There are a lot of factors. Crazy knife collectors are being crazy knife collectors and buying enough knives to kit out a personal platoon or company's worth of knives. Outbreaks are hard on the the supply chain everywhere along the way. The largest ports in the world have been continually backed up and often closed down periodically the last couple years. Every time a port shuts down due to an outbreak it causes massive backlogs that just get worse and worse, mostly because of how ports work here. You have a fragmented infrastructure system that's been a race to the bottom, which makes it hard to upgrade the port facilities, let alone any connecting rail systems. Instead of being an integrated, well operated machine, it's complete chaos. The various pieces and fragmented operations are so uncoordinated that they're constantly getting in each other's way, blocking each other from getting their job done. It's to the point where some companies are begging to be able to offload cargo containers with helicopters to bypass the mess of the ports.
There is a shortage of shipping containers in China, because we're buying more junk from them than they're buying from us. There was a recent styrophome shortage that would mean your fridge was ready to ship but delayed because they didn't have the packing materials to safely send it. The online shopping craze has stretched the logistics of shipping to the breaking point, when people are buying a pack of gum and need it shipped to their doorstep. That same space on a ship, train car, or truck being used for someone buying some printer paper (instead of going to a local office supply shop) is competing with my knife getting shipped. The increase in online shipping is killing warehouse workers who have to do twice as much with half the staff, due to covid protocols. The warehouse is also now disconnected from the office staff, who are often working from home. After years of driving a lot of truck drivers out of their jobs, by treating them like garbage, all this extra delivery work means there's a shortage of drivers to treat like crap. Asking them to come back, because you miss treating them like crap hasn't worked out very well.
Then there's the way the products are distributed. A certain amount of knives are sold directly by the manufacturer, so they hold onto that stock for dear life. Some preferred retailers get the lion's share of what's left and a lot of the other retailers get the scraps which are quickly bought out locally. There might be a bunch of the knives you are looking for, but they're either being sat on by someone you don't normally buy from or sat on by someone people don't normally think of to buy quality knives from. In the last year, I've found some knives that were sold out everywhere, but just sitting in some obscure hardware store you wouldn't expect to buy a more expensive knife from. You really don't expect to trip of a Cold Steel Magnum Tanto among the gardening tools of a hardware store, but it can happen.
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