[G6Tanuki]

From a business perspective, I can understand a company having more than one customer-facing presence (and differential pricing) even though the backstream distribution is the same. Equally, I can understand a distie culling the 'slow-moving, low-value' lines [a decade ago a friend was writing business-analytic software to identify the low-turnover/low-profit corners of a client's product-portfolio].

Stocking 40-year-old ICs that maybe only sell 10 or so a year is crazy for a mainstream distie - the capital tied-up in the stock can't always be depreciated as the parts-that-were-once-high-valued become obsolete. The smart distie will seek to offload their legacy-parts stock - which is where hobbyist-parts-suppliers like Cricklewood come into play - they buy-up the stuff for pennies-on-the-pound and then sell them to us hobbyists (usually minus any kind of parts-traceability guarantee).

Equally - I'm reminded of mainstream suppliers like RS that tried to develop a 'hobbyist/amateur' parallel-business - at rather higher prices than the same kit could be bought from RS.... In the case of RS it was "Doram" - which emerged in the 70s but faded away a decade later when they got to see just how much hassle it was to have to deal with hobbyists who bought 17/6d worth of components and paid with a postal-order.

RS tried again a few years later with "Electromail" which equally failed to set the world on fire.