I just spoke to someone who was, up until recently, in the kit business. It quickly became apparent that while it is possible to make is money selling kits, it requires a lot of hands-on effort to produce, market, and sell them. It is not an efficient operation that can be easily scaled up in size. A company like Horizon has no choice but to grow, grow, grow, or it will get eaten alive (like Hobbico just did), so they need products that can be easily produced (typically by 3rd parties in China) and sold in large quantities through retail channels without a lot of hands-on activity. You follow the same formula over and over again so you can keep growing the company larger and larger.

The only way to have a kit business today is for it to be a small boutique operation.