Well crap…

It appears Remington is going to file for bankruptcy…

Remington Outdoor Company Inc, one of the largest U.S. makers of firearms, has reached out to banks and credit investment funds in search of financing that will allow it to file for bankruptcy, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Full article HERE, at Reuters.

First Colt, now Remington, who’s next??? Mossberg?

Commonalities are they were formerly successful in the Northeast, but now… Not so much… Mossberg, Ruger, and others have already moved ‘most’ of their operations to more gun friendly states.

Good article, HERE.  And another HERE specifically talking about Remington in Ilion, NY.

Is this the ‘new’ way to get gun control? Run all the manufacturers out of business???

Comments

Well crap… — 25 Comments

  1. It might be an attempt. But… home machining (even sans 3D printing) might have something to say about that. And if the 2nd amendment is truly broken, why limit to mere firearms when there are nastier things readily made? Some have not truly thought through uncorking that bottle.

  2. Dang shame, Remington, like Colt, Browning and Winchester, are American firearm institutions.

  3. Barack Obama, the best firearms and ammo salesman that America ever knew is in hiding somewhere as the revelations of high crimes and misdemeanors keep being disclosed.

    Why would ANYONE manufacture in NY, CA, IL or NJ? That mystifies me. The cost of doing business in the socialist states is impossibly high. Maybe relocation to a free state is part of their bankruptcy planning?

    • “Maybe relocation to a free state is part of their bankruptcy planning?”

      Bankruptcy is one way to dissolve contractual agreements. Labor has a vested interest in believing management is bluffing when management says “you are driving us bankrupt”.

      Chapter 11 is almost a clean sheet of paper to renegotiate and it gets voted on by a judge who is balancing the needs of all the stakeholders.

  4. you’re missing the bigger picture. those manufacturers are part of a consortium of gun and outdoor equipment makers. the consortium is majority owned by none other than george soros. the individual companies, colt comes to mind, were sold and resold over and over. each new owner took all the equity they could out of the company when they left, basically selling debt to the next one until it no longer can operate on their profit margin.

    • Exactly. Remington is a company that has been sold over and over and over, and the NY money folks have milked it dry. The company has no value (or assets, really) anymore.

      The products are just OK any more, with their competitors eating them alive in quality and innovation, The reputation is all they had left, and it is fading. Plus old, outdated manufacturing and old facilities.

      Add in falling sales from a no-longer fearful customer base and they have nothing left, except debt caused by money men.

  5. Remington did most of it to themselves. The 800 variations of the 700. The cheapening of the 870. The failure of the R51. The craptastic 770 and 783.

  6. I am going with refusing to be innovative. Ruger was supposed to be damned and buried, yet they shed the past (and a nasty one to boot if you consider the crap Bill Ruger pulled in his last years) and now they are top honchos in the Gun World because they innovated.

    Adapt or Die.

  7. An old teammate used to say “I hate to see anybody bleeding, but if they shoot themselves in the foot, it’s really hard to feel sympathetic.” And Remington really shot themselves in the foot, putting out a crap product and expecting people to buy it anyway, treating QC as an option, etc.

    During the ammo crunch, I found one store that had bulk Remington Thunderbolt .22LR, $70 for a 1400 round bucket, and told a friend about it. He said “Well, the bucket would probably work, anyway.”

  8. Jim, that first article is almost 4 years old. That particular gloom and doom has passed. Remington has been suffering for awhile but it is now coming to a head.

  9. Hey Old NFO;

    I didn’t now that Remington had all the quality problems, I knew Remington back in the day, my 870 is 30 years old, it is the 2nd oldest firearm that I have that I am the “original” owner.

  10. All- Thanks for the comments. .45ACP, good point, I missed that. And yes their QC sucks…

    Posted from my iPhone.

  11. Well, I can’t speak to any of their products, other than the fact that my Browning Buckmark Camper didn’t like ANY Remington ammo, even the premium stuff; however, I can say that their website if goofy. I was just looking at it, and it seemed to shift at random from one page to another, without my involvement. Made it aggravating to try to read about ammo, then suddenly find myself on a Model 700 page.

