Colt - The Fall of an Empire

the smaller solutions every single Q&A that I've had since we started this channel a couple years ago everybody who's always asked me about cold they said you know what happened to cold why it's called backup why are they having these problems what does cold need to do to get themselves back into shape and you know I just get these every single time so we've decided to do is for me to give you a little video on my insight to coal everything I'm going to tell you here is all my opinion it's my experience now my experience comes from as being a lifelong historian I'm cold as well as a as an author who was written on cold as well as a former employee who was seeing the inside of coal to give you sort of an idea you know what got them to where they're at it really goes back quite some time but it really came to head here after the cancellation the world the expiration of their sole source contract but to give you a little of my background how long I've been into this now my history with Colt or interest in history of coal pretty much only goes to the black rifles I never was into the cowboy guns I was I mean you know I'm m1911 fan I do like some of their revolvers I absolutely love their the Python and a couple other their revolvers but never been much of a 1911 guy so really for my insight Nicole comes in is probably around 1958 or so once they got the first time 16 contracts from the first I got a patent for the m16 so I've been doing this my entire life Colt has been my absolute dream for my whole life you know my biggest goal in life is I want to go to work for Colt that was that was my end goal I wanted to be able to work with the m16s done floors and you know once I started my book is where I first got a relationship with Colt at that time there's a lot of stuff going on primarily was the HK m4 fiasco where you know the HK m4 was being introduced as a solution to the ailing m4 which is having all these problems with malfunctions and so forth at the time I was writing my book that was probably the major aspect and you know I had gotten involved with a couple of these things because colt was not responding you know if you look at everything that HK was putting out even the stuff that was false there was lots of those lately false about the reliability and durability or you know Cole for some reason thought they were going to take the high road and not respond which was a big mistake because majority of people whether they like it or not they associate guilt with silence they associated what people is being told about somebody is true because it's not being fought one of the earliest memories I can have here my involvement with cult other than visiting cult on a couple occasions for black raffle history development are black vertical history research from the book was there was a report point out or a article put out its hk416 a better rifle and you can't have it and the information that was put in there was just blatantly lives they were they were they were putting information in there that was untrue they were comparing a standard hk416 to the EMA for each k propaganda machine if you want to call that you know it started off with the xm8 which was a better rifle and you can't have it a lot of the stuff that the HK was saying about the xm8 was blatant lies unfortunately as i said they were comparing their rifle with their own their own requirements to an m4 that was decked I was sat non-gear which made it heavier and also they were making up their own requirements to make the rifle look good when you add the important that was meeting with the requirements at the military asked for but it goes without saying well I had made a rebuttal on behalf of myself not a cult and I had I basically said the record straight getting all the actual facts of the history the requirements and so forth and cold pretty much they really liked that I had gone out there to deliver books and I inside the general keys I said sir I want to work for you I mean he's been my dream job my entire life now general Keys I have the utmost respect for you took over I believe it was after Whitaker in the mid 90s now general Keys a former three-star general marine and he came in he was asked to take over and part of his requirements released a cover he goes I have full control I'm not gonna be a puppet I have full control and it's exactly what he had when General Keys took over as CEO there you know he ruled with an iron fist he very much rule and ran the company like it was the Marines because the SOE Marines working for him that he was only one who made this someone else with our free to make any decisions outside of the general keys general Keys was truly the hero of cultist because of the fact that you know he was there when this whole import thing came around now when the m4 first came out colt was in dire financial straits they'd just come out of bankruptcy again they had lost the contract for the m16a2 right after they introduced it to FN a lot of that had to do primarily with the cost you know the cost of manufacturing guns in Connecticut is outrageous compared to South Carolina where I find was you have the amount of Union that you had their work show and a lot of money you get the cost of living in Connecticut versus of South Carolina which was it which is astronomical and yeah also had the government of the sake indicating wasn't very conducive with cold you're either so cold just head-to-head loyalty to because you've always been there not to mention the state Connecticut has bailed them out and as always drug cold under because of the costs that the owner would require to be there well when the m4 carbine came out around 1995 it was really there just as a general purpose carbine it wasn't there as a primary type weapon it was to be bought in his small quantities and the reason coal got the sole source was because there was a the government did not protect Colts data on the m4 the import was their weapon it wasn't part of the 1968 licensing agreement after this information was released illegally called hey a couple options more negative sue the government for money or two they could get a sole source on the m4 while the sole source of neon for what seemed good to them at the time because it was there it was their weapon they had no idea that once the Global War on Terror came that the m4 become a primary weapon it was luck that it was great the right time this rifle came out that the global war on terror started and I don't believe anybody thought when they got that licensing agreement that that sole source ever would have thought they would have ended up becoming the next primary weapon of the US Armed Forces during that time period there were some decisions that were made that were bad which her called one general piece believed the colt was always first and foremost a government contractor I believe that they felt felt that the commercial lions the pistols and so forth was all secondary and that really wasn't where general pieces interest was he wanted to make guns for the military during the Global War on Terror well as all of you know the Python was gone basically they shut down all of the pistol lights they got rid of all their revolvers other than the metal piece for cowboy guns and they kept the 1911's and at that time also when Gerald he took over he had said that as long as he is there Cole will not make a 9-millimeter pistol he did not like Magnolia which also prevented Colt from ever being able to win any of the military pistol programs because colt first off they always lived in the past if you look at Colt probably around the 2000 time period that was the last time cold and made any attempt at making a matter on that pistol you know the Colt 2000 of course it was a flop because of what the lawyers did to the trigger but that was the last