The Fajen Years
嚜燜he
FAJEN
YEARS
每 Larry*s Short Stories #189 每
※L
arry, you should buy Fajen; it*s for sale.§ Those were
the words of Marty Fajen, when we met at a sporting
clays event in the spring of 1992. On July 15, the deal was
done; the Reinhart Fajen Gunstock Company had changed
hands. (So much for due diligence!) Fajen was a small,
well-established, well-respected company in Warsaw, MO,
※the gunstock capital of the world.§ The 80 Employees
were all local, and possessed the knowledge and skills to
hand fit, hand shape and finish sticks of walnut into pieces
of art. Business was divided between three missions,
shaped but unfinished stocks, The Custom Shop and
O.E.M. (Springfield M1A and Remington 90-T stocks were
the primary O.E.M. products at the time).
The 1996
Fajen Cat
featured a alog Cover
picture of
our
daughter,
Sara.
The things that Fajen
needed, in my opinion,
were CNC technology,
computerization, modern
leadership and management
principles and a new plant.
My vision was to modernize
everything as soon as
possible, believing that the
※new business§ would be
even more respected and
successful. Unfortunately, the
demand for the gunstocks we
were developing the capacity to
produce didn*t exist; and I never
did that research.
CNC equipment was the first priority, to help increase the
O.E.M. business and expand the line of Finished DropIn stocks. Fajen was the first to apply this technology to
gunstocks. The learning curve and costs for CNC were far
beyond anything I ever imagined 每 programming was very
difficult and time consuming. The four Shoda 4-spindle,
4-axis machines and one single spindle, five-axis machine
This is th
e update
d Fajen lo
go.
were very expensive. We also worked unsuccessfully with
an outside contractor to build a CNC Zuckerman outside
shaping machine.
Land near Lincoln, next town to the north, came up for
sale and we built a large, expensive building. It was well
underway in 1995, when Bishop, the other 每 and original
每 gunstock business in Warsaw, was offered for sale. We
bought it, and now controlled most of the independent
stockmaking capacity in the U.S. In retrospect, the Bishop
purchase added no value,
just additional expense.
"On July 15, the
In our new plant, with CNC deal was done..."
machining well established,
we needed more business. A few, small, difficult contracts
were landed and delivered to Browning, Ruger, Winchester
and Weatherby. Unfortunately, we learned that there
wasn*t enough wood gunstock business to support the
expensive operation we had put together. It not being
possible to ※back up§, we closed the plant in October 1998
and sold everything at auction. The Fajen years were over.
Larry Potterfield
Reinhart Fajen, Inc.
Lincoln, MO
October 1998
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