Savage Arms: the definition of accuracy: from riches to rags to honors, this company is a study in commitment, vision and innovation! - Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence: 2003 manufacturer of the year

Shooting Industry, Sept, 2003 by Carolee Anita Boyles

In early 1988, Savage Arms was bankrupt. The formerly proud American company was days from being dissolved and its assets sold to pay creditors.

Fast forward to 2003. Savage Arms is voted the Manufacturer of the Year by the Shooting Industry Academy of Excellence. Just as significant, the Savage 12BVSS with the new AccuTrigger is honored by the academy as the Rifle of the Year.

What happened between 1988 and 2003 to transform Savage Arms from a doomed company to one celebrated by the industry? This is a story of one man's commitment, and a company that wouldn't die. It's a story of vision and innovation.

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The Savage story is a long and honored one. Formed in 1894 by Arthur Savage, the company marketed the first "hammerless" lever-action rifle with the action enclosed in a steel receiver. By 1915, Savage Arms was manufacturing high-powered rifles, rimfire rifles, pistols and ammunition.

During World War I, Savage merged with the Driggs-Seabury Ordnance Co., and made Lewis machineguns. Savage purchased J. Stevens Arms in 1920, and later acquired the assets of the Page Lewis Co., Davis-Warner Arms, Crescent Firearms, and A.H. Fox. At the time, according to company history, Savage was the largest firearm company in the free world.

During World War II, Savage made heavy munitions and when the war ended, it again manufactured consumer products, including the first motorized lawnmower.

But in the 1960s Savage's fortunes took a downturn. A New York conglomerate purchased the company. Two additional sales later, Savage was on its deathbed.

Enter Ron Coburn. Coburn started his career at Smith & Wesson where he was director of engineering in the early 1980s. He was the president of Case Knives when the owners of Savage Arms hired him as the senior vice president "to straighten out the company."

"Their concern was two-fold," Coburn said. "First, they didn't have any money to change anything, and second, they had orders that they couldn't fill because of the lack of capacity. Plus, they had quality issues in the factory."

The owners thought the answer was "make more product."

"Making a product at a loss isn't the way to run a business," Coburn said. "The situation was just impossible. Just totally out of control. So within a few months, I resigned."

When Coburn resigned, the owners filed for bankruptcy. They pleaded with Coburn to return and either rebuild the company or liquidate it.

In February 1988, Coburn went to the bankruptcy judge.

"He was actually very good about it," Coburn said. "He really didn't want to lose the name or the employment in the area, because we were one of the few manufacturers left in that part of Massachusetts. So he gave me 60 days to stop the bleeding."

With the permission of the owners, Coburn fired the president and the chairman. The owners named Coburn president and CEO and gave him free rein.

"I had to revamp the company from top to bottom," Coburn said. "I had more than 500 employees on the day we filed bankruptcy. By the end of that week we were down to 101. I took out all the VPs and all the administrative levels, and dropped nine out of 11 individual product lines in one day. I decided we weren't going to continue to make more than 400,000 units a year at a loss. We had way too many products, each of them in dire need of re-engineering. I kept two products in the line that I felt were the focus of the company."

The two firearms he chose--though he says he did it without any real market information and with nothing to go on but his intuition--were the Model 110 bolt-action rifle mid the Model 24 over-and-under combination shotgun rifle.

Alter the drastic reductions in products and employees, Coburn started to rebuild Savage.

"Within live months we had stopped the hemorrhaging," he said. "Within a year, we were able to come out of bankruptcy. We paid off all of our prior debts, and all the vendors we owed money to. We paid off all tile back taxes we had accumulated. I'm very proud to say that we paid everyone off. That's one of the reasons we not only survived, but grew during that period. We took care of all the people who had taken care of us prior to bankruptcy. If we'd taken the easy way out, we'd have had a much harder time buying materials and staying alive afterwards."

The Rebuilding Begins

At that point, Coburn applied his engineering background to determine the direction of Savage Arms. He says he treats the manufacturing of firearms the same way automobile factories manufacture cars.

"You just start something at one end of the factory and keep it moving," he said. "You don't put it down, if at all possible. So, I put the equipment in line and kept the material flowing from machine to machine, and took the day-work approach. That was major culture shock to the company, but it got us focused on quality. Slowly but surely, we built up the company."

However, Savage Arms' troubles weren't over. In 1995, the company's owners decided to sell the company. While another firearm company was interested, Coburn believed Savage should remain independent. He told the owners that what ever they were offered, he'd match it. They agreed. Coburn raised his own money and attracted a group of investors.