time they made a polymer frame high-capacity 9-millimeter pistol that could have the potential for any kind of law enforcement or military purposes once the m4 is were in : got pretty complacent there engineering and pretty much stopped all their R&D stopped in Colt really became in my opinion a mass production company they were able to mass-produce and force astronomical numbers while maintaining absolutely incredible quality unfortunately during all this planning for upcoming events Colton never got around to planning for what happens when the m4 has done whether it be by the contract ending or by just a lack of interest they never nothing was beyond that and during the Global War on Terror those years where Colt was making all these guns they were living high off the horse literally to say they were they were building their in force everybody was very complacent the R&D was down around the 2005 period was the time of the star program and at that point was when you pretty much had the last of Colts if you want to call them really gun savvy engineers after they John their name Michael plant it was a true gun guy who worked in the engineering department he past when he when he had passed it was for the end of I think an era of true gun savvy engineers occult when I went to work there which were there was in April of 2008 when I got to the company I was sort of shocked I had realized this wasn't the company that I had dreamed of my working for my whole life there was a lot of things that were different than I expected the R&D issue became was a major major problem before I got there is an employee when I came to visit it was run a time of the scar program they just ended cold had lost to FN which was a shame because I felt that the scar type C was a much better rifle the scar the program was rather negative for Colt and the fact that what coltd dog was they had created two teams to develop rifles for the the external piston guns and one was the referred to as the Le 1020 and one was referred to as DM five so you had two groups that were working against each other come up with that final gun that was gonna be cold piston though I had come there and at that time Dennis today who is now the CEO he was a head of R&D engineering Dennis was very good at that I thought he was very open he did take it did take control of it he did you know work through that for as far as the scar program and let me suppose a development happened with a scar program he had a good team at that point to to do it hitting the teams against each other was a very bad thing and it would affect Colt long into the long after the scar program I heard remember going to Colt in sitting in Dennis's office and he had me look at the 1020 he had me look at the m5 and what did I like best I told him oh no I like the 1020 most but there were some features of the five that would have been better you could have added to it to make a to make a sort of a hybrid between the two the Dennis was very good in the in the air and he capability by the time I got to cope and he'd gone up to become my vice president of the lung tissues I'm not sure what it was and then Phil Hinckley had taken over the the R&D area and Phil was absolutely awesome to work with the first few months I was there I work with my by positioning quote was I did lots of things I wasn't one thing the first thing I did was I redid all our manuals their manuals were very very antiquated I assisted with some of the sales and marketing Phil had allowed me to work with them in R&D as well because I had a lot of background because of my extensive background and history of knowing when Cole did I was able to look people there who weren't there know things that cult had done in the past experimented with in fact it really could have saved them money because they'd already done things but the people that were in charge for the most part had no idea what was already done and it cost additional money one of the major things I did with Phil Haley was when they were working on the 1020 program they'd had all the damage that was happening into the upper tier would behind the campaign and I had gotten with Phil and I said yeah I know how to fix this I pulled out a report that was done by Winchester in 1968 of a conversion program that they did for the piston gun and it showed they'd see the same thing with that damaging of the receiver by the campaign and they put a hardened steel screw right behind that cam the track so when the the bolt would violently come back the camp in would strike that steel screw instead of the receiver it would stop that and I gave that to him and he liked it he turned it over to engineer Paul Hawk stripe and Paul Hawk stretch is also very very brilliant engineer and he turned it into the campaign guard did they have right now which day they have so he worked on me I worked on him with that you know he had had issues where he needed some stuff and I had a lot of contacts the industry it was really nice working with Phil and then came but we were four I refer to as the dark times filled up there you went over to quality and a new regime took over in engineering and I believe that was the beginning of the end for cult the first part as the engineering program became the people that came in or the heads that came in were people who I wouldn't say were gun savvy people it really split up the way that cult worked from that point forward in my opinion cold no longer became a cohesive entity as a company coal was split off into these small little rice bowls where you had people had their little kingdoms and these little kingdoms didn't did that talk to each other in engineering the worst they would not talk to people they would not let people know what they were doing and also when you had people who are in sales and marketing for instance law enforcement would go to them and say this is what the customer wants they didn't listen to it they wanted to give the customer what they wanted it was very frustrating because I worked a lot with sales and both in law enforcement in military I can remember one time where the guy that we had in charge of law enforcement at that time was Jim Markowski he was retired of ATF agent he did SRT everything so he really had his finger on the pulse of law enforcement and law enforcement was begging for a ten point three inch barrel they did not want the 11 inch barrel they had one into ten point three and I can remember Jim going to the head of R&D this guy wasn't even a real engineer by the way he'd need that got any engineering schools he went to this guy and he told him he goes this is what we want now we did one ten point range where he goes oh no I don't like that and that was really the attitude that Cole was whether they liked something or not they didn't want to provide it to the customer and also engineering also was very complacent because of the fact that they had all this money coming in from the m4 carbines and they sat idle if you look at the m4 carbine the attitude was if the government the US government was happy with it leave it alone like any company any companies are indeed driven new product driven if you don't have a functional irony Department bringing out new products you don't make money the m4 head of reprieved because they were delivering so many thousands in these guns a month nobody had thought about it and nobody was in the higher-ups it cold they were not engineering to do their job to produce the new weapon systems the only new product it out that had come out of our R&D was prior to this new regime was the one-piece upper receiver now Cole had not released a prior to the law enforcement or commercial market in rifles since around 1998 that was the Lu 6920 the commercial version law enforcement version of the m4 carbine now they've shown the 1020 which was the external piston gun