A lot of them are from China or elsewhere. They may have a small online store, or can get various goods. Lots of proxies/agents want one, etc.
I guess the balance is that we certainly benefit as a community when we have "makers" that build new stuff and add to what's out there. We also benefit from having a direct line of communication from larger vendors like Cooler Master, Matias, Kinesis, Unicomp, etc. Resellers aren't necessarily bad either, but unless they are unique in some way or have some exclusive products, I'd argue they are less helpful. (It's hard to throw everyone in big buckets though, since each case is so different. Any some resellers came *from* our community and support it in various ways.)
It's hard to draw the line as to what is good for the community and what isn't as far as vendors go. We don't want to turn into a spammy storefront for every vendor that happens to sell keyboard-related products. We don't want to police vendors as to their business practices, ethical behavior, etc. But how do you not if shady stuff is going on? So part of the scalability issue becomes dealing with that as well.
Am I over thinking it?