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America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

nytimes.com

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Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#71

Post by ryanmarsh »

vorpalhex wrote: post #2

This is not an uncommon story for firearm manufacturers unfortunately. Tooling costs are high, sales hard to predict, and designs can fail easily. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has done a lot of videos on this topic.

This is not at all the case for Remington, who enjoys name brand status with long respected product lines. I got my first 870 pump shotgun at a Wal-Mart 30 years ago, as of last year Wal-Mart was still selling them. It was a great gun. I love it. The only reason people stopped buying them is quality went down as they were sucked dry by a PE firm.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#72

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Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#73

Post by mandevil »

Blackthorn wrote: post #8

There's a certain amount of poetic justice here for Remington, seeing as how they acquired Marlin and then fired all their expertise, completely ruining the brand. Good riddance.

I think you have your timelines wrong. Remington was already owned by Cerberus when they purchased Marlin (they were one of the "18 businesses rolled up"). It was the same people, running the same playbook, just Remington, being bigger, lasted longer before it had been fully sucked dry.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#74

Post by ryanmarsh »

Simulacra wrote: post #3
vorpalhex wrote: post #2

This is not an uncommon story for firearm manufacturers unfortunately. Tooling costs are high, sales hard to predict, and designs can fail easily. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has done a lot of videos on this topic.

There's also the issue - perhaps - of market saturation. How many guns does one need? My pro-gun friends typically seem to have 2-3 but shy away from any more than that.

Ask more pro-gun friends. It kind of becomes an addiction. Everyone I know has a 30 gun safe that's damn near full.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#75

Post by paulddraper »

duxup wrote: post #51
vorpalhex wrote: post #2

This is not an uncommon story for firearm manufacturers unfortunately. Tooling costs are high, sales hard to predict, and designs can fail easily. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has done a lot of videos on this topic.

It feels like the sales are hard to predict have something to do with guns in the US being ... almost borderline fashion items in terms of how people decide things. Like there's a lot of discussion about usage and practicality among gun enthusiasts, but when they buy their 3rd or 6th gun ... I suspect the decisions are more about difficult to predict things and whims. It is a strange market.

I'd describe it as less "borderline fashion" (which any hobby has) more as legal caprice.

Historical examples:

* The Firearm Owners Protection Act banned machineguns manufactured before 1986.

* The Federal Assault Weapons Ban banned certain semi-automatic weapons excluding those manufactured before 1994.

Firearm hobbyists need decade-plus forward thinking predictions. What's today legal is a felony tomorrow, unless steps are taken now.

This makes it a volatile guessing game, even more than other hazardous hobbies (cars, aircraft, martial arts, motorcycles, etc.).

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#76

Post by dba7dba »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #43
Simulacra wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the issue - perhaps - of market saturation. How many guns does one need? My pro-gun friends typically seem to have 2-3 but shy away from any more than that.

Let's see, 3 for 3-gun matches, 1 more for PCC matches, 1 more for precision matches, a few extra if I don't compete in the same class for all of those, 1 the kids can shoot, 1 for my wife to carry, 1 for me to carry, bigger ones for the house and cabin, a few extras for the zombie apocalypse. No, there's plenty of demand for guns. Remington's just lost their former reputation.

Lol, you forgot to mention buying ones for family and friends, like Matt Carriker of offtheranch channel.

I agree free market (with certain safeguards) is usually the best path for a society to sustain itself and prosper.

But I feel private equity firms are definitely not good for a free market to sustain itself. And yet they and their lobbyists will insist free market is the best for our society, use that line to prevent any regulations over what they do.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#77

Post by _bxg1 »

"Financial engineers" aren't interested in building a sustainable business; they want to play a game cleverly, make a cash-grab, jump ship, and leave thousands dealing with the fallout. It's a similar short-term strategy to that taken by many SV founders who build a company only to sell it, though obviously the latter don't cause nearly the same degree of harm to society. But they still pass on opportunities to create actual value and jobs, in favor of making a quick buck and moving on to the next exploit. It's the mindset of locusts.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#78

Post by godzillabrennus »

paganel wrote: post #36

> Because private-equity firms appear frequently as villains in the press, many people assume that they cater mostly to the superrich, earning high returns on investments for billionaire clients. They do. But by far the most important piece of their business — 48 percent, according to the data-analytics firm Preqin — is investing capital for American pension funds. This doesn't get mentioned often enough when talking…

I’ve been shocked to the extent politicians haven’t focused on the lost tax revenue from the gig economy.

I’m certain it’s caused a drop in tax revenue from what would normally constitute middle class tax payers.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#79

Post by omegaham »

brightball wrote: post #25
jcranmer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an intriguing trend in the United States where, for the past several decades, the number of gun owners has gone down but the number of guns has gone up.

Do you mean the percentage of owners? I can count on one hand the number of people I know who own a home but don't own a firearm.

It's definitely region-dependent.

I grew up in an affluent suburb of Massachusetts, where guns were really uncommon.

I got stationed in Yuma, Arizona, where pretty much everyone owned guns.

Here in a suburb of Portland, OR, it's somewhere in the middle. Oregon is an interesting state.

Re: America’s Oldest Gun Maker Went Bankrupt: A Financial Engineering Mystery

#80

Post by aksss »

paganel wrote: post #36

> Because private-equity firms appear frequently as villains in the press, many people assume that they cater mostly to the superrich, earning high returns on investments for billionaire clients. They do. But by far the most important piece of their business — 48 percent, according to the data-analytics firm Preqin — is investing capital for American pension funds. This doesn't get mentioned often enough when talking…

Having been gainfully employed in corporate IT since I was 19 - and doing max contribution to my 401k every year since - I'm not "in touch" with the predicament of today's kids. Are they alright? Record employment numbers today. Wage growth up. We still have a talent shortage. Being (now) a business owner, my biggest complaint on the talent front isn't a lack of education in candidates, it's a lack of customer focus and inner curiosity (to be aggressively learning in one's spare time and on the job).
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