and the APC which is their mover for 2060 942 di version of the one-piece upper receiver it wasn't released until 2009 and I can get a little bit of an impact a little thought on that too at that time I was there in my boss with Mike rising I had told him that I thought that it was time to release the one-piece upper because cult is there even falling behind everybody else in development of new products the one time where the you know the master of the m16 m4 because our ad set silent and not doing anything they fell further and further and further behind there was no new products coming out Colt had a very bad name first far as the meeting was concerned he didn't even deal with them because they weren't sending anything out and quite frankly there wasn't ly anything the show we had a new product at the time it was that the cold does the LG the cold replacer and I thought it would be a good idea to release the two products together the yoga 69 40 and the CGL so mike said okay we're gonna go we're gonna meet with a general so I said the office of the general keys in my boss and said sir I think it's time that we bring this out you know we haven't released anything since 1998 for sparse commercial le market yeah I felt that we were behind and this is a good time to release both and he really agreed so one of my positions that quote was to deal with the media I chosen several media people who I thought very highly of such as young Gary Johnston and a four year and so forth couple other ones so and I got them out the new 16:40 with the grip laser and we got our first positive reviews in how many years I worked very closely with them to make sure what he had good in fact I remember I think there was like 9 or 10 of those rifles and only two of them came back the people actually bought the guns that we sent them I also at the time was writing for small arms reviews Long's defense Journal and the NRA it had a horrible relationship with Colt system or prior to that and I was asked to write an article for them we're an array and the usm for all the facts about the m4 versus everything was going in you know Colt knew I was a writer when I when I went to work for them I didn't really want to stop and in fact I really couldn't stop when I went to work for Colt because of the finances now when I got when I got hired at Colt you know it was I was paid decently but there was a problem I lived in Rochester New York and cold was the Hartford Connecticut and I have to say that I knew Colts history I knew how they were with people I know how they were with staff I knew they went through employees like crazy I wasn't really willing to move to Connecticut move my family to Connecticut because I didn't know how long the job was gonna be there and it was my dream job so what I did was I I said you know what I'm gonna ride this out as long as I can because I love working for it so I'm commuting from Rochester New York to Connecticut for three years I would leave at one o'clock in the morning and Monday morning get there around 9:00 o'clock work for 10-hour days stay in a hotel that you paid by the hour and then I would come home on Thursdays so basically what that meant is the job cost me $300 a week so out of my salary it cost me $3 a week or 12-hour dollars a month to pay for gas to pay for hotel and food for me to be done plus I was traveling quite a bit as well so you know the job cost me quite a bit of money so you know I just knew the wind position was that I didn't know how long was going to last so the the writing help me supplement some of the lost income now some of the time to offices didn't really think a lot of the writing that I was doing in fact uh one vice-president in his humble opinion didn't feel that it brought any money in which is totally not true I was respectful to cold thing anytime I've ran cold products I would allow them to review it now at that time I was the only one who was writing for Colt I'm quote on coal products I was the only one who was speaking and bought a lot of their issues and really setting the record straight I was wrong I wrote about a lot of the older projects that people realized that coal was not stagnant there was irony that was going on and then goes into problems with management no general keys again he was a brilliant man excellent man one mistake that I felt that he made was how he hired his executives Colt had become a retirement home for the Marine Corps and what that means is everybody who was any kind of a high-level position at the company was a retired Marine who worked with general peace and the problem with that was that just because somebody makes an excellent general officer you know in the Marines does not mean they know anything about business so he would put people in very very high positions because they were retired Marines who were totally incapable and competent to perform their job duties I guess we're given one example is the executive vice president position for manufacturing an indian area the person he put in charge of that was a marine whose background was human resources you put somebody in charge of a department who has no idea about manufacturing engineering couldn't even shoot a gun what does that give you that gives you somebody who was incompetent so people that he's supposed to be supervising or now telling him what to do and a lot of times that information wasn't good or wasn't the best interest for the company there another general was in charge of a lot of similar foreign sale stuff who was not a professional salesperson again he was a good general but he really had no clue what he was doing and the area where the Marines live did well at colt was in the manufacturing area for artists and writers back there but for as far as the business end of it the ones that he had there they they did not perform her job duties well and you know I can well say about that is the way Colt structure was there because he brought in all of these Marines was people refer to each other by ranks in that place if somebody got a promotion in the company who was a lower rank in the Marines it became a problem and the other problem was was a lot of these marine especially the general officers felt that they could treat the Colt employees who have been there forever and were civilians like they were their subordinate privates that really did not go over very well because you can't treat you know people as though you you're the general and they're your privates in a corporate environment it doesn't work that way and with the decisions always coming top-down well you had people from the top down who didn't have the experience in coal for 20-plus years to know how to do things to know how to make the sales to military it's know how to make decisions on our need to know how to run people where we as a marine life sales marketing end of it and the problem with that was these were the kind of Marines who do nothing unless they were given orders there was no forward thinking people didn't do anything without being told you know thinking back at that structure the reason why our general Keys maybe made it so nobody can make decisions outside of him maybe he knew that the people that he put in charge weren't capable of those kind of decisions and he didn't trust they were able to do that therefore everything had to go through him and you know the problem with that is is you don't have anybody who can make decisions you know if you know you're looking at doing an advertisement campaign you can't just do it you know guns couldn't even leave to go to to writers without hitting the generals accrual there was just no autonomy everything had come down and the other thing about general Keyes was he lived in Virginia I believe and he was not always in the office he would fly every week from Virginia to Connecticut and then when he would