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U.S. gunmaker Remington files for bankruptcy
- logfromblammo 9y agoSeems like the gun protests are more a convenient excuse than anything else. > $950 million debtload... Cerberus Capital Management LP, the private equity firm that controls Remington, will lose ownership in the bankruptcy. This looks like another case of a leveraged buyout destroying a business. Edit follows: Cutting the quality is straight out of the leveraged buyout playbook. Buy the brand, cash out any public goodwill it has remaining, then sell off the company before the debt payments catch up. In this instance, they couldn't sell the company fast enough, partly because a Remington Bushmaster was used to murder children at Sandy Hook. If a private equity company buys your favorite brand, buy up some of the warehoused product as quickly as you can, then just forget about it. Otherwise, it's like watching someone slowly succumb to cancer. Sure, sometimes that isn't the play, and the company actually improves post-buyout, but if you're talking about a nationally recognized brand, the odds are that someone is going to burn the brand to fuel their personal money engine, and then dump the husk of the company on the side of a lonely country road.
- mtmail 9y agoIt's a restructuring mostly "This has been in the works for a while and nobody is really concerned about it. They're still selling guns, building guns, and planning for the future. This was more of a they were behind on their financial payments because of their last buyout and such. When the industry took a downturn they were hit with it. So they need to restructure to be able to pay off debts. They're not going out of business, and they won't be likely to go out of business any time soon, their name is still hugely valuable and they still sell some of the most popular guns on the market (and their quality across the board seems to be getting better, especially their Marlin line). Source: Person in the industry (though not at Remington)" https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/875z4t/remington_one_of_americas_oldest_gun_makers_files/dwak8kz/ https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/875z4t/remington_one_... [edit: changed the quoting for readability on mobile]
- yodon 9y agoPlease don’t use code formatting for qoutes, it makes your comment unreadable on mobile
- dorfsmay 9y agoI really wish HN used basic markdown, so we could at least quote properly.
- rando444 9y agothis is basic markdown. use asterisks and put your quote in italics.
- exelius 9y agoNo offense, code blocks are easier and HN can fix them so they render properly.
- mbreese 9y agoKeep code blocks and block quotes separate. Code tends to have short lines and are easy to read with the current formatting (even on mobile). Quotes can have long lines which should be wrapped (especially on mobile).
- exelius 9y agoFine by me; but this is a usability issue and the answer isn’t “wrap every line in asterisks and prepend with an angle bracket”.
- dragonwriter 9y agoCode blocks render properly already. The proper rendering of code blocks (monospaced, fixed line breaks reflecting the original source, because both consistent line breaks and spacing are important for reading code and at least the first and sometimes both are semantically material in code) is not a good rendering for blockquotes. It would be nice if HN had a format option designed for blockquotes, but in the absence of one using code formatting is the worst possible option, worse than just wrapping the quoted block in quotation marks.
- jaquetheduck 9y agoI doubt this is really due to the protests. Remington's quality has been dropping for years. Their most popular model, the 870, used to be one of the most reliable and affordable shotguns out there, but now it is one of the worst ones you can buy. It seems just a coincidence that this is happening at such a high point of the gun control movement.
- jboggan 9y agoTerrible quality control and terrible product development is responsible for this. Principles of mass manufacturing reliable firearms were figured out in the early 20th century and Remington as a company seems to have forgotten how to do this in the last 20 years. The launch of the R51 pistol was a textbook disaster in terms of product quality and public messaging and pretty emblematic of the overall problems the management had.
- Pxtl 9y agoSo what does "bad quality" look like in a firearm? Because a "quality" problem in a device that ignite an explosive propellant in the palm of your hand and propels a piece of metal at deliberately lethal velocities sounds really bad.
- domevent 9y agoAmmo jams, rusting, poor MOA, that kind of thing. Firearms tend to fail around the moving parts, you need something close to criminal irresponsibility or stupid end users to blow it up. If you load your shotgun with a 4oz slug and a high brass load, you might actually blow it up, but otherwise the receiver or ejector jamming is far more likely. Rust is also a problem when you’re dealing with lots of heat, and corrosive gasses. Good question!
- rhcom2 9y agoPoor tolerances (or "bad quality") lead to jamming, misfeeds, excessive wear, ect. In really bad cases (famous on the Remmington 700) the gun can actually fire when you close the bolt or drop the weapon.
- talmand 9y agoI apologize for not going down the list but there are numerous things that count towards being a quality product when it comes to firearms that have nothing to do with its safety. These qualities can even vary across the range of gun owners such as plinkers, hunters, and collectors that look for different things based on their needs.
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- rboyd 9y agoHow much did the 887 recall contribute to this?
- ZorroToaster 9y agoI don't see why they bother implying the recent protests have had or will have an effect on Remington. Bankruptcy has been a long time coming due to garbage management and deteriorating quality. The timing is just coincidental and makes no material difference.
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- avs733 9y agoyeah absolutely this. They tried to make their factory in Upstate NY 'lights out' in the 1980's before the technology was ready. It failed miserably. Since then I don't think they have done anything to advance their manufacturing operations in any meaningful way. Add in that a long history of treating their union employees like garbage has led to a lot of internal disconnect between management, engineering, and labor and you have a situation that is not tuned for long term growth.
