If I had to hazard a guess, then I would say that a new kit supplier (probably Chinese) has been lined up. The club can quite rightly blow the rest of the EPL away due to scum (£75m), Chelski (£60m - gallingly with Nike) - neither of which are in the ECL next season. Barca just signing a new deal with Nike worth a reported (£100m) and ours of (£15m), had me incredulous that ours hadn't been re-negotiated.
No-one else has the access that we now have, to the biggest untapped market and it wouldn't even surprise me if they sold them at say half the price of others to get the shirt sales up because, as someone has already said, it's the number of shirts sold, not how much it costs in profits originally that matters. The old speculate to accumulate. With the contacts we have already forged, the Chinese would clamp down on fakes, and it would all tie in with their President's plan to drag their football footprint into the 21st century.
Probably barking up the wrong tree, but our deal is really poor at the moment and teams buy themselves out of their contracts all the time, ala Chelsea with adidas to get their new Nike deal...hell, we would probably get the new guys to pay to get us out of Nike...