It’s already listed on the EU website so they are already producing it. I wouldn’t think getting a mold for the US factory would be an issue for a large company. So who knows the reason they aren’t offering it to the US market.
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Molds can be a big deal in terms of revenue. Big, profitable companies can easily afford a mold, but those are not the questions they are usually asking.
They are asking, if we pay $250,000 (or more) for molds...
1.) How long until that investment gets paid off?
2.) Can we generate similar revenue without this added cost?
3.) From a profit standpoint, can we continue with what we have for a period of time and be more profitable than if we make this change right now?
4.) Do we even need these molds in the US, or can we just run them only in Austria?
Glock has clearly chosen NOT to sell it here. They can, they just aren't. Marketing has a hand in that. We don't even have Austrian G43Xr's.
Over here, they clearly they feel they can make more money by selling "X guns at P profit" than they can by selling X+Y guns at P-Q profit (Y is added gun sales margin over current state, and Q is added costs over current state by adding molds and reworking assembly protocols).
I am sure Glock is quite thoughtful in how they buy, use, track, and archive molds. And not knowing how many injection molding machines they run, how many gun frames are in each mold, and the number of guns sold impacts the ability for us to do math. If they need to run eight machines for a given frame size and each mold is $150k, they need to drop $1.2M on molds (no spares, just production).
In 2017 (latest public data), Glock, Smyrna made 175,696 guns (94,665 9mm, 73,646 in .380ACP, and 7,385 other handgun calibers below .50). How many additional guns would Glock have to sell to make the math work?
If the cost were amortized across every single Glock made in Smyrna (not just the new G43x with Rail), buying $1.2M in molds would add an average or $6.83 to the cost of every gun sold just to break even over the course of a year.
Profits for S&W (publicly traded so we can see OpEx, Net Sales, Cost of Sales, Taxes, etc.) were about 21.9% of total sales. ($21.90 profit for every $100 sold). If we assume gun sales of twice that ($200 per gun), that yields $43.80 profit per gun. If that math is near correct (pure guesses) Glock would have to sell 27,397 G43Xr US-made guns just to break even (all profits prior to that go to pay for the mold, and until they sell the 27,398th gun, Gaston and the execs are actually losing money compared to cashing in $43.80 per G43 without rails sold!).
If I ran their production, I might even consider selling a G43Xr in Europe for a while, using molds on a few Austrian machines. After the buzz faltered, and sales slipped, I might ship some of those molds across the pond to the US plant in Smyrna, and let them generate a mid-model year refresh by adding the rail to their regionally sold guns. Sure, the US gets the gun later than Austria, but people would still buy. And Glock may be able to avoid paying for additional molds. In Coronavirus terms, they could flatten the curve, pushing demand out over two plants and two years, instead of trying to scale manufacturing for one year just to watch demand fade after six months (and manufacturing capacity far exceed the diminishing demand).
Who knows? We just know that complex discussions between marketing and finance have happened, and the executives feel they will make more profit by not selling the G43Xr in the US right now.
