So is Hudson dead?

[MattR]

Sounds like a classic failure of a business trying to grow way faster than their skill set or budget. Going from building stuff in your garage to selling stuff nationally is a gigantic step that most small businesses are not capable of executing. They would have been better off with selling the patent or gun design to an established firearms manufacture. Or at least outsourcing the manufacturing to one of those companies.

Yeah, just look at well that worked out for the ACR

[Zundfolge]

Sounds like a classic failure of a business trying to grow way faster than their skill set or budget. Going from building stuff in your garage to selling stuff nationally is a gigantic step that most small businesses are not capable of executing. They would have been better off with selling the patent or gun design to an established firearms manufacture. Or at least outsourcing the manufacturing to one of those companies.

People need to keep this in mind when they complain that KelTec won't go into debt to meet the high demand for some of their more interesting products (like the KSG when it first came out, or the RDB and RFB).

[APEXgunparts]

There is talk on the "HIGH Road" forum about the defective parts in HUDSON handguns and the lengths the customers have gone thru to get warranty service.
The last page is where you see what is being discovered.

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.ph...-costs.844847/

It sounds like the company was under capitalized and then didn't get the orders needed to cover costs.

Richard

[MrPrena]

Hudson will be now known for Fuk and Run.
Fuk their consumers and Run away with money.

[kidicarus13]

Should have presented his idea on Shark Tank.

[Zundfolge]

TFB finally posted something about the fiasco.

https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/...g-shot-no-show

And an H9 owner has started this site https://h9owners.com/ (which he needs to update his SSL cert on).

Here's what it says there:

Update 1/23/2019 - Here's a timeline of what I do know to have transpired:

June 2018 - HR-D slide announced. Hudson, Mfg. intended for it to be manufactured at Hudson's facilities, not outsourced. The supplier of the original slides thought they were going to also make the HR-D slides. When the supplier found for the H9 found out that they were not going to be making the new HR-D or H9A slides they cut ties with Hudson Mfg. and began focusing on tooling up for other projects from other customers. This left Hudson Mfg. with no new slides coming in to meet production. Around roughly the same time grip modules were being made by another supplier and due to tolerance stacking the firearms were not functional. Several from this batch made it out to distributors and into customer hands, which resulted in warranty repair claims. After it was discovered that there were issues, units stopped shipping. Hudson Mfg. continued to place orders for grips with no design revisions. Warranty repairs were coming in as more inoperable grip modules were being delivered from the parts supplier.

September 2018 - By this time there are no parts left to do repairs. Warranty repairs were cannibalized from any source they could acquire parts from, including personal firearms of employees. Slide producer was no longer delivering slides for new firearms. Grip maker was producing grips with tolerance stacking issues. Over $1M in PO's sat unfulfilled due to supply issues. Hudson Mfg. started looking for a buyer or investors based on outstanding PO's but no one would assist due to it being a firearms related business.

Hudson Mfg. had considered licensing the H9 design to resolve cash flow issues with someone else handling the manufacturing processes but up until last known of the situation, has not been successful in this endeavor. Everyone in manufacturing was laid off back in September. The person that answered the emails and the voicemails has long since been released.

At the end Hudson went for several months unable to fulfill their PO's in hand, no inventory, no one left in manufacturing, a pile of warranty returns and no parts with which to fix them and also no one to do the work. The facility has been empty for some time. Their booth at SHOT Show 2019 was paid for in advance and they didn't appear in that booth this week.

Roughly 8-9000 H9's were ever made. Hudson operated on a no-inventory model (on hand), so there's nothing left of production guns at the factory. 300 threaded barrels were made. These have all sold. 100 HR-D slides were made and as of the end of September roughly 1/3rd of them had sold. There are only 4 prototypes of the H9A in existence. The HR-D slide is a modified H9A slide design.

1/23/2019: Posthumous RIP for Hudson, Mfg. You will be missed.

[Zundfolge]

Apparently Hudson has responded to Recoil Magazine/blog.

https://www.recoilweb.com/recoil-exc...ow-145454.html

[MrPrena]

Who knows.
They get a licensing deal with a whale. It would be great if licensed company can produce higher quality+mass supply+lower price.

It would be all win win.

[Vitesse304]

525 available through a distributor.
Who wants to gamble on one?

[Justin]

If Hudson is truly dead and gone, $525 for a safe queen that will appreciate in value/bragging rights might not be a bad deal.

In thinking about small gun startups with founders from outside of the industry that actually made it, the only one I can think of off of the top of my head is Boberg, and they ended up selling out to American Derringer.

The list of "revolutionary" handgun designs that didn't make it is way longer than the list of ones that did.