[BenLurkin]

Well, the obvious thing is for fedgub to step in an order an AR-15 for every adult citizen.

Kenyes would be proud.

[umgud]

My only Colt.

[Jeff Chandler]

I wonder how much of their financial woes is due to labor costs?

[advertising guy]

Bttt

[Cicero]

I don’t think it has helped Colt to have its headquarters in Hartford, CT. Connecticut was one of the biggest manufacturing states in earlier times, but those times have gone. The state is weighed down with taxes and gun haters.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Mismanagement of money.

[headstamp 2]

What’s this the fifth go round with this outfit?

If a gun company can’t make it in this environment, they need to hang it up.

[Chainmail]

Colt has been in sad straits for years. The company had some labor issues about 20 years ago, just when the company was transitioning to a leadership team who was looking for ways to make the products cheaper. I was interviewed twice by Colt for an executive position but both times I asked to see the production floor and to talk to the craftsmen. That was not a proper thing to do according the Front Office and they didn't want me both times.

When I went to Hartford, Colt still had very fine workers and outstanding craftsmen, particularly in the Colt Custom Gunshop but the factory floor was dirty and filled with both 19th Century overhead belt-driven polishers and computer-controlled machinery stations. While the Colt workers wanted to keep making the beautifully-hand finished Colts we all know and admire, the Front Office wanted castings and plastic and roll pins.

Never could convince them that we want quality and most of us are willing to pay the difference. Their loss.

[PAR35]

Incompetent management. Anyone who would keep a firearms manufacturer in Connecticut shouldn’t be able to take refuge in the ‘business judgment rule’.

[barmag25]

So where did the profits go from the past 7 years? No liquid was saved for slowdown in sales?

Poor planning and management. How did they not plan for a slowdown in sales after everybody stocked up.

[rey]

I’m certain they will get a bail out just like GM.

[bert]

If I were a creditor, I would insist that Colt move to Alabama or somewhere out of anti capitalist Connecticut.

[dila813]

"For gun enthusiasts, however, the New Jersey bill confirmed their worst fears: Gun-control types really were trying to force these expensive, newfangled, unproven devices down their throats. A New Jersey NRA affiliate denounced Colt’s for “standing with … the antigunners,” as a 1999 Wall Street Journal article recounted, and later called for a boycott. Though the group backed down, one major Colt’s dealer suffered a 20% hit in sales of Colt’s products—$1.5 million." http://fortune.com/2015/04/22/smart-guns-theyre-ready-are-we/ It's their own fault, don't partner with anti-gunners

[central_va]

God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal.

[stevio]

Sad if true.

[WellyP]

Get out of Connecticut

[Texas Eagle]

10.9 million payment on INTEREST??? Who the hell is running Colt? Baraq Goldstein Obola?

[central_va]

If they sold the reproduction rights to the original M1911 that would be worth a hell of a lot.

[M Kehoe]

The West Hartford manufacturer...

That there is the first problem. Second problem is the DOJ, and ATF. Third problem is the "safe" guns research. And the last problem is image, and marketing.

Have Colt give me a call, and I'll work them through a Ch. 11.

5.56mm

[vette6387]

“The West Hartford manufacturer established by Sam Colt has been the most famous gunmaker in America since the 1840s”

Part of any “restructuring” should be a requirement that Colt be made to move out of CT. But I guess if they merged with one of the other competitors, that would happen as a consequence of the deal. CT doesn’t deserve to have any firearm manufacturing within it’s borders.