This may end up being true but having been through a number of little fish eats bigger fish situations in my career, I have found two things to ring true.
Those in the know stick to well thought out talking points until it’s time for the talking points to change.
Those not in the know parrot the talking points, until the talking points change on them. Not their fault, it’s what they know.
If you know someone in the know, I’m sure you have been fed the same talking points the average employee has been fed. For a variety of reasons, mainly legal and monetary in nature. If you chatted with anyone mid management down, they’re likely just parroting what they have been told.
I’m probably being overly simplistic but a growing, highly profitable company does not sell out if outlook is positive operating as they currently do. Big companies don’t buy little companies if they don’t see opportunity to use big company resources to make the companies they purchase more profitable. Fishing is a niche market, fly fishing centric even more so. Outerwear, designed mainly for fly fishing and you really are starting to limit your ability to grow and be profitable long term…unless you are bought by a company that has ability to scale your business appropriately. Because of that, I cannot imagine new ownership would purchase a company like Simms and stick with the current operating model without making changes. Be it to production manner, production location, warranty, quality of materials, etc. etc. They’ll need to squeeze and streamline and source differently, which means things change from how they are today.
I could be wrong, maybe things were great at Simms, the current owners just wanted out and Vista’s path to profitable growth is buying up a lot well run niche companies and keeping them as is. Doubtful though. I imagine we’ll see changes impacting consumers eventually. Not tomorrow or even in the next 5 years. Eventually though.
Not a bad thing necessarily. Capitalism at work. If you want to support a company like Simms was…start doing your research and find the next up and coming thing.
