Ron Coburn, Savage Arms
If you look at the men who have made firearms history, you will never find a boring personality. They all seem to have a strong will, a willingness to believe in themselves. The man who saved Savage Arms, Ron Coburn, is no exception.
Coburn was born and raised in Northern Ireland. At the age of 12, friends invited him to go pheasant hunting with them on a neighboring farmer’s land. Ron did not own a shotgun, so he purchased the cheapest shotgun available in the local pawnshop—a Stevens 16-ga. pump with a poly choke, not realizing that one day, he would become a part of the history of Savage/Stevens/Fox.
Like a lot of teenagers Ron didn’t get along so well with his father. “I was the rebel of the family,” he told me. “I had too much of my father’s genes in me and we could never see eye to eye.” Ron finished high school at the age of 15 and immediately got on a boat to Liverpool to see the Beatles. But when he arrived, they were not there. So he spent three days hitchhiking to London to see them in concert.
When it was over he had $7 in his pocket, no job and no intention of going home. So he went to work at a Ford Motor plant as a welder. During that time, he also went to college to complete an engineering degree. Then he went back to college and completed a business degree, finishing all this by the age of 23.
“I was pretty burned out by then,” Coburn told me.
So he headed to Greece where he worked as a skipper’s mate on a tourist boat. But six months of that was enough, and Coburn returned to London to start working in a small engineering company that specialized in research and development for tools and machinery, including automation and early robotic systems
Some time later, he helped to deliver an experimental aircraft to an executive at Siemens in Munich, Germany, and he liked the place so much he stayed. Coburn went to work for Siemens and stayed for 5 1/2 years. Then back to London, then to Singapore for a year, then Hong Kong, then back to London where a headhunter contacted him about a Director of Engineering position with Smith & Wesson. He worked there for a while, but did not enjoy the corporate environment at the time. So when another offer came alone he moved on to Case Knives located in Bradford, Pa., where he turned around the failing company. Later, the same headhunter who recruited him for S&W and Case asked him to take a look at Savage Industries.
After touring the plant, Coburn turned them down. Then they upped the offer. “I thought, I have a pretty good résumé so far, how big a risk could it be?” He chuckled. “I took the job, and six months later they filed bankruptcy. So, feeling pretty stupid, I resigned. The owners at the time made me an offer to take over and run the business. I said fine, if they gave me full latitude, which they agreed to do.”