Greener Guns A family business for 200 years
Content: • Preface 9 • Four Generations in the family business 10/23 • The Webley Years 24/25 • Family tree 26/27 • Graham Greener 28/29 • Interview 30/33 • Awards 34/35
Preface
9/ Preface
Over the past 200 years Greener guns have sustained a reputation for exceptional quality and craftsmanship. In this book I am presenting and exploring the most notable aspects of a family life and business with its rises and falls, challenges, setbacks and achievements. What in the end has made them so successful? Family archives as well as an interview with fifth generation family member, Graham Greener, form the basis of this study.
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The First Generation William Greener (1806–69)
01/ WW Greener
for seven years, a Newcastle gunmaker of repute. When trained he went to London and worked for Joe Manton, probably the finest gunmaker of his time. In London he married his wife Anne Thorne who came from Dorset. She had some money so he returned to Newcastle and set up his own gunmaking business there in 1829. He was an inventor and many of the inventions which revolutionised gunmaking he was involved with. He moved the business to Birmingham in 1844 where he gained a high reputation and his guns and rifles commanded good prices, sufficient to net him between £2.000 and £5.000 in profits throughout the 1850’s. William has died on 23 August 1869. His will stated that, any property to be sold except Glencoe in Arden Street , Stratford, which I wish to remain in the family as long as there is a lineal son
descendant af the prenamed sons, Joseph, Albert and John; to these and the three daughters all property was left in equal shares.
11/ Four generations in the family business
Gunmaking business was started by William Greener in 1829. He loved shooting wildfowl on the Feeling marshes that inpired him to become a gunmaker. There was anyway one occupation that he could not take up - that of coal miner, and there was a good reason why. At about past eleven on the morning of 25th May 1812 the neighbouring villages were alarmed by a tremendous explosion at the colliery. Joseph Greener was the father of William Greener, the first of the gunmaking Greeners. Joseph had lost his father, Isaac Greener, two brothers, Isaac and John, a brother-in-law, Nicholas Urwin, and two nephews in the disaster. It was hardly surprising therefore that a decision was made in the family that in future no Greeners would become miners. William was apprenticed to Gardiner
Gunmaking in Newcastle 1845 01
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01/ Rolling out bars of iron to make rods for barrel making 02/ Welding the rods of iron and steel mixture to make gun barrels 03/ Boring barrels on a bench
The Second Generation William Wellington Greener (1834–1921)
William Greeener second son William Wellington Greener, the entrepreneur, grew the business and made it famous. When he was 9 years old he suffered from scarlet fever, with complication - rendering him permanently deaf in one ear and almost blind in the right eye, so he could never see to read properly and wrote only with great difficulty, and then seldom more than his signature. This is remarkable when he is reputed to have written some eight books on guns and gunmaking. He was an inventor and developer as his father. WW’s business prospered and in 1884 the front of the works facing St Mary’s Row was constructed. At that time the factory, offices and showroom facing St Mary’s Row, Loveday Street and Bath Street formed the largest sporting gun factory in England, which alo produced a greater diversity of sporting guns, rifles and military arms, for British and foreign governments, then any other gun factory in the world. By 1910 it was the largest sporting gun factory in the world employing over 500 people and selling worldwide. From 1884 much of WW’s life was spent consolidating his business at home and abroad. He opened agencies in Melbourne in Australia, New York and Chicago in the United States of America, and at St Petersburg in Russia.
Greener Gun was used ant the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Both Wyatt Earp and John ‘Doc’ Holliday, who featured in this gunfight, had purchased WW Greener shotguns made to their own specifications, and both were double-barrel 10-bore hammer guns. John Wayne: the very name conjures up visions of American West used Greener guns. Other branches of WW Greener’s business included the manufacture of what became known as the Greener Humane Cattle Killer, a noiseless shooting apparatus for killing cattle. In 1896 WW Greener was forced to institute an action against the firm Abrahams, in Australia, which was damaging not only the English gun trade but his own in particular by selling cheap trade shotguns made in Belgium, on which they engraved WW Greener or the names of other English makers. WW Greener considered the guns made by his brothers to be forgeries, but this is not strictly true. From the date of first registering the name Greener in 1886 WW claimed he had used it for gunmaking for 12 years before that date. This brings the official date to 1874 so guns made before that year by Albert Greener are of course genuine Albert Greener guns.
