What’s Up With Winchester?
On January 17, 2006, the U.S. Repeating Arms Company, makers of Winchester firearms, announced it would be closing its New Haven, Connecticut facility. Rumors have started circulating that the famous Winchester models 70 and 94 are gone forever and that Winchester is going out of business. We sat down with Scott Grange, the director of PR at Winchester and Browning to get the whole story.
(Originally published in the May/June 2006 issue of Hunting Illustrated)
Can you tell us a little about the beginnings of the Winchester Company?
Oliver Winchester purchased the New Haven Arms Company in 1866 and promptly changed the name to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. At the time, all major firearms production was taking place on the East Coast with the exception of a little unknown shop in Ogden Utah Territory called Browning Brothers. That is a fascinating story in itself, one we can perhaps cover another time. In 1931, Olin Corporation purchased Winchester Repeating Arms Company and merged it with the Western Cartridge Company.
How did the U.S. Repeating Arms Company come about?
In the mid 1960’s, Olin started struggling to make the firearms segment of the business profitable. For the next twenty years, things continued to deteriorate and in 1981 Olin divested of the firearms portion of the business. At that time, the employees of Winchester Repeating Arms Company purchased it lock, stock and barrel and formed U.S. Repeating Arms Company (USRAC). They simply purchased the facility along with the license to use the Winchester name. It was basically business as usual.
How did Browning and Winchester merge?
With limited resources, it was immediately apparent that the well meaning folks of USRAC would not be able to turn things around from a profitability standpoint. The company continued to struggle and in 1985, a French group called GIAT, who owned firearms giant Browning, conducted a study here in the U.S. to determine which firearm names were most popular among the people. The top three names from the study were Winchester, Browning and Remington - showing that anyone that knew anything about firearms at least knew these three names. At that time, the U.S. Repeating Arms Co. (makers of Winchester firearms) was struggling and was up for sale. The owners of Browning thought it would be a good move to own two of the three most popular companies and purchased U.S. Repeating Arms Co. in 1991.
Why was the decision made to close down the New Haven Plant?
Following the purchase of the U.S. Repeating Arms Co., Browning brought back some of the classic Winchester designs and did a lot of neat things to boost the revenue of the company, but we just could not make it profitable. The owners of Browning tried and tried to save the U.S. Repeating Arms Co., knowing that we had such a good and powerful name to work with. Our owners were gracious and allowed the losses to continue longer than most owners of businesses would; but, in the end, the company would not cash flow. So, after a long struggle, our owners decided to close the doors on the plant. The closing of the New Haven plant took place March 31, 2006. It was a business decision to realign resources and to help make the U.S. Repeating Arms Co. profitable again in the future.
What does this mean for the general public?
It means that three firearms are going away. The model 94 lever action rifle, the model 70 bolt action rifle, and the model 1300 pump shotgun have all been discontinued completely. There are some legal issues that completely prohibit us from even making those guns right now. In the meantime, we are moving forward with new ideas that will give Winchester a bright future. We are a worldwide company and are taking advantage of all of our resources.
The Browning/Winchester company has introduced a couple of new models to the Winchester line-up this year with the Super-X rifle, a semi-auto rifle like our Browning BAR, the Super-X3 shotgun, the select over/under shotgun which is also a Belgium-made product, and a beautiful little .22 rifle that we have coming from Russia. We have great plans for the future and we are preceding the best we can. We are alive and well in every aspect of our company. There has been absolutely no change in customer or product service. We have an obligation to our customers to continue servicing all products including those that have been discontinued.
For those people who own one of those firearms that have been discontinued, they should be very happy. The value of those guns probably just went up significantly because there will never be another Winchester rifle made that has “made in New Haven, Connecticut” stamped on the barrel - and, to collectors, that means something.
Are you seeing an increase in sales due to this announcement?
Absolutely! In fact, our complete inventory was gone in a three-hour period the day we made the announcement. It was unbelievable how fast that stuff went out of here.
What has been the public response from this?
Anytime you start ripping icons out of people’s lives, there is going to be emotion. And, what two greater icons are there in the firearms world than the model 94 and model 70? The human element and emotion has been enormous - everything from outrage from those people who simply do not know the whole story, to those who are very aware of the situation and who have said thanks for trying to make the company successful these past few years. It has been an emotional roller coaster. Are we happy to have made these guns go away? Absolutely not! It makes us sick! Eighty-percent of our Winchester production just went away. It has been rough, our internet site and our consumer department have been overloaded. The rumor mill has just gone crazy because people simply aren’t getting the real story. Winchester is not going out of business; we are alive and well and have a bright future!
Can you speculate on what the future holds for Winchester?
The biggest hurdle we have to overcome at this point is securing the license from Olin to continue to use the Winchester name. Negotiations are going on right now and everything should turn out just fine. I can’t speculate at this point on our new product ideas, but we are excited about the future and we are going to do some great things to show people that Winchester is still alive and well.
13 comments June 5th, 2006
