VoiceofReason wrote:I was just thinking that people should start writing Kimber, Beretta etc. and suggest they move their corporate headquarters and manufacturing to Texas, or more gun friendly states than New York or Maryland.
I can’t understand why they are helping the economy of those states when those states would happily legislate or regulate them out of business.
Because it is one thing to move an
office. It's quite another thing to move a
factory. I moved here from California (a state hostile to the needs of small businesses) when we moved an entire small printing/engraving business from North Hollywood to Dallas — and that was a relatively small scale operation. But what it meant for us was that for about 2 weeks, we were unable to produce anything at all because very heavy equipment like printing presses had to be uninstalled from where they were bolted to a concrete floor, put on trucks, driven to Texas, riggers hired to get the equipment off the trucks and bolted to the floors in the new location, get the power to where each press was located, etc., etc. And then there was the fact that only half of our employees were willing to make the move to Texas. Finding a qualified printing press operator is not that difficult, but finding a qualified engraving press operator is a different matter. They are an increasingly rare breed. Then there was the matter of outsourcing the engraving to another engraver in Waco until we could get our own presses up and running with newly hired qualified press operators. Then there was the matter of providing temporary housing in a hotel for the employees who chose to move with the company — and on and on and on and on.
And Kimber is a much larger corporation than our little operation was. They are already struggling to keep up with current production demands. Just pulling the plug and moving could possibly kill their business. Thus, there is only one way in which they could afford to make the move, and that would be for the state of Texas to aggressively pursue recruiting them to move. There would have to be considerable tax incentives offered, reduced rate or no charge financing, and other financial means of making it possible. Even if 100% of Kimber's employees were willing to make the move (not bloody likely), they only way they could make it work would be to build a whole new manufacturing facility here in Texas, with all new machining and manufacturing equipment in place and the entire infrastructure pre-positioned.
In order to understand Kimber's situation, you have to know something about their history.
Kimber was founded in 1979 in Oregon. It went belly up and liquidated 1989 or '90, its equipment being relegated to an Oregon junk yard. It is significant that several of their employees left at that time, along with Dan Cooper, to found Cooper Arms. Dan Cooper has proven to be less than a friend to the average gun owner — contributing large amounts of money to political candidates who foster an anti-gun climate. As long as he can continue to sell $10K rifles to the wealthy, he doesn't give a rip about the rest of us. In fact, Cooper Arms finally forced him out because his continued presence was damaging to their business interests. The reason this is significant is that Dan Cooper
was part of the early Kimber corporate culture.
Les Edelman, who owned Nationwide Sports Distributors, became the financial backing to an attempt to revive Kimber of Oregon initiated by Greg Warne. They bought the original tooling and founded Kimber of America in the mid-'90s. Edelman eventually gained the controlling interest in the company. In the meantime, Edelman separately invested in Yonkers-based Jerico Precision Manufacturing, a defense contractor. He combined Jerico Precision's existing capabilities with Kimber's reputation and dealer network to develop the line of Kimber 1911s. Over time, all of Kimber's manufacturing was moved to the Yonkers plant. But the point is that Kimber didn't just pick up and move then. There was a period of time in which the capabilities and manufacturing overlapped between Oregon and New York. And I am willing to bet that they receive some financial benefits from Yonkers and New York State to stay right where they are. (It would be interesting to know if Kimber is among the manufactures frivolously sued by Bloomberg's MAIG.) But it is notable that the move from Oregon to NY was based strictly on manufacturing and business needs, and had nothing really to do with politics, since by the 1990s, New York's political culture was already decidedly anti-gun.
My point is that, even though Kimber's products may be tightly regulated and difficult to obtain within the state where they are manufactured, A) they have difficulty meeting the demand from out of state business as it is, so they're actually sitting in the catbird seat for a manufacturer; B) they probably receive financial incentives to stay in NY, and they probably haven't received any aggressive recruitment efforts from TX or other states; C) as it is, they don't have to deal with employee (100+ in 2007) and infrastructure implications of moving; and D) they are still a business which has to make decisions based on their financial bottom line, and not necessarily on the personal politics of their end users or the individual employees.
So on the surface of it, sure it would make sense to move to a gun friendlier state, but there may be significant financial disincentives to moving. So I just think that it is a whole lot more complicated than it seems on the surface for any manufacturer to just pick up and move. Springfield Armory is in Illinois. Is there any worst state for guns than Illinois? Remington's Ilion Firearms Plant & Custom Shop is located in Ilion, New York. Winchester is in Connecticut, another left of center state. Colt is in Connecticut. Dan Wesson Arms is in New York. Para Ordinance is in anti-gun Canada. Ruger is in Connecticut. Smith & Wesson is in Massachusetts. Beretta is located in increasingly anti-gun Maryland. Marlin has facilities in Connecticut. And so on and so on and so on. Surely
one of those would move if there were any advantage in it for them.
You seem to be extremely informed on the subject. I don’t know about Kimber, but Beretta 
I believe that was Bart.
), brought in some execs who were gun-oriented, unlike the Tomkins people, and rebuilt the company. S&W didn't survive because the boycott failed -- they survived because they changed course.