I edited my comment. That's fair comments... I meant more the non-board stuff such as wires/interconnects etc. I actually saw a thread once where people were able to correlate bulk purchases on Alibaba/Ali (since they publish it with redacted usernames) with Adafruit on stock of certain supplies.
It's entirely possible the passive components they sell are repackaged AliExpress stuff. But I'd guess it's because the passives are the same quality a hobbyist would get from buying on Amazon. Their "secret sauce" is the boards and software they design.
