I am actually shocked to hear of a firearms company NOT making money right now. Look at IWI (IMI) launching the Tavor here in the US with their own factory.
Granted some of what H&K makes and sells are a bit a niche market, they could have done a lot by going towards the self-defense market and created weapons with their reliability and “good-guys carry us” reputation ten years ago.
I understand the import and export laws, and also the fact they have been hosed twice by our own government, but still…
H&K also does a shitty job of appealing to the US non-agency market. They make a lot of stuff that people would buy if they would actually bother to make a civilian legal version of it.
Europe is also a terrible market for a company like H&K. The only “legitimate” firearms people own are for hunting or the rare handgun (and only one handgun, from what I can find).
If you are a European based gunmaker, and you are not trying to appeal to civilian sales for significant portion of your income, then you are pretty much dependent on government sales and will live or die by those contracts.
Unfortunately SIG quality and refinement that was present on all of their older models went to shit when they started mass producing their firearms to the civilian populous in recent years.
Glock rushed their Gen4 models when they should have stuck with the tried and true models or waited for more testing before pushing the new Gen4 onto the market.
I’m trying to think but if I recall Beretta dropped their Brigadier Elite models due to expense of manufacturing and that was probably what I would consider the pinnicle of their product development. It’s a shame but I do love mine.
All of my Hk pistols have all been really nice minus the crappy plastic toy-like triggers they use. I do like my older gen Glocks and SIG P225 is about as sweet as it gets for a single stack. How these companies mass produce though will make or break them and I think Hk has decided to keep production tolerances high and that unfortunately cuts down on volume.
But is that quality slide strictly because of trying to produce more pistols? There are probably other confounding factors.
Plenty of other companies have managed to maintain quality levels on all-metal guns (Beretta, CZ, etc). If Sig had a good and well-marketed entry into the polymer market, they would probably have good sales numbers to prop up their metal guns sales.
I think its got less to do with trying to push out more pistols and more to do with some bad decisions made along the way.
Sorry but your comments are complete B.S.
How many Glock rifles or carbines are sold in the U.S.? Oh yeah, that’s right they don’t make any! Which means they are not subject to the same asinine German military style firearm export laws like H&K is subject to. Do you really think H&K specifically ignores the largest gun market in the world or purposely dumb down their rifles until they are almost retarded (remember the SL8, the civie version of the G36) because they just feel like it??? Try and do a little more reading next time before posting inaccuracies about H&K.
You made bro? And yes I do believe Hk is not placing the civilian sector as their primary target market. And it obviously works because I have bought many of them for suppressor hosts.
H&K could have turned lemons into lemonade when they built the plant to manufacture the defunct XM8. They chose not to.
IWI and Beretta have invested hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars into tooling up and building firearms - defensive carbines in particular - in the US. (This is partially mitigated for Beretta by the fact that their plant was paid for long ago by their M9 pistol contracts.)
FNH has probably dropped many millions into their own US subsidy - which now builds not only parts for the SCAR but also their own domestic (US) production handguns and Winchester rifles.
It wasn’t that long ago that H&K started shipping the HK45C to their distributors… just after SHOT Show… and the H&K USA reps at SHOT had no idea when the handguns were even going to show up in the US (apparently H&K in Germany didn’t think it was important to inform their opposite numbers in the US of when it was that they not only were going to, but indeed already had, shipped a highly desired firearm… whose chief market was virtually guaranteed from the word go to be American consumers).
The fact is H&K simply is not interested in the US market. Or they lack sufficient motivation (their own failing and fault) to do anything about it.
If H&K really cared, they would open a US factory to built the HK416 and G36 (and maybe even roller-block 9mm carbines and pistols). Again, they had the perfect opportunity when they built the plant to manufacture the XM8 and they failed to take advantage of it.
Nor have they responded to America’s craze for single-stack little carry guns. Nor any other desire that American shooters have for their handguns - no light LEM trigger P30Ls for the three-gun crowd, no minor adjustments to the HK45’s frame contours based on complaints from the very Americans who helped them design it, no tritium night sights in their handguns, &c., &c., &c.
ETA: As for the subject at hand…
On the one hand, I like H&K’s stuff and the fact that they have QC/QA second to none. (And the first real centerfire firearms I ever got to shoot were the USP45 and HK91.)
On the other hand, it’s their own damned fault and I have a hard time feeling sorry for someone who goes broke (for the second time in, what, two decades?) because they ignored my cries (and the cries of many other American shooters) of, “Shut up and take my money!”
