN wasn't Donic itself. Dr. Niclas sold Donic to a befriended family and then set up ESN later.
But I agree that it would be a risky move by ESN.
First of all I don't think that ESN would like to see traditional german brands like Donic, Tibhar, Gewo, Andro and Joola (now american, sort of...) go bankrupt, which would surely happen because Daiki and a chinese factory together likely could't come up with enough rubbers in time in order to prevent them from going bankrupt.
Secondly, even though ESN holds the patents to most of the rubbers they produce - at least as far as I know - I wouldn't be surprised if the contracts between ESN and their customers are designed to kind of rule out that ESN goes rogue with the rubbers.
Also, if I were ESN, I would very probably prefer to have a bunch of (steady and satisfied) customers who buy my products in large quantities. Re-selling them to tt shops and the players themselves isn't really my problem, which would in fact become my problem if I would have to do the distribution and (heavy) marketing myself, which in itself is a big hassle. It would mean to establish an entirely new and relatively big department within the company. ESN would have to hire a bunch of people who understand this business; they would have set up offices for marketing and distribution in Asia as well, I believe. That would be an
enormous risk and cost factor.
Would the brands try to turn to Daiki and/or a chinese factory? Maybe, but I doubt that they could handle the needed quantities in time. Could the brands each set up their own factories? I am not sure if the brands have the financial resources to do that. To set up such a specialized factory takes time and money. You would have to buy properties, built the factory itself, buy the machines, hire staff etc. That would take time and by the time everything would be ready to go, each brand would have gone bankrupt - maybe not Stiga though, since they have some other things going on aside from tt.
Now I do not know the market shares of ESN - zeio probably knows a bit more about that - but all in all I find it highly unlikely that ESN would start doing their own thing - just too much risk involved. Also it would create a lot of chaos within the industry and that would also not really benefit ESN because it might also damage their "street cred" so to speak, at least for some time.
