You can't relax in the business world, not even after two lifetimes of success. Remember Pontiac? They were so well established that the creators of Back To The Future thought they'd still be going strong in 2015. Kodak ring a bell? They were so big that the makers of Total Recall thought there'd be Kodak stores on Mars one day. Do you think your Grandma ever thought Woolworth would go out of business? All these formerly household-name companies have fallen into the dustbin of history (or been reorganized beyond recognition) due to CENTS violations, and now, we can add one more: Colt, the company created by the man who invented the modern handgun.
160 Year Old Colt Arms/Colt MFG Going Bankrupt After Losing US Military Contract
This story has a lot of complicated factors, but the key ingredients are twofold-Colt got lazy about their product, and lazy about their distribution.
Lazy about their product: Colt once made some of the best firearms in the market (heck, the Colt Python is still generally considered to be the best non-custom-shop revolver in history), but it discontinued many of its most lauded lines to focus on the lazy bread-and-butter of ARs and 1911s. But it didn't stop there. They were so secure in their branding that they let the competition get the jump on them. When you ask gun enthusiasts what the best 1911 or AR upper is, they're likely to name companies like Wilson Combat and Noveske ahead of Colt, because if there's one thing that gun enthusiasts hate, it's FTFs/FTEs. So other companies passed Colt in quality of product, but they soldiered on, until their largest customer decided to drop their contract.
Boom. All the eggs were in one basket. Then the basket got dropped on the concrete.
Sure, the lucrative brand name will live on, probably bought out and subsumed into some other company, but had they focused on lengthening the lead that previous pioneers in the company created, focused on the customer, focused on the product, and focused on gaining CONTROL of their sales in as many areas as possible, they wouldn't be in this mess.
160 Year Old Colt Arms/Colt MFG Going Bankrupt After Losing US Military Contract
This story has a lot of complicated factors, but the key ingredients are twofold-Colt got lazy about their product, and lazy about their distribution.
Lazy about their product: Colt once made some of the best firearms in the market (heck, the Colt Python is still generally considered to be the best non-custom-shop revolver in history), but it discontinued many of its most lauded lines to focus on the lazy bread-and-butter of ARs and 1911s. But it didn't stop there. They were so secure in their branding that they let the competition get the jump on them. When you ask gun enthusiasts what the best 1911 or AR upper is, they're likely to name companies like Wilson Combat and Noveske ahead of Colt, because if there's one thing that gun enthusiasts hate, it's FTFs/FTEs. So other companies passed Colt in quality of product, but they soldiered on, until their largest customer decided to drop their contract.
Boom. All the eggs were in one basket. Then the basket got dropped on the concrete.
Sure, the lucrative brand name will live on, probably bought out and subsumed into some other company, but had they focused on lengthening the lead that previous pioneers in the company created, focused on the customer, focused on the product, and focused on gaining CONTROL of their sales in as many areas as possible, they wouldn't be in this mess.
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