Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geezer

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.
I recently retired from a large company worth 6.4 billion. They acquired 2 or 3 companies per year for the last 17 years. All of these acquisitions pushed the spin that the change was good for them and they would become an even stronger entity. Many were stripped of some product lines our company desired and they dumped the rest before closing down their new acquisition in a one to five years. Remember when Estes did this to Cox? Their employees were assured of a solid future only to find that Estes just wanted the RTF r/c planes line and closed down the model engine plant and the plastic division that made glow engined control line planes.
Also I 'm sure you may recall the stories of how disheartening it was for the original Estes crew to make presentations to their new Damon executives who seemed somewhat clueless and indifferent to the items in the presentations. The new owners may very well be the same unless they have a solid background in the model rocketry industry.
No one can say with any degree of certanty whatsoever what will or will become of Estes. Only well after March 26th will anyone have an idea of what will happen.
Unless one of us has Half a billion hidden in their mattress all we can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

It's true that there are some scenarios that could play out that would be ultimately detrimental. The new owner might be a foreign conglomerate who would use Estes to bring their own inferior (or superior) product in to the market. The new owner might be an otherwise clueless individual with a lot of cash. Or might be a silicon valley investor who thinks Estes should get into robotics and AI and forget about all this silly rocket stuff.

Estes survived Damon, they survived Nomad, they survived Bank of the West, they survived Tunick (who, as much as I bash him, probably took Estes where it needed to go at the time), and it's probable that they'll survive Hobbico (which seemed like a great idea at the time).

As for Cox, I think Tunick was serious about building a hobby powerhouse back in '97 when he bought Cox, Sterling, and the other properties, but the market was already spiraling away for those, and he didn't seem to know how to deal (if he even wanted to) with niche markets.