  12. Colt got bought by vampires that sucked it dry. The vampires have been slowly gutting the company, while keeping it alive with successive waves of investments from people who should really know better. They sold Colt’s factory, which it now rents back at a hefty price. They sold the Colt name, which Colt now licenses. They’ve pumped and dumped Colt stock. You can still buy a new Colt firearm, but there’s literally no Colt company behind it; just a ghost of a zombie.

    Any day now, I expect Davis or Century will license the Colt name…

    Remington… they got caught out in the usual “big conglomerate buys all your stock and turns you into a sock puppet” thing. Remington Outdoor is in turn owned by someone else, whose name I forget, whose board is anti-gun but not averse to making money off them. Remington has serious operational problems; the 700 trigger issue, and then the disaster of the R51 pistol, which indicates levels of quality control even the Soviets wouldn’t have tolerated. They’re not just mistakes; they’re indications of basic operational troubles. Plus, Remington’s 700 is pretty much a commodity now; at least a dozen manufacturers will sell you an interchangeable copy of one. Meanwhile, they’re selling copies of Colt 1911s and imported Russian shotguns, etc. The only actual Remington products they sell are the tainted R51 and their semiauto and pump rifles and shotguns, which are more than half a century old and not big sellers. (hard to compete with all those used ones out there…)

    Remington’s corporate masters know nothing of the gun market and don’t care to learn; they’re just riding another corporate property down until it’s more profitable to bankrupt them or sell off their assets a’la Colt. Remington can’t invest in new products without permission they’ll never get. And the spiral downward continues…

  13. It is a shame to see Colt and Remington heading for the crapper.
    Col.Colt and Eliphalet Remington have to be spinning in their graves.

  14. Having been an FFL for 20 years (in Kalifornia, no less) here’s my two cents—

    To all the comments about the corporate vampires–totally agree. Here, Ian McCollum lays out the demise of Colt–

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk_TxE1d9HY

    In my grandfather’s time, a good rifle was expected to last a lifetime or more. It wasn’t like buying a pair of shoes, or the latest iphone. I wish I had kept one of those Smith and Wesson posters from the 90’s showing all the handguns in their line. It was jokingly referred to as the ‘gun a month’ club. While this was wonderful for consumers, it was just not sustainable. The corporate heads decided that the way to compete was to be like everybody else, and constantly offer something ‘new’, while at the same time dropping the tried and true products that had brought them customers in the first place. I remember watching this a Winchester as well.

  15. These days, brand loyalty (ANY brand) is a sucker’s game. The question isn’t if but rather when they’ll drop QC in the toilet to meet the next quarter’s earnings forecast.

  16. What the rest said.

    Big Green’s QC is dogshit and they’ve been trading on the reputation of a bygone day for a while now. If they can’t be bothered to put out a decent 870 maybe they should go away.

    * I know, annecdote isn’t data, but I bought two brand new 870s in 2009. The powder coat finish lasted 3(?) months on the first before starting to flake off and the second refused to cycle properly. Trip to the smith put it right, but a frigging pump shotgun with the reputation of the 870 should run out of the box.

    ** I say this as the owner of 5 870s and a couple of 1187s. I LIKE their stuff.

  17. Colt went bankrupt because their two key products AR platform rifles and 1911 pattern pistols, are made by just about everyone.

    The Single Action Army market is not big enough to sustain them.

    They are reintroducing some modern revolver models, but that’s a niche market and Colt needs some, and it kills me to say it, polymer framed guns and other products.

    Remington has suffered from quality issues since Cerebus (now Freedom Group) bought them and a bunch of other manufacturers. Add to that the disastrous R51 pistol and other missteps, and it’s easy to see.

    There are plenty of other manufacturers that are doing well, so I’m not worried that we are going to run out of gun makers. Glock, Sig, Beretta, S&W, Ruger, etc… are all doing fine.

    • Don’t forget the “Colt 2000” and Double Eagle debacles, and their failure to redesign their revolvers so as not to depend on extensive hand-fitting they could no longer afford.

  18. I still have my trusty Remington backpack from the early 1970’s. It was one of the first with an adjustable aluminum frame and it served me well in several climbs in the Cascades and Long’s Peak in Colorado.