come there he would just be bombarded with things and everything in general Keyes was forced to do he spent a lot of time in New York City in dealing with the board trying to keep the board have you a lot of the day-to-day operations they were problematic he never knew about and they made sure that he was in he was on accessible by most of the people in the coal plant another interesting aspect that I had learned was when you go to the coal facility in Connecticut and he started burger over there there's two buildings you have the front building which is all the administrator of HR engineering sales marketing IT and so forth and then outside is the actual factory now there's a big difference between going into the office building in factory when you go into the factory that was the Colt that I knew I loved that was where you had the people who were dedicated to the tradition to the quality to I think whatever all of us always thought of quote you had employees that had been there for generations you would had these old ladies who were coming some leaves for the import and you wouldn't believe how fast they could put these things together you had a lot of really really dedicated polishers yeah the metrology departments you had all those things it just make hope what it was when you walked into the exactly onto the main offices there the people there were again mostly retired Marines there were people in the R&D departments who I don't believe had the same goals that some did a lot of those people were waiting to something with their income until their retirement checks came through and then leave the R&D department I think probably as time went on became more and more of an issue a lack of having new programs coming out the further and further occult got behind and I think there's a lot of morale issues that open the company as well because a lot of power was given the people who used it for things that were not so much in the company's interest as they were their own gentleman who was in charge of engineering we're responsible for destroying a lot of people's careers you got a lot of people fired if he didn't like somebody he did what he had to to get him fired and we lost some really really incredible people no I was part of that as well general Keyes was their general Keyes like me he hired me he saw what they saw I was doing good work I always had good performance reviews the Dana general Keyes retired a left cold defense about to work for colds manufacturing was the day that I was let go and a lot of other people it was funny because I came to find out later on the reason why I was let go was released an article now the same information was in my book I did an article on Lois machine and tool and as well as in my book you guys should we talk about the Ellen teen hands bolt carrier and it was developed at the request of SOCOM to to take care of some of we've heard they referred to as issues with or deficiencies with the m4 carbine at the time that came out wasn't quote was having all kinds of QC problems with both breaking with the extraction issues you know they went right to Carlos it's that we need a better boat we need something has better extraction reading something that has a stronger boat so it doesn't break and so forth well the article came out where I was we were doing a review on the Lewis machine tool and I put the words in there the same ones that were in my book black rifle too that the SOCOM had asked them to create a ball to correct deficiencies so basically this engineer used that as my ease against the company and he was able to get me gone at that time I was traveling probably there near 70 percent of the time I was gone from weeks on end all over the world with marketing and sales doing everything from demos to armor schools and so forth I was learning did all the manuals I had a lot of accomplishments while I was a cold but this gentleman seemed in he wanted me gone we had had other issues that were it the best interest for the company but not best for him the idea a couple of things that I had done at cold was probably got me in trouble but they were the right things first off we had a couple hundred nine million easily ready to go to the next game DEA and I happened to go back there I thought the ejectors were not tuned the ejector tapped to be tuned in word against the side of the bolt carrier so when the bolt comes back it strikes the cartridge case the way these dropped in the ejectors are straight and if it comes back he actually missed the cartridge case and when he missed the correctors case they both can come back and it doesn't eject so will drop into the trigger compartment it'll lock up the mechanism so I'm affected I went to the manufacturer brusha hey guys we know this wasn't done they brought somebody in overnight to get that fixed yeah we caught it and everything well came in the next day and I was basically getting yelled at because what were you doing back there checking this stuff it's not your job to go back to check this stuff I was very good at finding problems you know finding issues so rather than us all being the same page hey we got this thank God when we do it back to some rossum but somebody's worried about getting in trouble you know in gloating along with that nine millimeter program another thing that I had done was I had been in Jamaica and I had been in or else we were on India had neither smu trials both Devils and I had on both occasions I had major malfunction with a nine-millimeter submachine guns because of failure to eject it one was a failure in the din of the barrel the barrel on came loose in India which is very embarrassing for me trying to explain that this is not how these products normally are and then we had the issue with the cartridge case eating cotton in the compartment because of the player to eject I had come back and I had signed a new buffer to eliminate both the failure to eject and the failure due to the cartridge case from getting lodged in the jerky apartment which was basically an extended top portion of the buffer on the nightma litres of machine gun I gave it to our executive vice president and said you need this dis will solve all these problems engineering took it back there well because it was my idea it wasn't gonna happen so instead of fixing the one part of the of the buffer and moving it forward the entering apartments I today we're gonna make a separate plug and put in the back so here you go it wasn't about by me so when I couldn't listen to you and another major thing that had come through which really pissed me off was I had worked a lot with military guys you know throughout my time the coltan I see throughout my life a lot of stuff at the mill attraction with the military when I got out they did while I was in and I got a phone call from I'm good buddy my Fort Drum saying hey man we just got a bunch of these new tan follower again three magazines and they are jamming like crazy in both our m4 and m16 a force at that time called we were using dream follow magazines to descend into the US government cult generally is a rule or address what the US government does they're not gonna put something new into their set the dinner system if they don't test it and they don't approve of it so I said send me some before five magazines so he's home to me I turned him over to engineering they went back and they had problems this is it we need more of them so I got authorization to basically say hey I'll give you for every one case of these tampon magazines even give you two cases of pmax next thing I know we had like three cases of these magazines show up so our engineer takes them back there and they do a major test and they find problems so when I went back to the Inquirer they wouldn't give me any information that I wasn't I wasn't engineering I wasn't you know I was too much