The Gun Counter

A major shareholder of Heckler & Koch has undertaken to provide funds in the amount of € 50 million for the capital increase, and will support the company’s efforts to refinance its 2011 9.50% Senior Secured Notes at a significantly lower debt level than currently. These funds will be provided initially in the form of a shareholder loan to be converted into share capital during the share capital increase to meet the time line of the refinancing of the 2011 9.50% Senior Secured Notes. Minority shareholders of H&K will have the possibility to subscribe for new shares on a pro-rata-basis and on the same economic terms against payment in cash.

Remember, they hate you, and you suck.

Keep operating operationally operators.

"OK, Helmut. New idea."

"Ja, Franz, tell me this new idea."

"We talk to the American Congress. Get a new law passed lowering the firearm ownership age to 10 and repealing the NFA. Then we sell submachineguns to everyone with a family. I call it The 'MP5s 4 Kidz' Program."

"GENIUS! We will make millions!"

Jered wrote:

A major shareholder of Heckler & Koch has undertaken to provide funds in the amount of € 50 million for the capital increase, and will support the company’s efforts to refinance its 2011 9.50% Senior Secured Notes at a significantly lower debt level than currently. These funds will be provided initially in the form of a shareholder loan to be converted into share capital during the share capital increase to meet the time line of the refinancing of the 2011 9.50% Senior Secured Notes. Minority shareholders of H&K will have the possibility to subscribe for new shares on a pro-rata-basis and on the same economic terms against payment in cash.

Remember, they hate you, and you suck.

Keep operating operationally operators.

Same problem that S&W had a few years ago. The original H&K clan were gun guys through and through and believed in making civilian versions of everything. That changed completely when they were bought by BAE in the 90's. I believe both because they were British and did not see marketing guns to civilians as a thing, but also the business model the followed generally was in selling large contracts to governments and that is what they followed with HK as well. BAE screwed them a lot and they have been recovering / floundering since they were spun off in the early 00's.

Much like S&W's corporate owners a few years ago (and many other situations I could mention) - they bought a company without realizing that the brand was actually as valuable as it was. But they want to stick with what they know (.gov sales) and ruin one of the best brands in the world which they could leverage.

Just plain stupid, but it happens all the time. The conglomerate that bought the company I work for came this close (fingers close together) to dumping our brand which is easily the strongest brand in the industry just because they wanted a "unified corporate brand" - well in this industry no one knows who you are, especially compared to the company name that invented this market. Thankfully some outside brand consultants seem to have slapped the COE/etc. enough that they relented, but WTF. It should be obvious.

I have noticed that HK are selling the SP89 now, so hopefully this is a step in the right direction. I would much rather they get back to being the old HK, the new one sucks. (... and I don't like their new products much either. Bring back the HK91/93!)

This is not an unexpected result for a company that hates its biggest market and believes they suck.

The MP-5 is a 51 year old design. It's sexy enough, but it doesn't have the lock on the SMG world like it used to. It's also a bit of a bitch to break down and clean and I'm told from people who carried them in shooty places that you have to baby the magwells lest they get dented at the worst possible time. I can also get a perfectly functional Zenith knockoff made on old machinery in Turkey for 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of the MP-5.

Or, I can build a 9mm, .40S&W, .45ACP or other flavor of AR using Glock mags for far less. Or, I can just go with the Sig MPX or CZ Skorpion. Or, get a Tavor in 9mm.

If they want to compete here, they need to bring new and interesting to the market in the US. MP-7s are a must. Build a G-36 here. Bring back the HK-21 and HK-11. Redesign the mag well for HK-53 and HK-33 to take a Nato mag. In fact, do anything except what they're doing now.

The C-93 was briefly tempting, but at the end of the day I could have gotten a suspect rifle (with regards to operation) that took proprietary mags, that cost more than an AR, that couldn't use as many accessories as an AR, and only performs as good as an AR in the best case. They're going to have to rely on more than Kraut Space Magic to save themselves. They're going to have to pull their "kopfe" out of their "esel" and start innovating again.

Until then, I hope they drown.

Update

No surprise, really.

Steamforger wrote: The C-93 was briefly tempting, but at the end of the day I could have gotten a suspect rifle (with regards to operation) that took proprietary mags, that cost more than an AR, that couldn't use as many accessories as an AR, and only performs as good as an AR in the best case. They're going to have to rely on more than Kraut Space Magic to save themselves. They're going to have to pull their "kopfe" out of their "esel" and start innovating again.

Until then, I hope they drown.

If HundK would make a 93 at a reasonable price point and which could take AR mags, that would be awfully tempting.

...but, they hate me, and I suck.

Of course, the C-93 was tempting, but, then my rational brain took over when I realized that it was made by Century.

"If you listen closely enough, your customers will explain your business to you."- Peter Schutz, retired CEO, Porsche AG

The basic problem is that the current HK management sees their business as one thing (selling large masses of parts to governments) and as far as I can tell they consider everything else a distraction. There is nothing wrong with that per se, it was actually the business model that HK started with. The problem is that it is a high risk / reward and also kisses off some very large potential markets in the consumer side of things.

For better or worse, they have one of the best known brands in the firearms industry. They just have absolutely no idea how to leverage that into anything else. This is particularly true when it comes to long arms, I guess they sell a few pistols here and there. The HK 91/93 and MP5 platforms could all be huge sellers for them here if they put them back into production, particularly with a few updates. For that matter, make more "sporting" versions of the actions and sell them worldwide (since the black rifle thing is not as big a deal in most places not named USA).

It probably would require putting a "gun guy" who understands the market and has enough technical background to know what can and cannot be done as the head of a separate business unit that just does that. This kind of work will always be an afterthought at best to the part of the business chasing government contracts. To my knowledge they have never done that, or at least done that well.

They are far from the first company to get stuck in this situation.

Steamforger wrote:The MP-5 is a 51 year old design. It's sexy enough, but it doesn't have the lock on the SMG world like it used to. It's also a bit of a bitch to break down and clean and I'm told from people who carried them in shooty places that you have to baby the magwells lest they get dented at the worst possible time. I can also get a perfectly functional Zenith knockoff made on old machinery in Turkey for 1/2 to 1/3 the cost of the MP-5.

I am not a SMG fan in general. However, I had two guys in my unit for my last deployment carry MP5's. They worked well enough so far as I know. Shot them on the range a couple times when we practiced (RHIP) - fun stuff.

Vonz90 wrote:The basic problem is that the current HK management sees their business as one thing (selling large masses of parts to governments) and as far as I can tell they consider everything else a distraction. There is nothing wrong with that per se, it was actually the business model that HK started with. The problem is that it is a high risk / reward and also kisses off some very large potential markets in the consumer side of things.

Rather like IBM, which never wanted to be in the consumer personal computer business and was dragged into it kicking and screaming. When the business became sufficiently commoditized to give them the excuse, they sold off to Lenovo and Lexmark and got outta Dodge.