The Demise of Colt??

Colt isn't the 'best' in any category. But neither is Ferrari or Lamborghini in any category, but no car [turns] heads turn faster than those cars. Colt just has the je nais se quoi.

I don't understand why they can't bring back the snake guns. I understand the Python would be difficult to bring back due to the workmanship issues, but the other snake guns are really no different than the other revolvers on the market today made by S&W.

*Redacted due to SN visible
 
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Keep in mind that "Colt" is two separate companies. The one discussed in the article is Colt Defense, which is the side that makes the military M16s and M4s. This is a totally separate operation from the company that makes the civilian handguns. If you could visit the Colt factory, you'd see a roof-high chain link fence across the middle of the factory. Civilian handgun production is on the street side of the fence. Colt Defense is on the other side.

The handgun company is actually doing pretty well these days. However, I don't know what it would mean for the civilian side of Colt Defense actually went belly-up.
 
Too bad - I wanted to have a Colt 2000 as a car gun for my Edsel.
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It's truly emblematic of how tone-deaf they could be towards the civilian market.

Sure, it had all the things the focus group said the public wanted. Polymer frame? Check. 17-round magazine? Check. Double-action trigger? Check.

Just like the Glock 17, right? Eh...nope. That's a tall glass of nope.

Of course, S&W wasn't much smarter, but at least they made a close copy of the Glock design. The internal memo that admitted that is a piece of folklore in its own right.

Then there's the Double Eagle. Dean Speir requested a model in 10mm to review. The slide and barrel were marked 10mm, but it wasn't until he disassembled it that he realized it was actually chambered in .45.
 
BarryLee said:
I don’t totally disagree with your statement, but keep in mind there are a lot of employees, stakeholders, and enthusiast that weren’t involved in those decisions.
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Guess they should have gotten so.

Employees probably played it too safe, and assisted by not speaking up and risking their jobs. Stakeholders, no excuse there at all; if you own it you'd better have control of your BoD and management. And enthusiasts? Well, they really don't have that much say other than at the cash register.

It takes a lot of people screwing up to bring down a name like Colt. Plenty of people were involved and either implicitly or explicitly approved of every action that led to near bankruptcy.
 
I own 4 Colts and think they're superb firearms. I'd hate to see such a fine old company close their doors. Unfortunately, short-sighted MBA-style management with its myopic focus on nothing but immediate profits has driven far too many American companies over the cliff in recent decades and I fear Colt may be added to that list. I liked America better back in its days as a capitalist economy. This corporatist thing that replaced it seems to work well only for the fat cats at everyone else's expense. :rolleyes:
 
Doyle said:
I don’t totally disagree with your statement, but keep in mind there are a lot of employees, stakeholders, and enthusiast that weren’t involved in those decisions.
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I agree about the employees. They shouldn't suffer because of bad management. I'm hoping BarryLee is right and some other company buys out their assets (including production lines).
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Ironically, those same employees are now facing suffering as a result of the company's loyalty to its work force. Many people have been urging Colt to bail out of anti-gun Connecticut for a number of years. Aside from the anti-gun legislative environment (Colt's own long guns can't be sold in Connecticut), Connecticut has very high labor costs, and the unionized workers at Colt are paid a LOT more than people doing similar work almost anywhere else in the country. But -- Colt has remained in Connecticut, and one of the factors behind that is not wanting to cut loose the workers, most of whom are older and probably not in a position to relocate to a southern or western state.

It's fine to blame it all on bad management, but if you're objective you really can't ignore that the workers may now be sleeping in a bed they helped make. And in a world in which we routinely criticize companies for not showing any loyalty to the employees, it seems a bit unfair to criticize Colt because they WERE loyal to their employees.
 
I blame this on the investors taking too much money out of the business and loading it up with debt. Management... I feel sure they have contributed to some degree as yes men to the ownership. Employees.... probably contributed to this too to some degree.

I was talking to some folks that work on the line at VW (new plant) and you would think they'd be fixated on producing quality and be thankful for their jobs. They aren't. It made me feel like VW should probably have opened their factory in Mexico and skipped the US.
 
Keep in mind that "Colt" is two separate companies. The one discussed in the article is Colt Defense, which is the side that makes the military M16s and M4s. This is a totally separate operation from the company that makes the civilian handguns. If you could visit the Colt factory, you'd see a roof-high chain link fence across the middle of the factory. Civilian handgun production is on the street side of the fence. Colt Defense is on the other side.

The handgun company is actually doing pretty well these days. However, I don't know what it would mean for the civilian side of Colt Defense actually went belly-up.

Colt Firearms and Colt Defense reintegrated last year, so they're once again a single company.
 
Colt can die for all I care. They have no respect for the American fighting man.
Back during the Bush administration there was a competition to look into a new rifle for our troops. Colt invested nothing in a new and improved rifle design and only submitted the same old modernized M-16 we're using now. It jammed 4 times as much as the next worst performing rifle for reliability. They didn't get chosen, but it didn't matter. At the end of the competition they pointed out they had a signed contract from the government that basically guaranteed we weren't allowed large scale supply of rifles to our troops from anyone but them. That's why they made no effort at doing anything and let everyone else expend resources. They'd paid off the correct congressmen and other sordid types and got a trump card.

