When all of this was going down a few years ago, here and at Prodigy Pro forum, I tried to convince people that group buys are not a good value - this pissed off folks who didn't like any rain on their parade.
Let's look at ribbon mics as one example. $79 for a Nady RSM-5 delivered in three days from the major vendors.
These misc are being sold at $79 to the end user with almost no profit margin to either Nady or Musician's Friend once shipping, import duties, distribution costs and, importantly - customer service - are figured in. One microphone manufacturer in China told me he saw Nady products being sold at retail for less than what the Chinese manufacturer charges for them!
In effect, microphones have become cheap commodity products that attract visitors to vendors' web sites where the vendor counts on the prospect buying higher profit or higher revenue-generating products.
Groups buys were a bad idea whose time has come and gone.