"You win 100% of the fights you avoid. If you're not there when it happens, you don't lose." - William Aprill
"I've owned a guitar for 31 years and that sure hasn't made me a musician, let alone an expert. It's made me a guy who owns a guitar."- BBI
All steel double stack striker production legal competition gun. Which is what they should have been marketed as to begin with. A company like STI that has extensive Limited and Open representation could use the Hudson design to buy right into the Production market.
I can’t. Bond is a small company. Five employees small. The cash outlay for The Boberg design was substantial. They’ve done very well to turn that gun design around and market it well. But they are still in loss leader territory. It’ll be another 36-months of selling the hundred or so a month they’re making, before Bond turns a profit. At least when I spoke to Gordon Bond about it at Christmas time. He’s tight lipped about what it cost him to buy Boberg’s design, but when you factor everything in, plus the 24-months of R&D to re-engineer the Boberg, he knew he was taking a big risk.I could see Bond Arms possibly being interested.
Really both him and his daughter took the risk. Bond’s daughter went to school with my wife and BIL. She skipped college and let her father keep the college fund to grow Bond Arms. He did, and that paid off enough to let Bond buy Boberg. But if this fails, the company will probably go TU and Gordon’s daughter will be out any inheritance she might get from her college fund investment.
Point being, Bond doesn’t have the cashflow to buy Hudson. Nor the right market share. Bond makes concealable carry guns not competition arms. A company with a vested competition interest should buy Hudson.
The fact that Cy Hudson was arrogant enough to believe his gun a Glock Killer tells me a lot about his business acumen. He should have marketed it as a USPSA and IDPA class leader. Meanwhile, while Hudson dies, Walther comes out with a steel frame Q5 and kills that production gun market.
From a consumer perspective, I can’t speak to how lower bore axis of the Hudson contributed to however flat the gun shot, considering its weight and chambering.
I don’t think that the actual design of the H9 is that valuable as is the idea of a steel framed striker 9mm as a minimum recoil kind of gun. The steel frame Walther, a steel grip module for the FCU-type designs such as the P320 and OZ-9 should prove out the concept without needing a brand new action design.
I hate to see stuff fail, but there’s a good video from Forgotten Weapons about what a risky thing it is to jump into the small arms business to manufacture and sell a new gun as a new business.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fjGcsYH0lOs
Last edited by Bergeron; 03-25-2019 at 06:58 AM.
Per the PF Code of Conduct, I have a commercial interest in the StreakTM product as sold by Ammo, Inc.
For Hudson's IP to be valuable, the design must be substantially sound. Who here knows that for sure?
Thanks for all the background!
I guess it boils down to if one of the big boys thinks the H9 would beat an all-steel version of one of their striker-fired guns in performance, and if the potential profit is worth the tooling up and the working-out-the bugs cost. I'm guessing the answer is probably not.
Did the unique action really do anything to dampen muzzle flip, or was it just the extra weight out front?
Any thoughts on if Ian's diagnosis ("announced the alloy version too soon and crushed sales of the steel one") has any validity? It doesn't seem to have had an impact on the P-F hive.
I'm really not the market for the H9, but I'd love to see a new design really make some headway. It seems like the action would be interesting for a hotter cartridge if it truly tames muzzle flip.
P.S. nothing is a Glock killer. Especially not at $1000+ msrp.
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
REPETITION CREATES BELIEF
REPETITION BUILDS THE SEPARATE WORLDS WE LIVE AND DIE IN
NO EXCEPTIONS
That would be my guess too.
My guess is, the reason we didn't see Hudson get bought before is a mixture of problems. One poor QC made the gun a non-starter and thus no one could tell if the commercial success would be there. Second, when Hudson started rolling downhill, I'm gonna guess they fielded a few phonecalls from interested parties, who probably noped out after seeing some of the digits. With a 10-million plus deficit apparent from the bankruptcy filings, that was too rich for anyone to want to buy.
My prediction? During bankruptcy there will be a very short auction for the Hudson IP, it'll include just a few players, it'll go for pennies on the start-up dollars. We'll see a new version of Hudson every five years for the next twenty years as someone tries to get it rolling again with too much money invested. One of the five versions won't suck, but will have to deal with the suck of the previous generations such that it will never make it.
Meanwhile, the big companies have learned something from it and we'll get more steel framed or steel inserted, heavier, guns.