The UK's Finest Independent Forum for Shooters and Gun Owners. Est 2010.

I've just discovered that smk are the importers for marlin and remmington....what happened to edgar bros?

SMK have been the importers or distributors for Remington for a few years. SMK is actually owned by Remington.

Perhaps Edgars decided to drop Remington when they got word about all the trigger recall problems that was just becoming public knowledge in the U.K. at around that time.

From what I gathered, it was Remington that moved their products from Edgars to SMK. When Remington bought Marlin, the natural course was that they'd be imported by SMK also.

Ummmm

Whether Edgars jumped or were given the push by Remington I don't know but I bet they were glad that it wasn't their problem when the 700 trigger recalls arose.

I believe it was a falling out over time due to differing views on what Edgar's should be selling. Long story short Remington wanted Edgar's to stop selling rival brands like CZ/Savage and were pushing that they should exclusively be selling brands owned by Remington Arms.

Edgar's told them to stroll on so Remington bought SMK and took distribution in house.

Fedaykin wrote:I believe it was a falling out over time due to differing views on what Edgar's should be selling. Long story short Remington wanted Edgar's to stop selling rival brands like CZ/Savage and were pushing that they should exclusively be selling brands owned by Remington Arms.

Edgar's told them to stroll on so Remington bought SMK and took distribution in house.

...add in the mark up's for the UK trade once the importers have added a hefty slice & no big surprise that Remington were not a huge seller %age wise, which is a shame as they could have been if priced better.
To put it in perspective, the price UK shooters fork out for an average quality at best Turkish gun would get you a similar Remington in other parts of the globe - and Edgars are a big fan of the Hatsan & Huglu brands as they get a better margin on them....and it IS all about the sales targets, nothing else; not what is best for the end user - £$£$£ talks!

I agree saddler, for their build quality and the mass produced nature Remington rifles are just way too overpriced. For the price of a standard bare Remington 700 with no work on it you can buy a Howa 1500 with better build quality that has an aftermarket stock, scope, bi-pod and suppressor. The current Marlins are a disgrace to their brand considering their history build quality wise.

A Remington 700 can be a platform for a great rifle if you chuck money at it but considering there is a hole slew of other precision rifles out there like the Ruger Precision, Mossburg MVP, Savage 12 that are are pretty darn good out of the box for less money I am not impressed.

Back when we had handguns , the big 3 were Parker Hale , Edgars and Viking .

Edgars and Viking survived and even got bigger because they had proper business policies , Parker Hale failed .

Parker Hale failed simply because they did not sell their products at a proper price and did not enforce proper pricing by gun dealers .

When Edgars took the Remington account from Hull Cartridge they went flat out to hold stocks of all Remington products , even though deliveries from Remington were always slow .

Edgars tried to enforce a price policy for dealers to make a decent profit for once , even though a few dealers bought their own guns from USA & Germany whenever the exchange rate was good .

Remington had bought SMK well before they cancelled the account with Edgars , and the argument that the account was closed due to Edgars stocking rival brands does not hold water as some of the Remington distributors in USA stock a broad range of products that could be said to clash with Remington products .

Bottom line is the UK is a small market and Remingtons owners , Cerberus Capital Management
want to squeeze every penny they can and control as much of the supply chain as they can get away with .

Just give it a few more years and people will be saying how good Edgar's was at supplying Remington products.

Rumour has it that a lot of people will not deal with smk...2 dealers I know personally will not deal with them either....