Kobo Says the Clara Colour Will Return to the US This Summer

Last week I posted about how something appears to be fishy with the distribution of Kobo ereaders in the US because they’re always out of stock, and they’re often priced above MSRP on Amazon when they are in stock, while the same exact models are readily available to order in other countries without any issues.

The Kobo Clara Colour is a good example of this. It’s been out of stock on Kobo’s own US website for most of the past month, at least. Yet it’s available to order without delay from Kobo’s website in Canada and in the UK.

I was starting to wonder if Kobo was planning to start phasing out distribution to the US, but fortunately that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Since the Kobo Clara Colour has been out of stock so often, Kobo finally put the following notice up on their website:

Due to unprecedented demand, Kobo Clara Colour is out of stock for US-based customers until summer 2025. In the meantime, check out the best-selling Kobo Libra Colour.

You have to respect their optimistic spin, but demand was certainly precedented. Basic observations would indicate the Libra Colour is the more popular model by a good margin, but maybe they didn’t expect to sell so many Clara Colours. It’s still weird how the shortage only seems to be affect the US, though. There’s something more to it but at least this indicates that Kobo still intends to sell their ereaders in the US. Distribution has been a little sketchy since their partnership with Walmart ended, but maybe they’ll get things back on track soon.

At least now US customers know the Clara Colour will be back at some point this summer. That’s better than just putting an ominous “Sold Out” label over half of the lineup in the US.