- lainga 9y agoTo point to as evidence of a firearms company brought low by their movement in action. I doubt many people, if any, in the post-Parkland protest wave are aware of Remington's quality issues, or that there are distinctions between firearms companies at all.
- jmanderley 9y agoNext, you're going to tell us it's called a magazine, not a clip.
- ncallaway 9y ago> I doubt many people, if any, in the post-Parkland protest wave are aware of Remington's quality issues While I think it's ridiculous to attach the "if any" claim to this sentence, I think the more general claim (the one referencing "many people") is fair. > or that there are distinctions between firearms companies at all. This is an absurd claim to make. You really think that people protesting don't know the difference between various firearm brands and manufacturers? I'm sure they can't all name every brand or manufacturer, but your claim is that most aren't aware that there are distinctions between various firearm companies. That's ludicrous on its face.
- dustinmoorenet 9y agoI think the gun industry has a problem with a product that doesn't really go bad and isn't able to expand much. Sure, bullets need to be replaced, but it is really hard to make a gun that wears out quickly but that also is not a safety hazard for the shooter. At a certain point people will have enough guns that will occasionally be used. And the more guns you have, the less any one gun will wear out. Also, the hot guns on the market now are what? AR-15? That gun was developed in the 1960s. Sure there is new tech in accessories, but `the gun` can't really improve, because bigger and faster are limited by physics and laws.
- banned1 9y agoBut you don't have to get another one because you need it. You get another one because you can. It's just like getting a new iPhone.
- usrusr 9y agoI'd say it is exactly not like the new iPhone: repeated private gun buying happens for completing a collection (which never happens), not for upgrading to the latest keynote filler feature. When IPhone enthusiasts keep their discarded phones in some drawer it's more a matter of laziness than of building an arsenal.
- nymnsat 9y agoAnother case of Cerberus being too aggressive with debt load and shoddy with its operating plan. It's a wonder anyone lends to them to do LBOs any more. Classic case of heads I win, tails other people lose
- banned1 9y agoIt seems that the gun homicide epidemic is winding down! Oh wait there was never an epidemic: https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/the-gun-homicide-epidemic-isnt-ac13b21ff3f9 https://medium.com/@bjcampbell/the-gun-homicide-epidemic-isn...
- dschuetz 9y agoI'm not sure what to think of it. Either it's a case for gun supporters saying "see, their jobs are at stake! gun law supporters endanger the economy!!1!" Or it's a case for gun law supporters saying "making guns is bad business anyway, and your business model sucks!" At this time Remington basically says "I'm done, buy me! I'm cheap now, because you have to deal with my inflated business model". Remington could continue to make fewer, more exclusive guns, but with this debt? I think the financial managers have been busy being incompetent, so do not hire former managers of Remington.
- avs733 9y agoIt was incompetent financial and product management that did them in long before the protests happened. If anything, 8 years of Obama just helped them survive for a longer period of time than they otherwise might have.
- DimitarIbra9 9y agoRemington 870 is a perfect shotgun to start with this fantastic sport. And it can protect your family too.
- yial 9y agoSadly, they've changed the extractor design on the 870, which is prone to breakage... Making the cheaper Mossberg 500 a better alternative at times. Though, I do have a major soft spot for the 870 as visually it's much nicer.
- kyleblarson 9y agoThis is purely related to private equity shenanigans and has nothing to do with the recent protests. Speaking of which, it's an interesting paradigm shift that people typically march for rights, but this weekend's marches were aiming to remove others' rights.
- advisedwang 9y agoThey are marching for their right to life.
- jdpedrie 9y agoNo no, that march is in January, but you don't hear about it on the news.
- gumby 9y agoSince this is Hacker News, it's worth noting that the Remington Arms company (Remington Outdoors) and Remington-Rand (maker of the Univac, latter merged with Sperry and turned into Unisys) started out as the same company. Remington-Rand in fact produced a version of the famous "M1911" automatic handgun (well after the arms company had split off from Remington Typewriter) The Wikipedia entries on these companies are quite thin, actually, but you can follow the thread, if you care, this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Remington_and_Sons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Remington_and_Sons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remington_Rand
- Rebelgecko 9y agoAnother interesting firearm connection: Vista Outdoor (parent of Savage Arms, Federal Ammo, and Hoppes #9) was spun off from Orbital ATK (who makes the Cygnus cargo spaceship and a whole range of solid rocket boosters)
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- paulie_a 9y agoI am going to speculate because quite frankly I am too lazy to do the research, but this seems to be fairly common? Is it an attempt reduce liability? Or are they just terribly run businesses?
- smsm42 9y agoThe article goes out of its way to put this into the context of Parkland shootings and Democrat's following renewed push for firearm ownership restrictions, and imply heavily - without saying it explicitly, as it would be an obvious blatant lie - that somehow the two are connected, even though this is an absolute coincidence. Inserting this angle into this article is yet another act of journalistic malpractice.