My first "industry" job back in 1996 was working for Eurocom Laptops in Ottawa, Canada. I think they're still around..
They were/are a Clevo reseller (back then the company was called Kapok), and our leadership and hardware team went to Taiwan for quarterly meetings - along with other territory partners - to have round-table discussions to help the factory decide what to put in upcoming models, and so on..
So I would believe that this is in fact still the process that happens to this day..
The factory (Clevo) focused on sourcing parts and assembling the units, but even back then they leaned pretty heavily on their retail/B2B partners to help them figure out what machines they should be building.
If System76 is moving enough units for them, you can bet they are asking them for input and guidance on what to put in their machines.
They were/are a Clevo reseller (back then the company was called Kapok), and our leadership and hardware team went to Taiwan for quarterly meetings - along with other territory partners - to have round-table discussions to help the factory decide what to put in upcoming models, and so on..
So I would believe that this is in fact still the process that happens to this day..
The factory (Clevo) focused on sourcing parts and assembling the units, but even back then they leaned pretty heavily on their retail/B2B partners to help them figure out what machines they should be building.
If System76 is moving enough units for them, you can bet they are asking them for input and guidance on what to put in their machines.