"I decided we were not going back to making shotguns or lots of other products anytime soon. We were going to concentrate on one product and, if that didn't work, well, I did my best. No marketing surveys, no market test, we just grabbed it and ran. We didn't have time for all that. With bankruptcy you have to stop the bleeding as fast as you can or the judge would force the company to liquidate in order to satisfy creditors."

Coburn downsized from 600 employees to 100 and removed them from a piecework pay formula that paid for each piece produced without regard for quality and replaced it with a day work system that provided a fixed hourly wage that was tied directly to quality. Within 18 months the company was out of bankruptcy and had paid off the debt. Coburn made it a point to pay off all the vendors; nobody got stuck with a reduced payment as a result of the bankruptcy. The law allowed Savage to walk away, but they did not. This was important to retaining good relations with the venders and pivotal to rebuilding the company.

By 1994 the company was doing well, and the owners decided to sell Savage to a competitor in order to raise the money to buy a dot-com business. So Coburn made a competitive offer and bought the company. That same year, he bought a Canadian manufacturer of .22 rimfire rifles called Lakefield Arms. "We Savagized it," Coburn said. "We put the same kind of heart and soul into it, and it just took off."

The company that sold Savage to Coburn is now bankrupt. Today Ron is branching out into other industries and new challenges, but he makes it clear that his baby is Savage Arms and that's where his heart will always remain.

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