For whatever reason, Remington has been a history of f---ups.
Periodically, they hit a home run, but on the whole, they screw up a LOT, and it's often in ways that should be easy to foresee.
The Nylon 66 was an enormously popular .22; when the tooling wore out, they just quit making it. Would Ruger quit making the 10/22, or Marlin the 60, if their tooling wore out? Or would they replace/upgrade the tooling?
The last new Remington shotgun design that really appealed to sophisticated shotgunners was the 3200. It was "too expensive to produce", so they proceeded to spend a lot more money designing and tooling up for the 300 series, which has been an unmitigated flop. Now, a Remington shotgun is what you buy when you can't afford better. Deserved or not, this is not a good reputation to have, in the high-end recreation marketplace! (Meanwhile, a 20-year-old 3200 costs as much as a new gun, or a good B-gun, and high-end buyers go elsewhere.)
In the marketplace for competition shotguns, I have no choice but to go outside the US. I'd rather buy American, but I can't afford custom. Remington could build a gun as good as a Citori. It's not that hard, the Citori's not that cheap, and the design has been around for at least as long as the 870.
The 700 has further issues. Instead of fixing a supposed safety problem by doing a little engineering, Big Green removed the bolt lock and made the trigger really heavy, and just left it that way. I bought a Weatherby Howa gun, essentially a copy of the 700 action, made in Japan, but with a user-adjustable trigger (no voided warranty for doing so) and a bolt lock on safe. What the?!? I was looking at Remingtons...
Contrary to the Express-bashers, the Express is a damn good shotgun, particularly for well under $300, with the new laminate stock and machined rib. There's just not a lot of profit in a budget hunting gun. You have to get people who like shotgunning to aspire to a Remington, too, not just start with Remingtons and move on to other guns! I can be very brand loyal, but if Remington doesn't even make a gun to move up to, I am lost as a future customer, despite loving my Remmies.
Remington was years ahead of their competitors with the 1100 when it came out. They squandered that lead, over and over again.
The 105CTi is also way ahead of the competition, or could be. It appears they released it with a few bugs. This could sully its reputation forever, a sad thing, because it's a wonderful gun to shoot, with essentially no felt recoil and wonderful balance. Meanwhile, Benelli's relentless marketing machine gets newbies to spend $1500 on a blowback gun with a crappy plastic stock, and sophisticated shotgunners who want an autoloader buy Berettas.
Beretta beat Remington 10+ years ago, but it needn't have been a long-term defeat. Remington didn't fight back until now. The 1100 G3 and Competition models are beautiful. The 105 and the new 1100s should have come out 10 years earlier, before Remington let Beretta make such huge inroads into a market that Big Green had sewn up for a long time.
The 597 is a great .22, but Remington released it with a major bug, and it will never recover from the bad reputation it gained. The bug is fixed (magazines), and it cost a few cents a gun to fix it. DUMB!!!
The 710 (now 770) is a POS. Remington gave Savage so much time to pull ahead, that they had no trouble. Now Savage threatens not just the low-end guns, but the flagship 700 as well, and Savage deserves to win.
This isn't about globalization, so much as it is about chickens coming home to roost. Management chickens.
My first shotgun, and my second, are both Remingtons. I like them! I don't want to see Remington go down, or become nothing but a badge to stick on Russian clunkers and Italian also-ran shotguns. If I want an Italian shotgun for $2000, I'll buy a known gun directly from a reputable manufacturer. There are plenty to choose from.
This change will cure them, or kill them. I hope it's the former.