Taurus fires CEO Mark Kresser

[jetfire]

According to various reports, Taurus fired their CEO Mark Kresser this morning. I reported just the facts over at Gun Nuts, but here I can engage in some wild speculation as to why. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it probably had something to do with the failure of Taurus' various attempts to rebrand themselves as a company.

I do wish Mark good luck with whatever happens next, but it is interesting that he was rather suddenly fired from his position at Taurus. Unfortunately, I'll probably never know the real reason he was let go, but we can speculate.

[Tamara]

Backchannel chatter had me hoping that he'd be able to bring some change to the company, but that's a hard line to re-brand.

Datsun had to be Datsun for a while before they could call themselves Nissan over here, and they still have to sell the high-dollar stuff under a different label.

[orionz06]

Hard to rebrand when neckbeards are buying lots of the stuff you wish to distance yourself from.

[littlejerry]

They were trying to rebrand? As what? Did they actually make any changes or are their revolvers still junk?

[av8usn]

Dang, I hope they do not lose Jessie Duff!

[jetfire]

They were trying to rebrand? As what? Did they actually make any changes or are their revolvers still junk?

When we interviewed Mark for GunUp the Magazine he talked a lot about improving their QC across all lines, and even went so far as to personally pull guns off the line because they didn't meet the ideal new production standards.

He was also the mastermind behind their new marketing campaigns, which...weren't very good, to be honest.

[Stephen]

I had assumed, perhaps wrongly, that their niche in the gun market was profitable and they were satisfied with their position. I thought their chatter about becoming a more respectable brand and improving quality was little more than marketing talk. I can't imagine what it would take to rehab that company's image. Maybe come up with a second brand name to be the Infiniti to Taurus' Datsun. That, and you know, actually make good guns.

[Tamara]

He was also the mastermind behind their new marketing campaigns, which...weren't very good, to be honest.

I did think it was cool that they were obviously marketing themselves to the Joe 'n' Suzy CCW demographic and largely eschewed fantasy rappelling ninja operators in their ads. The idea seemed sound, but... mistakes were made.

[jetfire]

I did think it was cool that they were obviously marketing themselves to the Joe 'n' Suzy CCW demographic and largely eschewed fantasy rappelling ninja operators in their ads. The idea seemed sound, but... mistakes were made.

Just a few.

[littlejerry]

So has anyone actually put rounds through the "improved QC" products?