of a risk to have something outside of engineer you know about engineering information so they contacted picatinny and picatinny brought people out to cold and right before they got there my boss Mike took me in his office and said he goes look I was told by them the engineering guys that you can't they don't want you here the guys were picketing because obviously they wanted to be the heroes and say oh we found this problem and everything and my boss says but I do want you to know that by fighting this problem and probably saved lives which is probably the nicest thing my boss ever said to me and you know he knew that it was wrong me being kept out of the loop I was yeah I was good enough to bring them all the information and the problem but I wasn't good enough to be involved with it I didn't leave I'm just really going to the second-in-command of cold under general keys and said this is [ __ ] I brought you this information you know I arranged everything this is ridiculous that I can't have access to the information of what's going on well the information that I gave them and it was actually given to Picatinny stuff correction of that magazine they got it fixed so no more went out to the Troops that were bad so we mean by rice bowls you would think that we were all supposed to be on the same team and we never work it was always I was always separate what brought Colts in the position they were in was a combination of first off the attitude that we were only a government contractor that was our primary and regardless of whether you are a government contractor or not cold as it was involved it was law enforcement it was commercial guns it was everything the changing of the attitude that it was only for military production in that keeping those other ends really going it was a detriment it would come back to bite them because everything comes to an end and if you don't plan for it you will have the devastating circumstances you know you know by it you know we go back to that time you look at them to 90s Wayne colt it was really adding more use to kiss the government's ass because I just lost the contract well we're gonna we're gonna come up with the occult sport or series if we're gonna put the auto sear block in it and we're gonna make it that much more difficult for you to convert to polo we're gonna hack off of Antoine that really upset people in prior to at coltd voluntarily pulled their ar-15 from the civilian market you just put him up no to directly only available in law enforcement military which got called the attitude from their customers that you don't care about us I you care body for government contracts lost people at that point they lost a lot of people say that you don't care about us and you don't care about you any successful company knows that you know you need to have all the sales because it anytime anyone you know falls off that's where your safety line is that's where your money is for your safety right and then we get into the band period post 94 Colt introduced their met their match target series which was the ban compliant which was great I mean that was all anybody could have then we had the the sunset of the assault weapon ban well here's another major cold screw-up they left all of their mash targets the exact same way and what ended up happening which is sort of interesting was the Le guns became legal all the only 69 20s now le means le law enforcement power so cold had three different types of Russian lines a lot of course of military and commercial well he only went through LD le distributors according to the board that was only to go to law enforcement well those guns were filing from le distributors into gun shops and commercial hands so he sunset it's all of a man the top-selling gun was the le 69 20 and that was a Nelly gun not a commercial gun Colt never up until more recently replaced the match target post man with the new sunset you and I'd regulated once so the commercial market was all buying belly guns they never upgraded their commercial guns which really pissed off a lot of people like she were looking in New Yorker where these Dan states so there was another impression you know coal doesn't care about the commercial or sales or anything and also at the time of the little war on terror Colt wasn't meeting their government or their le contracts called literally you if you wanted only 69 20 the police department good good luck I'm getting it they didn't a lot that production time to the le production which comes into the cult Canada it comes into the buying of my Mac oh you know Colton bought died Mac Oh for many reasons first off died Mac Oh had a first-rate engineering department their capabilities far exceeded what they had at Hartford at that time these guys were active R&D they didn't have to wait to have anything and he told to they were constantly upgrading the rifles they were smart enough in Canada to realize that you know the US government gun is not the is not the final resting place here of the design that customers eventually we're going to get a lot smarter and say we know there's better guns out there we know guns that have enhancements over the colt m4 so they continued to update the gun and make better models the Matco le also worked with Colt in the past when cold would have issues with you know with with their strikes and so forth by the eighties and whatnot didn't have the ability to move forward and a lot of their projects for instance the LMG project Hank thr worked at it they had a strike at the time they turned that project over to D'Amico and diamond took it and they were once it came out with the LMG there was a lot of programs that cold canada had worked out or dime a call at the time and the second was they had felt that they can use dime echo to supplement their lack of ability to procure guns for the law enforcement market now Colton used iveco components you know as spare parts and his parts for their military contracts such as just the stripped upper receivers bolts bull carriers and so forth they wanted full rifles to go in law enforcement well their legal department didn't do a very good job of researching that after the acquisition was done they found out that due to the fact the importation ban that was put in place they could not import these guns into the US now for law enforcement law enforcement could but they had to be drop shipped right to the police departments so they couldn't get these into their le distributors which is where a lot of it a lot of their the sales wasn't going towards la le agencies it was going towards the commercial market they know that but they it was probably easier not to let the the people in New York and all that you know that these were going to commercial and that law enforcement lines so there was a couple batches that were brought in to the United States they were basically coke Canada right with US stocks u.s. fire control groups and with some US markings on they became very valuable to collectors but it was - it was so much of a difficult thing to do they they couldn't and I had a big fear that when Koch acquired by Mack oh did they were gonna start Emeco because D'Amato was a incredibly well-run well-oiled machine did very well with their Kingdom but their Canada contracts as well as their early military contracts in fact it was Canada who got the British contract for the SAS for the l1 191 which Colt could not get because they'd been in within bankruptcy within ten years and the cable a new business with a company like that which is better off anyways because Colt would have shoved the important air bases and is good enough for those governors good enough for you where the rifle that was needed by the SAS was one that I had to have extended range there was things need to be done to it to make they get hit their requirements which Col Canada