I'd guess that it's like a lot of other "niche" goods (like keycaps for example). It may be successful and well received but that probably doesn't mean it was worth it for them to buy all the in house tooling to produce the set.
Rather it often makes sense to pay to tool a factory for a limited set of runs, produce the amount you know you can sell plus a bit of extra inventory, and then eventually when it sells out you can consider tooling up again.
Working capital and cash flow - the majority of a board game's expenses are literally just the physical manufacturing of the items, you need to pay all that up front before you have anything to sell, and you need to guess how much you'll sell because you're only doing a single run, not a continuous manufacturing, so you can't easily make more if you run out and if you make too much, you're stuck with worthless inventory.
Preorders make total sense for board games because of these issues, so that you make as much as there is actual demand and get the money up front to fund the manufacturing, and especially for a reprint of a successful ones because then it's not a cat in the bag but customers can reasonably know what they're getting in the end.
Probably most of the first run sold through Kickstarter and despite critical acclaim they didn't get a publishing deal or didn't want a publishing deal.
It's only natural that profit from the first run might not be enough to pay for the costs of second run. And if you don't want investors poking their noses into your business and seeking free rent of of you, you might choose to pre-sell the next batch. And one of the ways you can do that is Kickstarter.
Rather it often makes sense to pay to tool a factory for a limited set of runs, produce the amount you know you can sell plus a bit of extra inventory, and then eventually when it sells out you can consider tooling up again.