Thompson/Center Arms is back up and running, making new product right now for sale this fall, said new company president Greg Ritz in a conference call with NRA Publications Tuesday June 25. After the company was only recently purchased by a new ownership group, T/C production and assembly is humming. Within the next 12 months, hunters and shooters can expect to see on store shelves the Encore multi-firearm platform, Contender break-open “hand cannon,” the Icon bolt-action centerfire rifle and Triumph muzzleloader.
“America’s master gunmaker,” says Ritz, “is back. And it’s all made in the U.S.A.”
The stage was set for the T/C resurgence only recently, when a three-pronged ownership group came together to purchase the brand with a three-year-old “for sale” sign attached to it. The group includes company president Ritz. A former T/C employee, he went on to purchase the company then sold it to Smith & Wesson, actually worked for the new corporate parent two more years then moved away to start another venture. It includes Glenn Butcher, the man behind Bass and Bucks, a hunting and archery pro shop in Wabash, Ind., that has grown into a regional treasure offering hunters and fishers not only a 10,000-square-foot full-service pro shop, but indoor/outdoor archery ranges, an outdoor gun range, event and tournament hosting, and sponsorship of a youth archery team on its 182 acres. Butcher is also, as hunters might expect, a longtime T/C fan. And new ownership includes Global Precision Parts (GPP), an ISO-certified and ITAR-registered provider of high-quality manufacturing services in the Midwest that also maintains several joint ventures across the globe.
GPP helps T/C bring to bear instant infrastructure with four facilities across the Midwest. Design and engineering remain in Rochester, N.H., where Thompson Investment Casting is again casting Encore frames. Company headquarters lie in Wabash, site of a new 143,000-square-foot production and assembly facility that also includes an indoor range. Atop all this, said Ritz, the company is investing millions of dollars in new barrel-making technology.
The Encore, the T/C arm so popular for its ability to switch from handgun to shotgun to muzzleloader to centerfire rifle with the switch of barrels, will go on sale in October. After that, in short order, hunters will see the Contender, Icon and Triumph. New offerings acknowledge at least two trends: all new T/C barrels will be threaded; new centerfire calibers will include straight-wall cartridges. And rest assured, said Ritz: Any new T/C barrel or frame interchanges with parts made all along by T/C, even parts made in 1965 when the company first launched.
After all these years beyond his involvement with T/C, we asked Ritz what stirred him to come back to T/C. Did he have an itch to scratch? Why has he returned to re-launch the company he once worked at, purchased, built up and sold? “It wasn’t an itch,” he replied. “It was a pit in my stomach. It was an emptiness. When I left the gun world there was an emptiness.”
When the company was offered for sale three years ago, Ritz said, more than a hundred companies must’ve been interested in purchasing it. He said more than one of them approached him, asking if he might return. “I wasn’t interested because none of those offers were about family,” he said. This is different, he said. “This is the right people at the right time. Since the purchase I can’t even sleep at night. I wake up in the middle of the night with my notebook. I’m just so excited now that the emptiness has gone away.”
Longtime fans of everything Thompson/Center also can be excited. Brand-new T/C guns, just the way we like ’em, are coming soon. Visit Thompson/Center Arms’ new website to bookmark it for use later, and watch a quick video of Greg Ritz announce the return of his American-made brand.
Meantime, we expect to accept our first new T/C in years in September. Check back here this fall to learn more about it.
