The biggest joke in the Firearms industry...

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I don't know a great deal about KT but I have three of their weapons. Two are flawless and one is back in Cocoa right now. The aerospace industry in that area is drying up as we type so I hope they are not too heavily involved in that industry.

I can guess at a few reasons for the limited production.

First is that it may not be a very profitable item for them and they don't really want/need to produce more. I used to sell some products that were marginal for me so I sold them but did not really try to push them. How much demand is really out there for a $2000 KT? I don't know.
The second might be available capital. These guns may require eqipment that costs a great deal and the owners are not willing to invest more capital right now. While it makes sense to most people to spend the money up front and make it back over time there are a lot of companies that either are heavily in debt and can't get additional financing or just feel that "cash is king" and prefer not to get heavily in debt.
It is also possible that a lot of the parts for these guns are produced on the same machinery as their pistols which are the guns that pay their bills. This would tie into #2 if they are only able to allocate a limited amount of time to the production of these weapons.

There are a lot of other possibilities. One thing I am pretty certain about is that KT management has not made the decision to limit production because they don't really want to make more money. I have worked with a lot of companies, public, private, huge and small and have yet to hear one say that they were happy with their income and really did not need to make more.
 
My first thought was RANDALL knives... why would they not ramp up production?

My suspicion is that Keltec views a limited amount of demand and will continue to produce as many as they can without expansion. Expansion takes time and money.
 
My first thought was RANDALL knives... why would they not ramp up production?

Buying equipment is one thing. Teaching someone to do what your father taught you over two or three decades is quite a bit different.
 
I have heard from multiple gun shops that Kel-Tec is not only a gun manufacturer. I wanted a SUB 2000 and it was almost impossible to find one. I was told they do runs of models and then move onto the next. So if it is a popular model it may run out fast and there are no more until they do a run again. I also heard that manufacture other things, I think stuff for aircraft, and so while that is happening they are not manufacturing any guns.

This is what I was told why it is hard to find some Kel-Tec models. Is this just gun shop drivel? I have no idea.

Shawn
I've wanted 9mm Glock mag Sub2K's as well.

I'm an FFL, and I've been on the waiting list at multiple distributors for this item for 3 YEARS, and have yet to see ONE.

I had to buy mine on GunBroker.
 
For the RFB, if mine is typical, if they made more they'd being going broke trying to fix them!

Its been back three times, and has had two broken part exchanges mixed in. No complaints about their customer service but for the price a gun like the RFB should work a lot better than this. Up to 340 rounds fired without a breakage (would be a lot more but the weather has rained out my shooting the past three weeks :( ) I'm still not ready to call it "good".


I think they are really in an beta testing phase for most of their newest products and just can't afford to have more guns out there potentially needing to be fixed.
 
There is an online/catalog gun seller that gets the PMR-30 several dozen at a time in on a bi-weekly basis now and a dozens of KSG's a month. The PMR-30 is $299 with free shipping and the KSG is under $600. I'm not going to post the name of this ompany beause then everyone will slam them with phone calls and jank a reliable pipeline of these guns. But if you will search the guns and the prices I listed you will figure it out pretty quick. Good Luck to ya.
 
I used to own three KelTecs. Used to. Sold every one. They are cheap. Not inexpensive...cheap.
 
Actually, they're outselling both Springfield and Colt. KT is the 3rd largest handgun maker in the USA.
Actually as of 2010:

S&W, Ruger, Beretta, Sig Sauer and Taurus produced more handguns in the USA then Kel-Tec did. Unless KT has ramped-up production, that makes them #6.
 
I can understand Kel-tec wants to protect its long-term prospects by keeping its firearms business small-scale. The machining they use to sell 500$ guns could just as easily be building +10000$ components for their real customers. What I don't get is why they don't just contract some other shop to do the gun-forging. With proper oversight, the same guns would get made, but Kel-tec wouldn't have to risk over-investing in that arm of their business. If the market falls out, they can always dump the contractor, who will then hook up with another corporation.

TCB

This makes no sense at all. How does KT "protect its long-term prospects by keeping its firearms business small-scale." You stating an opportunity cost that has no factual basis. You're also suggesting that business is a zero-sum game -- that they can service their "real" customers or they can build gun. That's simply not the case.

What "gun forging" are you speaking of? KT products are made largely from molded plastic and cast/stamprd metal.
 
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You cannot just 'wave your hand' and double the production.

Often a company produces quality work because they have an experienced and highly engaged work force.

Second, as far as producing a finished product, it can cost a lot to get a second batch of machines ordered and installed.

Third it would do Kel-Tec no good to double their production rate if they produce a big quantity then meet demand and 3 years later all that expensive new machinery is mostly sitting idle.
 
Running at full capacity makes excellent use of your equipment and does a great job of spreading the associated/fixed costs across as many units as possible. Expanding and then not consistently fulling utilizing that additional capacity is likely to increase per-unit production costs.

And from a PR standpoint it's better to keep a relatively small number of employees and simply never hire more than it is to hire more and then have to lay them off later.
 
