The much-hyped partnership between Australian gunmaker Lithgow Arms and distributor Spika has collapsed, and a statement by Spika says Lithgow has “stopped manufacturing of civilian rifles”.
In announcing that the companies had parted ways, the Spika statement said, “with Lithgow’s changing circumstances, our business models do not align going forward,” and added there was “no certainty” about when production of firearms might re-commence.
Lithgow has made no statement of its own. When we contacted them, representatives of Lithgow and Spika would not comment except to confirm that the separation was mutually agreed and amicable.
Sources in the retail industry suggest Lithgow has not been happy with lacklustre sales and what it saw as inadequate marketing efforts, both of which had led to an excess of unsold stock held in Lithgow’s stores.
Others sources indicated Spika had been frustrated by what it considered the slow pace of Lithgow’s rollout of new products, as well as the difficulty of marketing firearms on social media given the punitive application of anti-gun policies by companies such as Meta (Facebook).
Lithgow has previously told Sporting Shooter that it has capacity to make 135 civilian rifles a week, and at the height of its success, during the COVID pandemic, it was selling more than 100 a week.
However, our sources say the current selling rate is about a third of that, while production had remained relatively high.
As such, Lithgow has been forced to either slow or pause production until enough of those 4500 rifles are sold to justify re-starting the machines.
Spika yesterday sent its dealers a list of more than 4500 firearms available now as it encourages shops to “get in quick if you want to secure any rifles before distribution is concluded” on 13 December.
One dealer principal, who didn’t want to be named, said Lithgow had already begun talks with at least one potential new distributor.
He said he did not think the gunmaker would walk away from the civilian firearm market, but admitted he was hedging his bets by buying up as many rifles as he could.
“You never know which way a multinational like [Lithgow’s parent company] Thales might go,” he said, “but the constant turnover of making commercial-market guns every week is the bread and butter they need because the military and police sales are only the cream.”
0 Comments