My cynical view on computer parts these days is that only differentiating factor are some heatsinks and fans. Some people even put RGB blinkies on them. It's crazy. But seriously, with the thin margins it must be a very hard market to survive in.
Sounds more like they can't cope with the competition. After all, making a video card is just putting some chips on a board and be done with it. There is no unique selling point to be made because the GPU manufacturer's closed source driver dictates the functionality.
Maybe if you copy reference design. But from what I hear board partners cannot test their GPUs functionally until release day. The working drivers are distributed by NVIDIA, and AIBs only get a stressload BIOS to see how cooling and VRMs hold up. Of course this is nowhere close to real world demands where instability may occur for certain loads. Some of these cards also have a factory OC or custom V/F curve.. how are they going to verify those?
It sounds more like putting out the pick'n'place order is the easiest part. The hard part is keeping your will to life while being a slave of NVIDIA's will.