RANDY WAKEMAN OUTDOORS: Interview

The End of Remington

Remington Arms is no more. They have had no firearm production for some time, they have no work force, no engineering department, no marketing department, insufficient raw materials to make complete firearms, no management team, no customer service, no way of ordering parts, and they don't have so much as a website. The remington.com website was quickly converted to the Remington Ammunition website by the new owners of Remington ammo, Vista Outdoor.

The former Remington of Ilion, New York, does not own its own name or trademarks: all of that went to Vista Outdoor. Apparently, the unknown investment group, Roundhill Group LLC, that bought the Ilion facility in the bankruptcy auction cannot legally make firearms yet as they have no firearms manufacturing license. Every day that goes by means that Remington loses market share, loses shelf space, and long time Remington customers are forced to find other vendors. Law enforcement in the U.S. and around the world has long relied on Remington 870s shotguns and Model 700 rifles. They can do that no longer.

Ruger, who bought the Marlin line, has already moved tooling and equipment from the former Remington facilities and is deciding which of their plants will produce Marlin firearms (perhaps all of them) starting mid to late 2021. Ruger discussed this in their Q3 Earnings Webcast of October 29, 2020.

Quite understandably, the Remington firearms name is now mud. Vendors were screwed, employees were screwed, the NRA was screwed, and Remington owners have no customer service to contact, much less any warranty to rely upon. There has been an explosion of e-mails about Remington product. I've covered Remington firearms for decades and used Remington product going back to my great-grandfather's Model 11 and my mother's 11-48 28 gauge. While Remington once had over 1200 employees in Ilion, New York, (and 3500 employees total) alone they now apparently have none. They have lost a priceless amount of skill and talent: many of whom are friends of mine.

Many have opinions and I'm no different. I see no evidence that Remington Arms will be a player of any significance in the firearms industry again.