or dimecaco was well and capability of doing but so the failures beginning there with the lack of civilian and law enforcement sales there's one of your first major ones bringing in people who do nothing about sales and marketing but we're just there because they were retired Marines you brought people in who did not know what they were doing first of ours the sales marketing and development you had an engineering apartment was brought in with people who were virtually lazy no they they did not do anything to enhance the gun you would think they would be trying to take the import carving and make it better because there are there are customers out there as I said they want better guns they know the other companies are making a superior guns better bolts motor boat materials better barrel bur better barrel processes and so forth and rather than do that for their other customers are than the US government they just kept stagnant they fought releasing new products if you look at the one-piece upper receiver they had that since 2005 with the release of the scar guns that sat there and it said you know you saw it shows but it wasn't actually released until 2009 you look at the external piston gun which was a complete cluster from the 2004 time period with the release of the HK m4 they got people on the bandwagon who wanted external piston rifles and of course now you have HK you have no WRC you have POF you have companies who are now making external piston versions of the rifle which cold had well in Colts infinite wisdom they thought that if they were to release an external piston rifle that they would they would be admitting that there was something better than their m4 which was a completely the wrong way to look at it the way that you look at it is ok we have customers who want this we're going to give it to them they didn't do that so they spent all this time trying to tell you how much better their directly you know their internal rifle was entropolis level was compared to an external so meanwhile HK got a lot of sales all of you are see got sales POF got sales and Colt did it because they thought they were gonna it was gonna affect them and that was wrong yelling 10 2009 they've become the the Colt piston carbine at least 69 40p Colt manufactured very few of them they became collectors I was and now they're no longer in the catalog Colt is not only making them for the military market major problem then when you would have other decisions of products that could have sold I can remember going into Dennis day he was office Chris at the time that I went to I worked occult he was the president of colt's manufacturing of the commercial out of it you know I said we need to we need to release as a US government copy of the m4 in the commercial market where it comes the exact same way our military ones do with a 16 inch barrel you know you can put the proper US government marks on it everything they never did it were they doing now now you're seeing le 69 20s or 69 21s with pin die longer barrels and say property US government and they come with the raslak something that I mentioned to him back then and it also it seemed where it comes to making smart business decisions what would Colt do e to the exact opposite coldest had some opportunities to release guns to the commercial Anneli markets that would have been incredible would have made the tons of money a good example would be there CK 901 their southern 60 by 39 that gun would have done awesome in the commercial market they showed it at trade shows never produced it and we come to the time of the individual carbine you know Colt put a rifle on the individual carbine ambidextrous lower receiver very very very nice impressive rifle did they release into the commercial sales no that gun would have done incredible so there's two opportunities as they had they could have brought guns to the market that would have made them money they didn't do it now comes the next bankruptcy well it was obvious why it happened they weren't providing a gun to the commercial market they lost all innovation there was no new products and the company had not released parts sales to international were dropping because again they had competitors out there who were making guns it's just as good if not better and foolishly enough banks gave Colt a bailout and they allowed the same people who brought it down and to bankruptcy to run it again and where are we at now still no new products still not much improvements international sales price still there of them going under once and for all and unfortunately if they go under this time it's done because everything they had was up for collateral the bad decisions just kept time and what do I think it would take for Colt to come back out of this it doesn't take rocket science you get a new Rd Department somebody who actually is dedicated to new product development it was absolutely pathetic and I mean to Fedak they cold for the first time in their history did not submit to a missile replacement program to the US military Colton had everyday epistles and every pistol competition we've ever had but the XM 17 that's unacceptable and you know another aspect with engineering list with the individual who took over he fired everybody who knew what they were doing we had excellent engineers you know Greg Rossum there was a lot of incredible engineers for pistol development when Colt fired people they always fired the wrong people the people who are responsible for putting the company there they stayed the ones who knew how to do things are gone you all wonder why there's no Python where I never came back there's nobody left who can do that a cold that all that custom hang and work those effect last guy I knew who was there retires in little Jam he was when I was there in 2008 that time period he was the last one left who would ever on those lines and his primary job was was custom fittings of the parts of the cowboy guns the females they don't have it it's all CNC now all that custody custom working is gone you know I have they don't have it anymore they need to have the new engineering a part of it somebody knows what he's doing somebody who brings in people that know what's going on the people they brought in I mean you look at the m240 and 249 contractor cold had and failed the the failed barrels this was primarily because engineering got rid of the people who knew how to do this kind of stuff you know the head guy that brought in his buddies who worked for companies who did he make all loading firearms so you have people on top who don't know what they're doing leading people who don't know what they're doing of course you're not gonna get your m24 e to work they have a to warehouse all those machine guns that they couldn't solve the US government because the parts are interchangeable you know I started on common for you know a competitor who ends up getting a contract for a government gun taking the technical data package and not necessarily all the information is in there because they don't want to give out all of their trade secrets well if you have a competent engineering department they can figure that out we call didn't have a compilation or your partner at the time to be able to do that so the you know first and foremost to get this company right you've got to get people out on the top and you have your people in one who's gonna care about the the company is traditions and want to keep it going and get the company back to their roots and deliver new products you know every time you see any advertisers or from cold anything it's bringing back it's bringing back its bringing back this 1911 bringing back that 1911 you know you did there they're living in 1911 there is only a certain amount of the market who cares about 1911 new law enforcement new military contracts want modern military combat