It puts a big dent in the credibility.
Here they introduced the 357 in '00 and they had lots of issues. Sales dropped to almost nothing after 6 months sale and 254 sold out.
They stood in for a hard decision. Continue 254 and hold sales for 357 until it was ready, perhaps loose a couple customers in process.
Other option was to drop production of the 254 and continue sale of 357, loose a bit more customers but save the cost of another production run of a saw that was to be outdated shortly. So they did the later and lost 5% market for good, 25% temporarily.
Production got going and sales increased as the saw got better. Another dent in sales when auto decomp came in the picture, a couple more lost temporay that came back a year or so later when they got it going good again. Then came same dilemma as the 560 was ready almost to go on market. Same path was chosen with same result.
It is nothing surprising to manufacturer, they spend a lot of money to know what reactions it will be on market from consumer. How much cost there is involved compared to potential gain. Huge resources and money is spent on this...
They know how you react...