Okay, so what's going on with Dahon in just the American market?
Got me, pal.
The high water mark seemed to be the year before they declared ThorUSA, who are also Tern dealers, as the Dahon national distributor and closed their West Coast design office. Since then the models offered in the NA market has been whittled down to just basic machines.
Dahon continues to innovate and create interesting bikes and show them at the Asian trade shows, Eurobike and even the Sea Otter - but they are never offered in the USA. I haven't seen a Dahon advertisement in decades. My local mega-LBS was a Dahon dealer, but they never had floor stock nor any sales personnel who even knew how to fold the bikes. Hello? Where are the district sales reps? No matter, the LBS dropped Dahon around the time the direct-to-consumer sales path was created.
So now we have news of Thor's impending retirement. (To his credit, he's always offered exemplary support for the bikes post-sale, including discontinued models.) Whither, Dahon-US?
Could be worse, I suppose. In America: Birdy - MIA. DiBlasi - MIA. Mobiky - out of business. Xootr - out of business. Big Fish - out of business. Giant, Trek, Breezer have all dropped their folders. The Strida Factory web page hasn't been updated since ~2018.
Culturally the US is just moving away from bicycle commuting (bicycle modal share has been declining since a peak in 2014), and folding bikes are a largely commuter-driven market. I am unsurprised that folding bikes are floundering in the US, and we just don't have good access to a lot of the more interesting folding bike brands at all (birdy, asian brompton clones, etc.)