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Introduction
On March 7, 1888, ownership of E. Remington & Sons of Ilion, New York, passed out of the hands of the Remington family. The company was purchased for $152,000 ($3,746,167 in 2011 dollars) by a new partnership formed by Hartley & Graham, successful sporting goods dealers and Remington sales agents, and the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. Remington had been a major American firearms manufacturer since the 1840s, but by the 1880s the company was suffering financially. Military contracts had declined and, in the civilian market, Remington's fine target rifles served only a niche segment, while sales of its cartridge revolvers were just a fraction of those sold by Colt and Smith & Wesson ([31] Flayderman, 2007). After the sale, the partners formed a new firm called the Remington Arms Company and continued producing some military arms and sporting rifles and shotguns. Thus, Remington as a company and brand name lived on.
When Samuel Colt died in 1862, the company he founded continued to be called Colt's Patent Fire Arms Mfg Co. and its revolvers as "Colts". Similarly, after the death of Oliver F. Winchester in 1880, his name lived on in the Winchester Repeating Arms Company and its eponymous lever action rifles ([70] Williamson, 1952). However, company and brand names in the nineteenth century firearms industry did not always outlive their founders. Ethan Allen, for example, was a prolific gunmaker known for his percussion "pepperbox" revolvers and numerous other arms. When he died in 1871, his partners (and sons-in-law) continued production, but under their own name, Forehand and Wadsworth ([53] Mouillesseaux, 1973). In 1888, the Whitney Arms Company was acquired by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. The Whitney's had been noted gun manufacturers since Eli Sr landed his first government contract in 1798, but after Winchester bought the company the brand name was shelved for good ([26] Cooper et al. , 1980).
Why did bankrupt Remington survive as a company and brand name when several contemporary firearms companies did not? Herein, we argue that over three decades Remington's national advertising campaigns had built an iconic brand name that was too valuable to abandon. Thus, the purpose of this research is to provide evidence of how this was done in the period 1854-1888. Studying...