A cute move by them.
Think about the ergonomics/economics of their sale. They have clearly (I would suggest) planned to reduce prices in the normally slack part of the year by selling off some accumulated seconds and clearance lines among the continued production, to fulfil the 'sale' orders for in-house manufactured items.
Normal sale - lots of cheap stock to offload, keeping packing staff really busy for the first week.
This type of sale would see the manufacturing staff busy before the event, but not fully utilised beween start of sale and the new season (hopefully starting about March).
The way they seem to have organised themselves now is to have (probable) reduced staffing levels in the manufacturing section and/or more fully utilised those workers by taking orders and then simply manufacturing that demand over a much longer period using cheaper grades of timber. Likely, the manufacturing personnel transferred to the despatch area for the first few days to clear the rush of real sales clearance items, then carry on making less than perfect items for sale orders with those components.
Well, that is the way I see it. Sensible organisation of labour. Not so much a sale, like the one-day scrums where they are selling a pre-manufactured items, but a period of cheaper quality output combined with the proper sale of limited clearance items.
Good move to say/suggest there was plenty of National stuff available, I reckon; probably still in the store as planks or still in transit from their timber suppliers.
They are now having to compete with cheaper(?) 'Lan Make' stuff and have likely needed to streamline their production to reduce costs. Possible reason for some extended delivery peiods as exprienced by some during the busy season? That trading loss, quoted way back in the thread(?) might be a clue that their stranglehold on quality at a high cost has been compromised by cheaper stuff all year round. Don't get me wrong - the thrones first quality is just that, spot on accuracy with no knotty timber, dead or live, good grain direction and good surface finish, but that costs a premium. Perhaps they should be renaming their products as premium, budget, low buget and seconds?
