If you think about all the things that Cold Steel has to do before it can start putting new knives out there for sale, then you'll see that this delay is not surprising. We all know that CS has its knives manufactured under contract by outside companies/factories. Even though they're only changing the type of steel used, and not the designs, they'll still have to make significant changes inside the factory to go from making O-1 to A2 knives. Because I would think the heat treating and many other production processes are going to be completely different. Then after the factory makes prototype models, CS has to test them to make sure they're tough enough, sharp enough, and so forth. If there were problems with the heat treat or the quality of steel, they'll have to corrected by the metallurgists. Finally, after the prototypes pass all the tests, they'll start manufacturing in high quantities. I would think that getting the factories set up properly is the biggest challenge. Doubtless, these factories don't just work for CS, they work for dozens of other knife companies and tool manufacturers as well. So it may be CS has to wait for its turn.
Once they start churning them out, I'm sure they make 'em in batches of at least ten or twenty thousand. Cost of production is an extremely important factor to the profit margin. Costs per knife probably goes down as the number of knives produced increases. Ultimately, it's all about the profit margin. I'm sure the A2 models will come out eventually, but we may have wait a while longer.
