One Alembic dealer told me that when he orders Alembics from the factory, he pays 50% in advance, and again 50% on delivery - which may take a long time. This is the same for custom orders on behalf of customers, and for his selection of instruments on sale. Of course the dealer gets a discount from the MSRP, but he can't very well sell you the instrument without a bit of profit to keep his business afloat. And he also has to fork out the import duties (something like 20%) when the instruments arrive.
With large volume brands, the dealer pays dealer price on instruments that have already been made, or that are coming off a production line, and he pays in advance, on receipt of the goods, or he can even get credit and pay after sale. He can more easily sell these brands, so the cash flow is much easier to deal with.
Alembic does allow you to order direct from them, but they discourage that for at least two good reasons: (1) they don't want to spend too much time not building instruments, (2) dealers usually know their Alembics, so they're able to help you make the decisions that you never get to make with run-of-the-mill instruments, and so you stand less chance of ordering one that you will end up not liking.