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01/ William Wellington Greener
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01/ WW Greener’s gunmakers circa 1892. This old photograph, taken for the Chicago exhibition. The figures above indicate the number of years each craftsmen had worked for the firm.
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The Third Generation William Oliver Greener (1862–1936) WW Greener employed four of his sons in the gun business but he realised that the eldest , William Oliver, and Frederick were not primarily interested in gunmaking. William Oliver was the eldest son of WW Greener and the author’s grandfather. While he was not particularly well known in gunmaking circles then, and perhaps even less now, on leaving school at the age of seventeen William Oliver went to work for his father and became a partner in the business for the next fifteen years. In 1894 he was no longer involved with gunmaking he continued to write books for his father and articles on guns and gunmaking for the press. In fact William Oliver wrote most of the books attributed to his father who was, partially, both deaf and blind. On leaving the business his father set him up in publishing. Later he became a foreigh correspondent for The Times and covered, amongst other news, the Russo-Japanese war in the Far East. He visited Russia and Moscow several times and during one of these visits he was intrigued to hear how very few of the inmates of the notorious Ljubianca Prison in Moscow were ever released. William Oliver travelled widely and was the first Englishman to travel over the whole length of the Trans-Siberian Railway, all the way from Moscow to Vladivostok on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. England went into the First World War armed mainly with the longest Lee Enfield Mark 1 rifles which were already obsolescent. At that time the Government ordnance factory at Enfield was the only one equipped to produce the short Mark III Lee Enfield
and its output was clearly not going to match the rate of mobilisation. Shotgun manufacture was reduced during the war to make way for the production of other items vital to the war effort, but production of the newly invented Empire model shotgun was continued by Greeners and used by the Royal Air Force. At peace time to improve matters further the price of all guns was increased by 50% and accessories by 100%. Early in 1922 came the news that the company had won a contract to supply 70.000 special weapons, required to rearm the Egyptian Ghaffir police force. During the Great depression the demand for the sporting guns following World War I was mostly satisfied by 1928. In 1929 Harry Greener died suddenly and the company was deprived of one of its most prolific inventors. Charles Edward Greener became chairman but trade was very slack for several years and the Depression of the early 1930s set in so badly that many firms went bankrupt. Greeners only just managed to survive that period and did so against the advice of their accountants once again. His greatest literary achievement though was ghost-writing his father’s book The Gun and its Developement which he started writing at seventeen years of age in 1879 when he joined the firm; it was published first in 1881. Another book, Causes of Decay in a British Industry, should have been more widely read by politicians and the captains of Bristish industry.
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01/ Members of the Greener family taken about 1910
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21/ Four Generations in the family business
01/ Drawing showing the extent of the factory from St. Mary’s Squere on the left, the side along Loveday Street to the corner of Bath Street on the right
The Fourth Generation Leyton Greener (1903–83)
01 Leyton Greener was the only son of Harry Greener and his wife Anne, although he had three sisters. On 1 September 1921, soon after leaving Repton School, he started his career in gunmaking. His first job in one of the workshops at the Greener factory in St Mary’s Row was to keep it clear of rubbish and to move the guns from one workshop to another in the course of their manufacture. In this way he learnt his way around the factory to the many departments, but more importantly he learnt the order in which operations on the various guns were undertaken. Harry offered Leyton a career in a silverculture, starting as an assistant to one of his personal friends. Harry cosidered that this occupation would be more rewarding and would provide a more enjoyable life generally. However Leyton decided to stay with the Greener Company and when he spoke to me just before his death, in 1983, he said he never regretted that decision. The directors were confident that the financial setbacks of the Great Depression would be overcome, but they predicted it would be an uphill struggle for many years. In May of 1929, when his father Harry died
suddenly his uncle Charles became chairman, Leyton was made a director of WW Greener Limited with a rise in salary to £250 per annum, almost as much as the skilled craftsmen were earning at that time. By the time Leyton returned to the St Mary’s Row the factory was already being prepared for wartime production. Unlike World War I, when a few shotguns were made for the military, the production of shotguns now ceased for the duration of hostilities. During the war aircraft parts were made, such as the tailwheel bearings for Seafires and wing-bolts for the folding wings of naival aircraft. Birmingham suffered considerable damage in the air raids by German bombers and Snow Hill station was one of their prime targets, situated only a few hundred yards from the Greener factory in St Mary’s Row. The Greener works was lucky to escape with only four direct hits by high explosive bombs, two of which failed to explode. About 60 HE bombs fell close to the factory during the war, but these only caused superficial damage. During the post-war years there was always enough demand for the Greener Empire gun which retailed for £21 for the non-ejectors, and £33 for the ejector model. By the time Leyton returned to the St Mary’s Row the factory was already being prepared for wartime production. Unlike World War I, when a few shotguns were made for the military, the production of shotguns now ceased for the duration of hostilities. On 1964 the company received a three-month notice to vacate the St Mary’s Row factory. The site was valued at £90.000 about the third of the value that the company estate agents considered a fair price on the open market. Government legislation continued to work against the company and the industry and when the Birmingham inner ring road was built this meant that my cousin Leyton Greener , who had no-one to pass the company on to, sold the business to Webleys in 1965 and retired. a rise in salary to £250 per annum, almost as much as the skilled craftsmen were earning at that time.
