I work for a manufacturing business (machine shop, assembly, etc). Our products and processes are very mature and efficient. We have virtually no competition in our market. We use Lean manufacturing principles and our production cells run extremely efficiently. Our costs go up every year. The increase in cost is generally attributed to higher health care costs, benefits, employee cost of living raises, insurance increases, price increases from suppliers who experience the same issues and must pass that along to us at some point to remain profitable. We can only absorb so much of that until we must pass that along to our customers. If the production employees at Remington are members of a union, then it's even worse. If a company can't increase their revenue by at least 3%-5% a year, they won't be able to stay afloat for long. In Remington's case, they have seen a huge increase in competition over the last few years. 30 years ago, it was Remington and Winchester. Now there are many more competitors turning out products that are more innovative, higher quality, and meet the wants/needs of today's shooters, especially those shooters who aren't looking for a "hunting" rifle.
Remington reminds me a lot of Sears. They fell behind and had so much baggage that they could not move forward at a pace to keep up, and probably couldn't afford to do so now if they wanted to. Material and processing costs are only a small part of the total cost to run a business. Employee costs are a HUGE part of it, and young small companies can handle it much better than old large ones, most of the time.