Colt is more concerned about making money than the lives of our troops or America. I will never buy a weapon from them.
 
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Colt went bankrupt in 1843 after startling the company, no surprise it was because of the same reason of going after and relying on government contracts as they are doing today.
 
Dfarisheel said:
Colt Firearms and Colt Defense reintegrated last year, so they're once again a single company.
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I just learned this on the M1911.ORG forum earlier today. Don't know how the merger escaped my notice, but it did.

Thanks for bringing me up to speed.
 
I've often thought the firearms industry would be a great area of study for all those MBA students out there. You've got brand loyalty, features people want/hate, price points, labor issues, political issues, gun buying frenzies, gun bans, etc. etc. etc.

HK and Hi-Point...both successful companies. High Standard-went out of business selling very nice .22 target pistols and then came back under new management. Glock muscling in on the law enforcement market with a new idea, other companies falling all over themselves trying to emulate Glock. Companies that started out fine with a good product and good service and their success ruined them. The stuff that's happening to Colt now and the stuff that happened to S&W when the Brits owned 'em.

Maybe somebody already wrote such a book. I'd be interested if there was one out there.
 
Colt has been grossly mismanaged for many years. The owners and managers took their "advisory fees" and "distributions" while borrowing money to keep the company afloat.

Over the next several years, Colt Defense went through the private equity leverage wringer. Sciens Capital and its affiliates loaded the company with debt while taking out cash in the form of “distributions” and “advisory fees.” The 2005 SEC filing shows payouts totaling $40 million over the two prior years—a significant amount for a company in such fragile financial health. In 2006, another SEC filing shows, the company redeemed “members’ equity” worth $41 million. In 2007, Colt Defense agreed to borrow $150 million in a “leveraged recapitalization” that featured distributions to “members” of $131 million. In 2009 it borrowed an additional $250 million, while multimillion-dollar payouts continued. For 2010, Colt Defense had sales of $176 million—more than double what they were in 2004—but registered an $11 million loss. “You didn’t have to work at Colt Defense to know it had put itself in a dire situation,” says Merrick Alpert, a Connecticut businessman who began advising the shriveled remains of Colt’s Manufacturing in late 2010 and later became its senior vice president.


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Better-prepared manufacturers such as Glock saw sales rise sharply. Under the terms of the Colt split, however, Colt Defense could reach the booming civilian market only by first selling its rifles to Colt’s Manufacturing, a debilitated company with sclerotic lines of distribution. Colt’s Manufacturing, for its part, offered only a limited selection of the handguns so much in demand.
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http://www.businessweek.com/article...ers-owners-have-led-it-to-crisis-after-crisis
 
I hate to see a historic company like Colt fail, or even be bought out by some other firearms company. Colts will never be the same, or even have a chance of being the same if it gets bought out.
 
Shut down the Conn plant, re-open in a right to work(aka no union)gun friendly state and they will have a chance.
 
Colts will never be the same, or even have a chance of being the same if it gets bought out.
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Okay, but...
Never be the same as what?
As the Colt you knew in 2011?
Or the Colt that I knew in 1990?
Or the Colt that older folks knew in 1955?
Or the Colt that earlier generations knew back in the 1940s?
Or the legend that built the name -FAR- earlier than that?

I bet if we had a knock-down, drag out dirty-laundry fest on all of the American gun manufacturing legends in American history, Colt takes first place and it's a helluva space between 1st and 2nd place. S&W was owned buy a British company, Bill Ruger tried to sell us down the river on mag capacity limits, Winchester & Browning guns are made in Japan and Remington would be better off if they fired every possible member of management and replaced them with... anyone, and that's just touching on the scads of names and legends that are no longer with us in any form or the name has recently been regurgitated by someone with a medium bankroll & a dream.

But I don't think anyone has had so much success & carries with it such a grand name as does Colt, which is miraculous because it sure seems like they've bumbled and fumbled their way so many times that a pure detailed list of it point-by-point might take down the server that feeds TFL Forums.
 
The fact that Colt was in dire financial straits did not stop their award of bonuses to corporate officers:

In the first quarter of 2014, the Governing Board granted cash bonus incentive awards for fiscal year 2013 in the amount of $120,000 to the Chief Executive Officer, $225,000 to the Chief Financial Officer, $50,000 to the Chief Operating Officer and $150,000 to the General Counsel.
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http://www.last10k.com/sec-filings/t...-14-066180.htm
 
When a big mismanaged company fails it fails big ! Often because of company mentality . For example , Kodak 'we will always be here no matter what happens' What's Kodak ???
Anyway there's construction going on nearby , a new plant for KAHR !!:)
 
Merger with a more stable company and a restructuring will probably be the outcome. Hate to see the name hit the dust.
 
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