Smith & Wesson sold to Arizona firm Firearms manufacturer makes handcuffs at plant in Houlton

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Smith & Wesson, a worldwide manufacturer of handguns and handcuffs, has been sold to an Arizona company that makes a specialized line of firearm safety products.

Saf-T-Hammer of Scottsdale, Ariz., announced its agreement Monday with Tomkins PLC, the British owner of Smith & Wesson since 1987.

The deal requires that Saf-T-Hammer pay $15 million in cash, with $5 million paid upon closing and the remainder due in May 2002. Total liabilities are approximately $53 million, which includes a 10-year note for $30 million payable to Tomkins and due in May 2011.

“Smith & Wesson, a brand name for 147 years, would be at the top of any list of immediately identifiable corporate logos recognized worldwide,” said Robert L. Scott, president of Saf-T-Hammer and former vice president for business development at Smith & Wesson.

Smith & Wesson employs about 500 people at its 660,000-square-foot plant in Springfield. It has another 70 employees at a 36,000-square-foot facility in Houlton.

The purchase agreement with Saf-T-Hammer includes all patents, distribution rights, inventory and physical assets, including the corporate headquarters in Springfield. The total assets are worth approximately $97 million.

The Houlton plant makes handcuffs and two models of .22-caliber target and sport pistols. Smith & Wesson is the largest manufacturer of handcuffs in the world. In 1998, the Houlton plant reached a milestone when it manufactured its 3 millionth pair of handcuffs.

Mitchell Saltz, Saf-T-Hammer’s founder and CEO, said the entire $15 million purchase is being funded by a private investor he refused to name. The investor will be publicly identified when the company files paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission within the next two weeks.

The trigger locks, cables and lock boxes that Saf-T-Hammer makes will be incorporated into the Smith & Wesson product line, Staltz said, as the company hopes to capitalize on the well-known Smith & Wesson name.

Staltz said he expected “minimal downsizing” at Smith & Wesson, whose headquarters will remain in Springfield.

“There will be some layoffs, but not a huge amount,” he said. “It will be less than 5 percent of the work force, maybe 30 or 35 jobs.”

Ken Jorgensen, marketing director for Smith & Wesson, said during a Monday telephone interview that he had “heard no mention of changes at Houlton,” although there would be some in Springfield, as a result of the deal with Saf-T-Hammer.

“There hasn’t been any type of discussion [about Houlton] as far as I know,” he said.

Carol A. Heide, manager of customer service for Saf-T-Hammer, said Monday that for now it would be “status quo” at Smith & Wesson, but she added that there “definitely is going to be some reorganization going on” within the company as a whole.

According to the Saf-T-Hammer Web page, the company was founded and incorporated on May 7, 1998, by entrepreneur and inventor Saltz, and refers to itself as a development-stage company.

Jorgensen described Saf-T-Hammer as a “start-up” company with about a half-dozen employees. He said manufacturing work is done by outside contractors.

The company makes Saf-T-Trigger, a gun lock that the manufacturer says can be retrofitted to the majority of the firearms owned in the United States, as well a gun vault and a cable gunlock.

In March 2000, Smith & Wesson, in an agreement with the federal government, agreed to install safety locks, demand background checks on gun-show buyers, and work to develop a gun that can be fired only by its owner. In return, several lawsuits challenging the safety and marketing practices of the gun industry were dropped by federal, state and local agencies across the country.

Since 1998, the company’s Houlton plant has been including gunlocks with all the guns it distributes.

Competitors of Smith & Wesson, and others, sued the government, claiming the deal with the gun manufacturer was a restraint on trade and an attempt by the government to illegally push police departments to buy from Smith & Wesson.

Critics of the deal, including avid gun-owner rights supporters, vowed to boycott the company. There also has been a national decline in the sale of handguns and Smith & Wesson has seen its sales cut in half, according to Jorgensen.

Smith & Wesson has been located in Houlton since 1966, when it operated a small gun-manufacturing shop in a garage on Bangor Street. Operations shifted to the town’s industrial park in 1979 when the company moved into a 20,000-square-foot building. That building was enlarged to 36,000 square feet in 1994 as part of a $2 million expansion effort.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.