I don't wish to cause offence, but a certain phrase involving elderly relatives and egg sucking springs to mind. Gibbo and I have about forty years combined experience in this industry. If you honestly believe that you know better after hearing that then I'm at a loss words.
I have gone over this before.
All of the brands were told the morning after the launch how many of their cards we'd sold. They were..and still are, kept up to date on weekly basis.
The brands that do ship direct, (generally Zotac, Inno3D, KFA on the Nvidia side) and like to work this way were given large POs BEFORE the launch. These are still not even close to being fulfilled. You've all seen Gibbo's update so you know how well this practice ACTUALLY works in real life.
The main brands, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, don't accept large POs direct. THEY allocate stock to each reseller as it's produced and that stock is shipped to one of their local distributors who then tell us how many and at what price to raise the PO. Gigabyte and MSI do sometimes ship direct but, only from their EU hub, and again, only based on the stock that they've got on hand and allocated to us. Asus never ship direct, full stop.
B2B orders aren't subject to any protection so, even if we give them a PO days before launch at launch pricing, there's absolutely no chance that they'd be sticking to it. In fact, one of those examples that I gave before of a $400 increase in a 3090 price in the space of a month, was from a brand direct shipping against one of those "Day 1" POs
I'm tired & cranky, I'm going to bed