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01/ Leyton Greener 02/ Apprenticeship Certificate of one of the last apprentices to be trained before closure in 1965
(1965
The Webley Years
WW Greener had been split before the sale of the gunmaking part to Webleys. Tool-making and general engineering, formerly the old Pottiers part of the business, was sold to another company in the Midlands. The Museum, which was not included in the sale of WW Greener to Cope Allman, was sold separately by Leyton to an American. Much of the WW Greener collection of firearms, built up by WW Greener and his sons Harry and Charles, had been sold at auction through Sotheby’s of London, in 1960. Webleys rediced the number of models of Greener gun made to one type a basic utility single barrel shotgun and even Webleys stopped production of this in 1972.
25/ The Webley Years
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26/ Family tree
The Greene
27/ Family tree
er Family Tree
The Fifth Generation Graham Greener (1965)
What is career? A career is a combination of learning a particular set of skills for certain employment, then being employed in that job, industry, profession or vocation for a period of time and then leaving it for another career or retiring. Generally a career is what one does from leaving school to retirement but one can have several careers during one’s life.
After school - Navy In my own case after leaving school I joined the Royal Navy as an apprentice, qualified as a radio electrical engineer then worked on aircraft radio and radar systems. I then changed my career path to volunteer for a short service commission to become an aviator flying in Naval aircraft as an Observer. After a further six years I qualified as a diver and spent the next sis years training Naval Search and Rescue Divers. My last appointment in the Royal Navy was commanding the RN Aircrewman School one of the three naval flying training schools.
Career since leaving the Royal Navy I left the Royal Navy at the end of 1979 and joined Rank Pullin Controls, part of the Rank Organisation, in 1980 as Marine Sales Manager, although I only spent 9 months in that job. The reason for so short a stay was that I was responsible for a sales budget of about £3 million per annum - with the recession and the conservatives, under Margaret Thatcher, coming to power budgets for defence spending were put on hold, and about 95% of the sales orders I was expected to obtain were not forthcoming. Sales slumped to 10% of what we expected and I spent most of my time negotiating the company out of certain contracts they should never have been involved in anyway. It was a rather strange experience so I became disillusioned and left. The company also had a Military Sales
Manager and his orders suffered the same cuts, he later also left the company. In 1981 I joined Marconi Space and Defence Systems Limited, a company employing some 11,000 people mostly involved in making systems for the Ministry of Defence. I was employed as marketing Manager for one of the company’s divisions, the Naval and Ocean Engineering Division, at Frimley. Like the Rank Organisation no training was given to me for the job I was expected to do. My position involved promoting the division’s quasi military products to the UK Ministry of Defence and foreign governments. The equipment we made included underwater sonars for oil and gas exploration and diver communications. I had limited responsibilities and felt that it was not what I wanted to do so I left in 1982 and joined Kongsberg Limited. Kongsberg Limited (employing about 150 people) was the UK subsidiary of Norway’s largest defence manufacturer which employed a further 2,000 people. The UK company, based in Maidenhead promoted the products made by the parent company in Norway. I was employed as the Salesman for vessel traffic systems promoting radar based surveillance systems to enable ships to enter and leave ports in bad visibility. From nothing in 1982 we achieved sales of £1.5 million in the first year so in year 2 I was promoted to become European Sales Manager, still based in England but responsible for sales of vessel traffic systems in Europe as well. Having achieved sales in Europe in year 2 I was made Divisional Manager for all Marine Systems in year 1985 became Managing Director of the UK subsidiary which by that had become Norcontrol Limited and based at Aztec Industrial Estate near Bristol. By 1985 we had achieved 75% of the UK Market for vessel traffic systems and some 30% of the European market. In 1985 with a colleague in Norway we wrote a business plan for the company to go into the Air Traffic Control market. We had identified a future bottleneck in airport operations which could be overcome
by providing a radar based surveillance ground movement control system, using the technology we had for vessel traffic systems. My colleague in Norway put together a team of engineers and designers to develop the system and in 1990 we obtained contracts to supply London Heathrow and Oslo Fornebu airports with systems. This was followed by a further 15 airport contracts in UK and Norway so in 1991 we branched out into Europe obtaining contracts for 5 more airports in France, Italy and Poland. The following year we went world-wide and obtained contracts in USA, Australia and other countries. In 1994 I left the company to go into consultancy on my own and within a year was employing other consultants do work in Europe and the Caribbean before moving myself to the Middle east to set up companies in Abu Dhabi for main contractors in UK and Norway. In 1998 I retired to write my first book – The Greener Story. I have since written two more books on local history and am writing a fourth book. G N Greener 25th April 2011
01/ Graham Greener’s present workshop 02/ Inside the workshop
29/ Graham Greener
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Interview with
Ideas, suggestions for those who want to start their own business?