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You cannot just 'wave your hand' and double the production.

Often a company produces quality work because they have an experienced and highly engaged work force.

Second, as far as producing a finished product, it can cost a lot to get a second batch of machines ordered and installed.

Third it would do Kel-Tec no good to double their production rate if they produce a big quantity then meet demand and 3 years later all that expensive new machinery is mostly sitting idle.

Looking at KT products there isn't a great deal of fitting -- which is a good thing. There are mainly plastic injection moldings, some CNC and screw machine parts and maybe a MIM part or two.

It wouldn't take a lot to bring new KT machine attendants/assemblers/testers up to speed. The aren't Les Bear Customs.

Just what "new machinery" are you talking about? Take a critical look at KT designs. If they don't have the CNC/molder machine time they can farm it out. Suggesting an increase in product necessitates a huge capital investment has simply not been proven in this case.
 
Looking at KT products there isn't a great deal of fitting -- which is a good thing. There are mainly plastic injection moldings, some CNC and screw machine parts and maybe a MIM part or two.

It wouldn't take a lot to bring new KT machine attendants/assemblers/testers up to speed. The aren't Les Bear Customs.

Just what "new machinery" are you talking about? Take a critical look at KT designs. If they don't have the CNC/molder machine time they can farm it out. Suggesting an increase in product necessitates a huge capital investment has simply not been proven in this case.

Along with the typical loss of or reduction in direct control/oversight that often comes along with that. And you still gotta pay.
 
It's the gun biz; just about the flakiest bunch of clowns in the country. Anybody know if KT is running more than one shift or longer hours per shift or weekends?

You don't want to buy new machines; run the piss out of the ones you already own. But gun biz flakes won't do that; makes too much sense....

And you don't need months to train somebody to run a CNC machining center. Couple of days if they're really slow on the uptake. Couple of hours if they're bright. Mostly consists of showing them what to do and then watching them run the machine for an hour to see if they got it. Call the jobsetter if anything goes wrong.
 
Just to throw my hat in the ring..I carry a p32 first generation...utterly reliable for several hundred rounds and reasonably accurate. I added a trigger shoe and cut the trigger pull in half.
 
Kel_Tec should be:cuss:boycotted until they go out of business.Why? Because they make unreliable junk.You should not have to send a gun back repeatedly or Fluff and buff it to run right.
 
This thread wouldn't exist if you guys didn't want their products. Kel-tec has the luxury of taking their time because they make stuff that nobody else does.

Take a look through their product line up and consider how many things have no competition.

http://www.keltecweapons.com/our-guns/


I think EAA is a bigger joke (oddly enough, they're also in Cocoa beach, or were). Taurus is also around there somewhere. What is it with Florida?
 
This thread wouldn't exist if you guys didn't want their products. Kel-tec has the luxury of taking their time because they make stuff that nobody else does.

Take a look through their product line up and consider how many things have no competition.

http://www.keltecweapons.com/our-guns/


I think EAA is a bigger joke (oddly enough, they're also in Cocoa beach, or were). Taurus is also around there somewhere. What is it with Florida?
And this is the problem, I love innovation, I love a company that put out what no one else will. I Hate when a business is run poorly, maybe it's because I was in charge of getting rid of ineptitude in business for several years, I am almost to the point of no longer supporting Kel-Tec because of it.

I haven't had any problems with my P3AT that has been my EDC for a little more then a year now (the cerakoting has worn off on the edges of the slide from my jeans but that isn't KelTec's fault). I have been thinking about this since this thread was started and while I do think there are some good theories and some of them are probably accurate I also think that one of the major problems is that the company seems to be run by an engineer. Nothing against engineers, they are some of the smartest people I have ever met, but I have known very few who have the acumen to run a business (maybe that isn't a fair representation, but that has been my experience).

After considering the arguments thus far I think I stand by my statement, showing a new product at an industry show and then blaming other factors when you miss your full production target date by 1.5+ years is irresponsible from a business standpoint. It alienates customers and gives your competition an (albeit potential) upper hand thus reducing the profitability of your company.

I believe that with the start-up funds I could be producing in two years what Kel-Tec has been unable to produce in five, and be doing it profitably, honestly I have been thinking about this more and more in the last couple of days.
 
"I am almost to the point of no longer supporting Kel-Tec because of it."

You have no proof that Kel-Tec is poorly run and/or unprofitable. All you have is your opinion that you wouldn't run it the way they do. Lot's of companies have gone broke overexpanding during a boom.

John
 
Along with the typical loss of or reduction in direct control/oversight that often comes along with that. And you still gotta pay.
Loss of "control/oversight?" No. Certainly not a loss of "control." KT is a CNC vendor to others. They should know how to procure quality parts. Loss of "oversight?" What do you mean? Are you suggesting quality levels might drop? Again, not proven. The fact is they just might improve with a specialist making the parts.

"Still paying" isn't the issue. Not making huge capital expenditures is.
 
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