Well yeah, Definitely Stihl (and other OPE Manufacturers moving the same direction) are shooting themselves in the foot , and definitely not helping their dealer *service* network in any way by jacking up prices like that.. Briggs seems to be going the same direction as well, making repair parts so much more expensive it just isn't worth repairing the machine anyway... focusing instead on just replacing engines or major components with minimal skill needed..
I've been actually putting a great deal of my inventory on ebay/amazon and elsewhere at closeout pricing and not re-stocking stuff - I can buy a pretty decent off-market equivalent part for less than half the cost of the OEM part (at dealer cost) from Briggs distributor.. So.. liquidate inventory, and just order in as needed, I almost never see any units in for warranty repairs anyway (Briggs sends them to a "Diamond Dealer" 30 minutes away from here) So I have no real valid business reason to stock OEM parts any more.. But I still think the Stihl move to change terms on their contract with Zama is more about protecting their branding and parts supply - if the chinese can't steal Zama's tooling any more, they can't readily duplicate the new Stihl designs,having to instead do their own R&D to reverse-engineer the components.. not gonna stop them at all, but likely will at least slow them down. It took less than a year for the China sellers to start dumping their clone version of the new Briggs plastic body carbs... So I don't think what they are trying to do is going to help them or their dealers at all.