Another American Icon Falls to Poor Management

A Hard Kick From John Wayne's Gun

By STACEY STOWE
Published: January 21, 2006
Come spring, the Winchester rifle, immortalized as the gun that won the West and rode into the sunset with John Wayne, will be made in Portugal and Japan.

Workers were told of the decision to close the plant this month after executives learned in December that projected sales for 2006 were expected to decline by one-third.

Paul DeMennato, a company spokesman, did not provide production and sales numbers, but the New Haven mayor's office released a statement saying that only 80,000 guns had been produced at the plant last year. The factory is capable of producing 300,000 a year.

"It's just not profitable to continue to manufacture that small quantity of firearms," said Mr. DeMennato, whose father assembled Winchester guns in the 1940's, when the plant had 19,000 employees and maintained its own hospital and police department. "I still have my dad's guns. These products don't have a built-in obsolescence."

The Winchester repeating rifle became the gun of choice for Western settlers after it was introduced in 1866, Mr. DeMennato said. The lever-action breech mechanism allowed the user to fire a number of shots before having to reload. It became so ubiquitous, the gun assumed a stock role in Hollywood westerns and became a kind of sidekick for the actor John Wayne.

"Instead of saying, 'Get me my gun,' he'd say, 'Get me my Winchester,' " Mr. DeMennato said.

A 10-foot-high bronze statute of Wayne, eyes narrowed in concentration and left hand clutching a Winchester, stands in the lobby of the New Haven plant. On the wall behind it are the mounted heads of a stag and wild boar and a turkey in its entirety.

"I used to come down and polish John Wayne because I was proud he was here and proud to be here," said Dave Roy, 48, an electrician at the plant for 22 years. "Not anymore."

The Belgian-based Herstal Group owns the company, but the Winchester name is owned by the Olin Corporation, which makes Winchester ammunition. Certain models made in New Haven will be discontinued when the plant closes, but other Winchester guns will continue to be made in Japan and Portugal, Mr. DeMennato said.

Echoing several other employees who streamed out the doors after 3 p.m. on Wednesday, at the end of their shifts, Mr. Roy tied declining sales to a diminished product. He said in recent years, company executives worried more about saving money than making a good product, and the guns suffered for it.

But Scott Hoffman, who owns Hoffman's Gun Center in Newington, Conn., said that sales of the guns were lackluster because of the Winchester company's poor marketing strategy.

It's a real sad time when American Companies fall victim to bad European management. As a former employee of Shell Chemical Company, I have witnessed the incompetency of European management first hand. Now don't get me wrong, in many cases, that management steps in because of incompetence in the American led management. Such was the case with Shell. The Dutch moved in because the American management was performing so poorly, but the corporation deteriorated even more after they stepped in. To see the demise of Winchester saddens me greatly. There is one thing to remember, when American companies like Winchester are bought by foreign companies like Herstal, owners of Fabrique National of France, there is no allegiance to the iconic status of the company's name or traditions. Winchester may be inextricably linked to our West and our period of "Westward Expansion," but to a European company like Herstal, it is only a source of income. Were I a Liberal, I would be protesting the sale of an American iconic company to a foreign nation, but of course as it is an arms manufacturer, Liberals would never rally to their defense. As a conservative, who believes in a free market, I can only shake my head in sorrow at the loss. It is not the first, and it will not be the last. Such is the march of technology and progress. Perhaps this would not be occurring if Liberals weren't so violently afraid of guns that they wanted them eliminated.

Full Story: John Wayne Must Be Spinning in His Grave

What do you think?

To leave your opinion click on the word "COMMENT(S)" below