I have a hard time even imagining how f___ed up they must be to be doing so poorly with contracts for the M27, HK416N, plus the various SOF contracts with the DOD, Poland, Germany, France, &c.
I bet that if H&K built the HK416 in the US it would do a lot to change the Marines’ arithmetic about the cost of adopting the M27 service-wide as a replacement for some (or all) M4s and M16A4s. (Not necessarily enough to make a difference.)
They might have even gotten a real coup and had the Army pick up M27s instead of M4A1 MWSs for their grunts.
Whatever the reason for their cash woes it’s not due to lack of quality or demand.
Moving manufacturing to the US would have helped despite the pinheadish comments about “how the German made guns are better…” drivel.
The HK416/MR556 should have been made here - perhaps as well as in Deutschland. The MR is sold in EUrope as well so that might be investment heavy. It’s not so easy to ship manufacturing out of your nation if you possess a soul and a modicum of patriotism. Just look to Detroit (CAFTA, NAFTA, GATT, WTO, FTAA, …) and ask if shipping manufacturing out of your nation makes any damned sense.
That said, IM/EX laws dictate that at a minimum HK may require a partner or purchase an existing company to manufacture US market guns in the US.
That is the approach I would take (as well as take input from the US for triggers and sights).
Just my take.
“One cannot awaken a man who pretends to be asleep.”
I’m appreciative that HK took the effort to offer a civie 416 in a non neutered state and I really, really wanted to like the MR556 but it simply was NOT a semi auto version of the 416.
When introduced it was twice the cost of a high quality AR and when prices jumped again to almost three times the cost of a high quality AR I sold mine and haven’t had the desire to replace it.
I also sold my SL8/ G36K SBR that cost quite a bit to get done in an acceptable platform. Magazine costs and LOP issues from the required stock block made sighting the rifle less than optimum with factory iron or carry handle optic sights. Expensive mags were another issue.
In fact the only modern HK rifle I have still is my USC / UMP conversion because it doesn’t have the LOP issues and makes a practical semi auto, especially for a suppressed .45 carbine.
Steyr made the effort to have a AUG A3 produced domestically. FN has made semi auto civilian versions of many of their rifles. IWI and Swisss SIG even managed to get the Tavor and 551 553 firearms to market.
I’m a huge fan of HK firearms but it seems like they just can’t seem to get it together. Nobody is going to buy a MR556 when they can get a SCAR for less. It’s a shame too, I’d really love a semi auto version of the 416 that is correct from the factory.
Not true. This was discussed in depth at HKPro.com The XM8’s design made it almost child’s play to turn it into a full-auto weapon. Germany’s laws will not allow HK to export the same machinery they used to produce the XM8 as it was, meaning they’d first have to redesign the XM8 to allow for a semi-auto-only configuration, then produce machinery specifically for making a semi-auto XM8, and then get it over to the US. Due to the amount of redesigning it would take, as well as export laws to produce it on current German machinery, it didn’t make any sense.
Most people who say HK has no interest in the civilian market mistake German laws and logistics issues for stubbornness.
The difference is that HK has never made a weapon primarily designed for civilians. Every weapon they design is for competition for military and LE contracts. That means they’re not very marketable to the “average” gun owner because they’re military-grade (and priced accordingly) through and through. They have no civilian marketing focus.
Their income comes specifically from military contracts. So, to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to produce or export something domestically that most people can’t afford in the first place makes zero sense for them. Case in point, the special run of FDE HK45’s that H&K did for HKPro.com - H&K would not accept an custom order of any less than 250 guns (that’s ~$250,000, for those who aren’t familiar). The reps literally said it would not be profitable for them to do smaller quantities.
It’s not like SIG or FN where if their gun doesn’t perform, they just make a version 2.0 of it. It’s not financially viable due to their structure. And don’t even mention Germany’s crazy laws that make it hard for them to do business with civilians.
Ok, let’s take rifles out of that equation. Explain the success of Glock pistols in the civilian market over all other Euro competitors. Glock also made a full court press to go for the US LEO market. Not so much with Sig or H&K.
Cost. Glock only produces pistols. All calibers’ magazines are interchangeable. This reduces cost and R&D.
A Glock 17 with three magazines is less than $600. A USP, by comparison, is $900+ and additional magazines are $50. USP magazines are not interchangeable with USP Compact magazines, they use different recoil assemblies, etc.
Further, Glock built a product and marketed it. HK only builds ls weapons to meet contracts. Once that contract is done, they work on meeting the next contract.
