The Model Expo website indicates that the owners of the company are thinking seriously of retiring and putting the firm up for sale.
This is the second such announcement within the last few months. Earlier the owners of Bluejacket indicated they were looking for a buyer. They later clarified that they were only interested in selling to somebody who would run the company right, and that there was no imminent danger of BJ going out of business. I've seen no indication that such a buyer has been found yet. (It certainly won't be me.)
I've always had a mixed attitude toward Model Expo. It appears to be the leading American distributor of those awful HECEPOB (Hideously Expensive Continental European Plank-On-Bulkhead) kits, the vast majority of which are gross parodies of scale models. And Model Expo fittings are, to say the least, highly variable in quality.
On the other hand, Model Expo has for quite a few years now been the manufacturer and distributor of Model Shipways kits. Old-timers who can remember back to the sixties and seventies have a huge nostalgic feeling for that grand old company, and most (I won't say quite all) of the kits Model Expo has added to the MS line, or modified from MS originals, have been good, well-designed replicas based on sound research and good plans. The Model Shipways line is a big, vital part of the American wood ship model kit industry.
Here's hoping that good, conscientious buyers - ones who understand scale ship modeling - can be found for both ME and BJ. (And if a new Model Expo were to stop importing HECEPOBs I wouldn't complain.) If those two firms were to go under, the American wood ship model industry would be virtually dead. (I have hopes for the revived A.J. Fisher, but it sure doesn't seem to have released much yet - ten years after the new owners took over.) The demise of either Bluejacket or Model Expo would be a terrible thing for the hobby.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.