pistols Colt could not provide those they stay with them but making cowboy guns you know going back to that tradition back there there's only so many people have wanted cowboy guns you know Colts still would charge a premium on those 1911 when most of the companies out there who are making 1911 ZnO make it but our 1911 they're more hand fit there are more custom parts they're not stock pistols like we'd like what you're getting an aggressive marketing department an aggressive marketing department that will work with the media because regardless of whether you believe it or not you need media you know I had had a meeting with my boss and one of the vice presidents who was telling me how you know I was moonlighting on my own first fires doing the writing and that the you know I didn't bring him any in then I was putting people out by asking them and get any products that I could review when my writing I was only one who was doing at the time and it was bringing notoriety to cult it was bringing explanations that people were able to realize that maybe Colts not dead you know bringing back some of their old programs cult has to get out of Connecticut there's no way they're gonna make anything in a competitive price with the cost of the Union up there the cost of living up there and the taxes and there also says it's not a gun friendly state you look at a lot of people you know it wouldn't take a job in a state of myself I wouldn't take a job in an estate like that where guns were illegal and everything was I couldn't own what I was making you have to get out of there but more importantly you have to have it run by somebody who is dedicated to bringing his company back to its greatness bringing it back to it being a major industry leader in firearms are indeed Melvin if you look at the Colt in the 1980s you know that would have been the time to work at coal yeah this when you had just engineers that were at the top in the world you know Mack McCall and Hank Waterman you know in Kevin Kaminsky there you just literally had no 10 Maynard you had all these Jim Dalen under one you had all these engineers who were just brilliant guys who are pumping out new products every freaking here new ones that were to develop for different purposes and you know that that really would have been the time you know there were so many failures that were done because of lack of R&D the cold offensive hang on weapon system was another one you know for the mark 23 program you know looking with Colt threw into that against the HK pistol 1911 with a rotating barrel that rotating barrel they couldn't get to work in the colt mm that failed the gun never had a chance you know the guys were breaking the SSP I believe it was called the one that came out for the xm9 program that was also the time where cold their R&D was starting up was starting to lag but up until the 2009 time period naturally when the R&D just failed and I believe R&D was a major reason for this failure and the continuing failure you know the you know the the current president Dennis day you have a lot of respect for him he had done love the position under position he had a cold was awesome you know definitely in his defense when he took over Dennis was left for the shitstorm most of the damage had already been done I think one of the biggest problems that Dennis had was he was unable to fire for the proper people because they were his buddies he was unable to get proper engineering people in there and he a lot of people to run rampant you know when you allow certain people to run rampant you are on firing people that will and and so forth and you have people who are allowed to instead of making your company a cohesive unit working together all for the same goal to separate the partners that don't talk to each other and they don't work together unfortunately you can only go after the head of the company for allowing this company to be in that position do I believe cold has a future no way they're kind of features that they have a change in the management and people who care about what's going on and people who are dedicated to the company that to themselves you know it was great to general Keyes helped out a lot of Marines when they came out but unfortunately the Marines and he hired his foreign offices they were not people up to par with the task of the business ends you know there's there was no business no sales no marketing they had no experience in it whatsoever and bringing somebody into a sales meeting just because he had stars and the shoulders does not bring any more credibility than bringing somebody in who actually knows about what the guns are officer weren't even combat arms who did even reuse the EM horse the major issue with in hiring never rains only applied to the front office we had a lot of Marines and were in our manufacturing areas who were awesome but you know we're running production lines and all that kind of stuff it really worked great there because it was a technical job bringing somebody into a multi-million dollar company to work with sales and manufacturing engineering and had people who were not qualified for those jobs that was a disaster waiting to happen and you know thinking back why general Keyes rolled an iron hand why he made all the decisions maybe he knew that maybe he knew those people that you were bringing in or once we're not going to be the guys out innovating and thinking for themselves if they were going to have to be told what to do are they they were they didn't have knowledge that was there to make a lot of these decisions I just wanted to make sure you guys understand that I'm not saying you don't hire the veterans but what I'm saying is when you have you know major corporations with these particular kinds of products you have to have people who know how to sell how to deal with these soaring governments how to attack weapons demonstrations weapons programs and how to how to market you know that you don't get that coming out of the military there's nothing in you know in sales and marketing in the military that gives you the knowledge to be able to do as such the corporate culture bringing you know a large number of military people into civilians is a difficult thing especially like as I said before when you have general officers who like to treat everybody their underlings yelling and screaming with them it got bad enough occult that one of the executives had a restraining order against them by another one of the executives because of the way that he treated them yelled at them and maybe I feel uncomfortable so you get to a debt kind of a position you really have to relook at how you're doing things you know I'm former Army I was there I got treated by a couple of these Marines as I was an underling I rather than somebody who was there as a professional a knew what they were doing you know if you look at a lot of the sales and marketing you go to a trade show where you be you know you need to have somebody who could talk technically about weapons they bring out you know a good looking buff Marines and one of these things but they were good-looking buff Maureen every time you asked a question would always say well that's a good question you would be able to answer it you know it was this idea we have to have a military to sell the military or Niki's Marines to sell the marine to the Marine Corps when yeah it's great these people were Marines but they don't know about the guns they can't answer the questions they don't understand what they're being asked it was that whole attitude of faces that they wanted the company unfortunately those faces didn't go along with the business they didn't go along with the the proper way to market sale development any of that stuff that's why you have industry professionals who do this and that was one of things that hopefully never did was the