What role does advertising takes in your company? We do not advertise as we have absolutely no need. We get far too many orders by word of mouth and personal recommendations. Fending off advertisers is a major problem no it’s not really a problem but more of an inconvenience since magazines all want to write articles about our guns and then want us to advertise. Really we don’t want either because it may lead to more orders we cannot fulfil.
The company has always made the very best quality products – safe, reliable, robust and from 1855 to 1967 continued to invent new mechanisms to improve these products. We now develop new ways of reducing the costs of making these products.
You need a good product, you need to research your market to see if it is viable and will sell for enough money to make a profit. You need a good business plan. You need to know exactly where you want to be in five years and ten years and how to get there. You need capital/investment but you also need to make sure before you invest or get others to invest that you can get a return for the investment. You need to be a marketing man – being able to determine and match what the company can produce and balance this with what the market needs. You need to be an accountant. You need to be able to motivate and manage people if you are to grow. You have to work very very hard and you have to believe in what you are doing.
Why have you chosen to continue your family business?
What difficulties have you faced in your work?
Originally thought it would be a good hobby and it would be nice just to keep it going.
Physical – diving training is arduous. Quick thinking – in aviation mental arithmetic in navigating. Lack of money to invest and realise the true potential of a business.
Graham Greener What is the secret of your success?
Did you ever question what you could do instead? Often, but I took those opportunities which I fancied as they presented themselves. Your plans for the future. Do you think your children will continue what your ancestors had started? What my children do is up to them, if any want to become involved with the family business then I would probably not encourage them since the future of gun making is always clouded with unnecessary government paperwork and restrictions. People and sportsmen who use guns for recreational purposes such as hunting and game shooting, clay pigeons etc. are law abiding citizens. Criminals who use guns will get them to commit their unlawful acts no matter what governments do to restrict their purchase and use. These people get them illegally and probably always will but it just means it makes it more difficult for the legitimate users.
What would you do different if you could turn back time? Probably nothing I have had a great varied and exciting life. Competition with companies making same stuff? No there are other gunmakers, they have bigger overheads but we can make better product for same price. How beneficial is your strategic location? Birmingham is the centre of the English gun trade but this is not significant, we could be almost anywhere in England and still function in the same way. Career possibilities in your company?
What is special about your business? Extremely high skills of the people who make our products. It is bespoke.
Virtually none. When we all get too old we will probably close it down or sell it if someone wants to buy.
