SPRINGFIELD — American Outdoor Brands Corp., parent company of Springfield stalwart Smith & Wesson, will close its distribution operations here and elsewhere around the country as it opens a new $75-million warehouse near Columbia, Missouri, this year.
Executives at the publicly-traded AOBC touted the cost savings and efficiencies associated with consolidating into its new 600,000-square-foot Missouri warehouse in a conference call with analysts last week. (The call followed AOBC’s announcement of its most recent quarterly results.)
There are 20 to 30 people at Smith & Wesson in Springfield whose current jobs will move to Missouri, said Elizabeth A. Sharp, vice president of investor relations for American Outdoor Brands Corp. But those people will move to other jobs here in Springfield.
“Therefore, we do not expect any job loss in conjunction with the transition,” she said.
The plan is to have all American Outdoor Brands products — including firearms from Smith & Wesson and Thompson Center and knives, tools, and outdoor equipment from other American Outdoor Brands businesses — ship through the new warehouse.
Jeffrey Buchanan, AOBC's chief financial officer and executive vice president, ran through a list of company's existing distribution centers including two logistics warehouses in Massachusetts, one in Jacksonville, Florida and a smaller Missouri distribution center that will be folded into the new one.
“All that is going away,” Buchanan told the conference-call audience, according to an available online transcript.
At another point in the call, CEO P. James Debney told stock analysts that Springfield distribution and the old Missouri center will operate in parallel with the new center in Missouri as it ramps up. The transition process will play out during the current calendar year.
The Missouri facility will hire 154 new workers as it opens a total of 328 new employees over the next few years, the company has said. The existing Missouri distribution center has 175 employees already.
After that, American Outdoor Brands will transfer distribution work from Jacksonville and from its Crimson Trace logistics operation in Wilsonville, Oregon, and consolidate all that work in Missouri. American Outdoor Brands bought Crimson Trace, a maker of laser sights, for $95 million in 2016.
Buchanan explained that there will be a state tax savings for the audience saying firearms made in Massachusetts will be shipped to Missouri and distributed from there. That means the profits will be with Smith & Wesson in Springfield, not the logistics facility.
Sharp said Smith & Wesson will continue to pay taxes on the products will continue to make in Massachusetts.
“The benefit occurs to us at the Logistics facility, since it will now have nexus with our customers, and it will be less impacted by taxes when those products (upon which Smith & Wesson has already paid taxes in Massachusetts) are then sent to higher tax-rate states,” Sharp wrote in an email.
American Outdoor Brands has about 1,600 employees at its Springfield factory. Its other firearms factories are in Deep River, Connecticut, where it makes plastic parts and Houlton, Maine.
American Outdoor Brands, then known as Smith & Wesson, announced the Missouri project in 2017. The local taxing authority, Boone County, has granted it a 50 percent property tax break over 10 years, according to the Columbia Missourian newspaper.
Smith & Wesson traces its roots to 1852, when Horace Smith and Daniel Baird Wesson partnered to manufacture a firearm that used a self-contained cartridge. The company has a long history making firearms first downtown and later on Roosevelt Avenue.
Springfield facility also houses the company's principal research, development, engineering, design sales, marketing, finance, and management functions, according to its most recent report to stockholders.
That annual report, dating from June 2018, also says that American Outdoor Brands plans to continue to upgrade and improve its manufacturing operations, including those in Springfield.
In 2011, Smith & Wesson — this is prior to its 2017 name change too American outdoor Brands — received a $6-million break on its state corporate taxes over the following seven years in exchange for moving 225 jobs here from Rochester, N.H.