general piece came in it really didn't hire what you'd call industry professionals it was all people who came out of the Marine Corps if you look at some company like you know cig or presidents who the marketing head they're gonna go after they're gonna find somebody who has marketing experience to go and do it if you look at somebody who's in charge of law enforcement sales you're gonna bring in somebody who understands law enforcement sales bringing somebody who could actually talk to these people and understand what's going on somebody who has experience with law enforcement sales you're not gonna bring in somebody who just has never worked a sales job and I like to come out of the infantry or the Marine Corps they are putting a very charge of selling guns to uh law enforcement it was it was not hiring people who are qualified to do their jobs when you sorta have the whole picture and you see what it was like on the inside and you also know the history you can really clearly understand where things went wrong and why stills continues now to this day my understanding there's there are a lot of newer people that were in there because it can anything for one reason other a lot of people were fired but it still is true today you know you go to there's a shot show this year was very very sad to see a Colt had a little tiny booth that was uh you know sitting on the back of LWRC you know with only a few guns to show you know to literally be to be taken down to that from literally an empire that you used to have and there's no reason for it I mean the stuff that I'm telling you they need to do is stuff is not rocket science new products professional sales your staff you can't have a high turnover then a problem this industry has as a whole is high turnover people don't stay in the same positions they move from company to company and company which is a bad idea you know especially in sales end of it you know a lot of your customers it takes time to build relationships and to build trust and it's very difficult to do that when you bargain people left and right and they're always dealing with new people and Colt has been a complete revolving door well the people are fired for just or just because somebody engineering doesn't like them you know I really hope this company does come back I'm not a disgruntled ex-employee I am somebody who is very very disappointed in the way things turned out I dedicated I dedicated myself 100% to Colt my wife raised are my children from that at that point as a single mother because I was traveling all the time the Colt was just very impervious to any kind of change to any kind of anybody coming in who had energy or wanted to do anything they squashed out real relatively quickly you saw very quickly the complacency in the government contracts that all that money was coming and everybody was really happy I'm just sort of glad I wasn't there at the point where they lost the government contracts because it would've been horrible and to see almost people being let go I mean I was bad enough when I was there we had three shifts going 24 hours and they cut down to one shift and they had a furlough one day a week where they weren't going on and then to find out they're down to a skeleton crew you know that to keep that company open there's a good number of guns that have to be made per date if you don't have military contracts there's no jobs you know I really hope that if coal does go under this time again that the name is bought by somebody who wants to bring the company back wants to restore to its greatness we'll get back into you know some of the classics but they'll be more so concerned with having new pistols that are available to our government in to our law enforcement and for export to taking a rifle from 1995 in developing new weapons platforms that are better and that are stronger or more durable more reliable and will last longer with better finishes better you know barrel materials and so forth it also made me to build a whole new platform that's not built off of the ar-15 m16 that's what I believe is needed okay these are all my thoughts my experiences as a historian who's dedicated his life to the Copeland's platform its history and then to working for them you see still to this day I do reviews on cold weapons if the weapon is good I tell you if the weapon is and I tell you the colt expands video that you saw that was horrible that was terribly pathetic that was a mistake but if you had the Colt combat you know they did a very good job on that the individual carbine your entry they did a beautiful job on that why don't you sell it to masses it was an external piston piston operated rifle to have that beautiful lower receiver that they had on that individual carbine and did not sell it is a crime these are all things that could make them really good money Colts been showing a commercial summit as a mathematic only a meal or receiver for last few years there's nothing there they haven't they haven't released a value 69-42 one-piece uppers that was sort of a disaster for Cole it was a disaster because you know their lawyers were sleeping in to help they violated Carlos's patent no I know I know our day go I know my plan I don't the guy suit at all today Cole do I believe that they took his design and copied it no they had the ideas for one piece upper receivers as well but you can't design something in that patented I don't have a patent search because people do have the same ideas cold has to pay a royalty to lose machine its own Souls diamond CO or cocaine it up there with their I you are a violation of Carl Woese depends you know lawyers are doing their jobs you spent a lot of money there and you get something that you have to pay somebody else for you got to have people who are on the ball you know this stuff cold had a really good lawyer that he ended up getting let go which was which was a terrible injustice because this is god this guy was awesome but again you have the mold you have to fit there that if you don't fit it you're gone the cult has had it points they had cold they had the best weapons designers in the world working for them they were a mecca for new R&D in modern military weapons to come to the point now where they're they're literally on the ass of the dog's tail they are so far behind other are a are manufacturers that the military doesn't really consider them viable anymore it's good to see that they got a contract to see that they're making weapons for for military sales and rather government through the mimouna it's not gonna help if they don't correct their problems I hope you guys found this trick this is an inside view of what I saw and why I think colt is where they're at and I wish them the best I want to see them succeed there's nope there's been no cult flagger more so than me I remember my boss saying when one of the people retired that they had you know the blue cold blood well there's a lot of people that really had blue cold blood that were let go for no good reasons people who were dedicated people who want a company to succeed you need those people back you need the ones who are gonna help push it forward and that dragged it behind which a lot of people that you have those four offices right now I've done and done past I hope you guys enjoyed this video please click like please subscribe even better share and please consider donating to our patreon you

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Views: 92,193

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Id: gpz8KTqoOhk

Length: 60min 32sec (3632 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Sabo_cat]

A while back Ian posted a video giving a history of colt. I figured everyone here would like a more detailed explanation colt going from, the American firearms company to hanging in there. Resubmit due to auto correct.