Have you changed your logo since the company’s inception? No, although we did buy another company in 1900 and with that came another registered trade mark. However, we no longer use that particular mark. Business now I was working in industry, I’ve been shooting and it was an interest of mine and I knew obviously that my family have been involved in guns and shooting. When left the Navy I went to work in a gun business in Birmingham started by the factory foreman of Greeners and accountant, they found a little company called Baylons, they were servicing all the old Greeener guns that came in from the collonies and wherever, and not realy making guns. Anyway I worked there for a while and it was quite interesting. Then I decided that I needed to get a proper job, and earn some money so I ended up wtih this Norwegian company, made a bit of money. In 1985 Webley’s decided to dispose of all the other gunmaking businesses that they bought. There were a lot of them: WC Scott, Lancasters, Beesley, Webleys itself and Greeners. All of these gunmaking names were inmated in one factory. All they were producing was airrifles and shotguns. The only Greener shotgun they were producing was the Control shotgun, which we were producing for the Egyptian policeforce. So we bought the company back in 1985. We bought the name, archives of name, archives of the company and the goodwill, plus some stock of single barrel shotguns Webleys had not sold. We were offered all these bits of rifle control shotguns aswell to carry on with production. We said no, we don’t want those, we just want the name. Because what we intended to do was to start making the best guns again, all the old shotguns. I made a new best quality shotgun in 1987 and this led to many
orders for similar guns at the very top end so from there we didn’t look back. I am still a Director and responsible for sales, repairs and administration. Although the gun business is very much smaller than it once was it does not have any debts, it has positive cash flow, the order book is five years long and so for the present closed, we just cannot increase production because there are not enough people with the right skills. We make the very best hand-made guns in England and they are the most expensive. Making money is not the objective, just having a good time. In terms of UK gunmakers we are probably making 10 guns a year, thats 5% percent of all the market of best guns. Boss are probably making 30 a year, Holland and Holland 70 a year, Westley Richards 20 year, about 20 guns in Scotland. Totally about 200 guns a years in England. WW Greener Ltd. and WW Greener (Sporting Guns) Ltd. one is Dolmut company which owns the name, archives, trade, marks and everything in value. Another company is the operating company, which makes the guns. This is because in case of an accident, if the gun injures the client, and we get sued. We say we can’t afford to pay you, you can have the company, and if they have WW Greener (Sporting Guns) Ltd. it goes to liquidation. There is no value in it. All the assets are in WW Greener Ltd. We can make another company for example WW Greener Assets Tripping Ltd. and then we make guns from that one. It may not stand up in law but it’s never been tested. It’s just an inventive safeguard. Customers The customer circle is more or less closed. If one of the rich people decides to that he wants a gun, we may consider it, but it depends on the work load and all the rest of it. We will consider making guns for people, but its by recomendation really. There are lots of cheaper second hand Greener gunshots which you can pick up quite cheaply. You can pay from tens to thousands of pounds in auctions depending on condition, type, how good it is, etc. The big thing with second hand guns is condition, that’s internal and external condition. The least important is external condition. The internal condition is vital, the collectors want it working. Then you got other things which can determine the value of the gun; how many were made.Is it rare or it is a common example, did it have a famous owner. Lots of our guns were owened by famous people. One of the guns that came
threw our hands recently was one of the guns built for the king of Afganistan Mohammed Nadir Shah. We made guns for the Car of Russia, King Olav of Norway he was our bes known customer, King George the VI and Prince Albert the cousin of Queen Victoria. We are pandering to the collector or sportsman, who are interested in guns or shooting or both. They are tending to be for their hobby, or their interest. Lots of them are collectors, and the collectors are shooters. One guy who lives near Cirencester is a collector but he shoots from every one of his guns, he’s a sportsman and a collector. He’s got about 50 guns, and he uses all of them. I collect guns, some examples are very rare. I shoot from around 6 of the guns. If the client orders a gun we get him to pay one third of the cost of the gun upfront. That puts a lot of people off - thats great. Because we got so many orders we can’t cope with them. It gives us a cash flow, that means that we can pay for labour and materials and then we got another third of payment when the gun goes to proof so that’s when it’s virtually half complete then we are being paid two thirds of the money so that will fund the next bit stocking all the rest of it. When the guy pays the final amount which is before delivery we’ve only got the short bit of materials and labour to fund until we get finally paid for the whole job. So by keeping ten to fifteen guns running, we’ve always got money coming in for new orders, the next stage payment, we’ve always got money at the end which provides the profit. That’s the way we fund the business, and we don’t have a cash flow problem, we have the full employment always, we’ve got money in the bank always, we’ve got a full order book always, but we can’t advertise because we’d then be oversubscribed. It’s a very nice position to be in, but you can’t expand it, you just can shut it down. Often customers write testimonials, being thankful for the great work. People are sending pictures with different examples of guns we made from different years. Some of them are pretty spectacular. Marketing We used to advertise before the present company a lot. The present company has advertised, but probably not since 2004. When we started up, we advertised in Shooting Times and most of the gun periodicals of the time, just to say we are going. In 1987 I made the Saint George gun for myself for hooting - the link to the past, the motive on the side was the St George and the dragon the English gun. The first such gun was made in 1907 as a showgun. So it seemed appropriate when we bought
