However everybody who has successfully ordered from him agree that his refurbishment jobs are the best you'll get, so everybody kind of puts up with it.
To get a piece for a tool I'm restoring, I had to figure out the cell number of a guy who bought the property that had the warehouse from a defunct dealer on it, and beg him to go through it for me. He runs an actual business, and bought the warehouse as somewhere to store his day-job machinery, not realizing it was the go-to for this particular brand of vintage machinery.
It was legitimately interesting to hear his perspective when I had an issue with my shipment. He literally remembered my order off the top of his head and helped troubleshoot without any sort of reference material.
Woodworkers are an odd bunch.
If we don't like you, we'll make you hurt.
Probably half of the rotary Mazda parts/car sales happen on Facebook now.
Sucks for those of us who choose not to have Facebook accounts.
Consistent demand, med-high value: the business' inventory is bought up by a larger business that supplies a related niche as part of an expansion plan. This can result in poorer availability/service as the tribal knowledge of inventory organization and item details is lost in transition.
High value but demand is inconsistent/slow: parts bought up by a collector or restorer, they go off the market into storage in order to keep a specific collection going. They may in theory sell parts to others but usually difficult to deal with and almost always requires an "in".
Low demand low value: Scrapped, or stored in indifferent conditions (outside or piled up in storage units) until everything degrades.
Of course, if another "that guy" appears there is a possibility for a stable transition. But as other commenters alluded to, these folks tend to have idiosyncratic personalities and lifestyles so that happens very rarely in my experience.
I guess the original proprietary ICs won't last literally forever, but probably long enough for anyone to still care.