the business back to make another one on sidelock design, that was appropriate for that time. I finished it in 5 years at 1992, it cost me £26.000, I used it for shooting. I posted a few ads, and an American guy made an offer for £56.000. He decided to order another 10 similar guns the same day. We completed 36 guns for this guy. He’s got a few friends, so they came along to see us and ordered guns. And we’ve got another client who orders guns. So before you know it your making so many best quality high end guns all worth around £56.000 plus. Sold them around £120.000, because they want precious metal inlaid, gol engraving, etc. If you can provide it they want it and we’ve got skills to do it. So if we advertised, we get enquires, if we get enquires, we might get orders if we get orders we might have to produce them. Would it be right to say to somebody, yes we can produce them, you can have it done in 20 years time? If any of them is going to be alive in 20 years time. There is a dilema. We can’t take these two guys, or any other team member of making guns to train people, because you loose half their work.By training somebody else they have to spend half of their time, taken out of the productive time. You can’t afford to train anybody. Lots of people have thought of creating schools for gunmakers. But from the government point, do we want to have people making guns? Guns are dangerous. Don’t forget that we are ruled by politicians, and politicians are pathetic idiots. We’ve got one trademark it’s the elephant which was created by WW Greener probably in the late 1860’s. We’ve got another trademark but we don’t use it, its crossed flags with rifle. The elephant was chosen because of hunting in India. The original big game hunters Samuelsen, Baker all these sorts of people hunted in Africa but a lot in India as well. Used to use big bore elephant guns, and by big bore I mean a big bore. Theese would be four bores, eight bores. Which are five balls, this is the only way of stopping the elephant. You kill it with one of the balls, it’s got to penetrate. That’s what people did in those days, they killed things and they still do. One of our customers lives up the road, and he’s got a big building about the size of my house. He says: “ I think there’s just two types of goat left in the world that this chap hasn’t shot”. Thats turn him on. That’s his hobby. He is very rich, we make guns for him. That’s our giant tower, the very rich people. They buy our guns at £50.000-£70.000 because they can, and nobody else can. The font that we mostly use mostly for letters is Times New Roman. That’s traditional, the colour obviously is green for Greeners. We are very traditional. When I was in industry, I went to have a look
at “JAG” cause I was buying the new company car. It just had to be the same as the Rolls Royce, I looked at it as well as you do. Well I considered it to be very old fashioned, and had to mention it. I said: “It looks very old fashioned”. He said: “We like to call it traditional, Sir.” We are using the logo on guns and accesories. Employees The company’s policy for employees is quite simple, that everybody works for themselves. That way we don’t have any liability for pensions. They are called selfcontracted. It’s like a lot things in our days, the last thing you want in our days is employees. That should be anybody’s policy, if you look at small businesses they don’t want to employ anybody, because if you employ somebody you’ve got to pay them wages, if they are sick you’ve got to pay them, if the women are pregnant you’ve got to pay them for bloody years. Who wants the people like that? This is life. Man has been exploiting man for centuries, and they will continue to do so and entrepreneurs are trying to get the best out of what they can for the cheapest amount of money. We’ve always looked after our emplyees, we always paid them, but it’s better to have a subcontractor. It is traditional in the guntrade that everybody gets paid on friday. We have different prices for different jobs. A chap is getting a £1000 a week, but he’s doing other orders in parallel. A stocker gets a net around £40.000 per year, because he’s highly skilled. All the craftsmen’s payment varies. The best people cost a little more. We have a meeting with employees once a month when I work in Birmingham, to discuss what to do. They make the guns, and I make the sales. We have a meeting once a year, it’s quite simple you go through the accounts, you point the auditors, any other business, or you discuss where you gonna go, max for a couple of hours. All of the craftsmen been working in the company since 1985. We used just diferent outworkers. We got two workshops at the moment, which could house two people each, but we got two in one and one in the other. All the people who do the specialist outwork, they are all in their own letting workshop all over the country. It’s the same wherever you go now. The apprenticeship is 7 years. There are 4 apprentices in the country. My business now employs two full time master gunmakers and a team of specialist outworkers. One gunmaker who was trained at Churchills, who was another big gunmaker and has recently been resurected by somebody else but not the original Churchill people.
I got to get one of the original apprentices, that went through the Greener factory in 1965 also a guy who is making accesories for the guntrade so he’s making all the stuff that you put in the guncase if you want to sell a guncase as a piece of kit. Decided I was making guns, put a lot together, we had the name Greener, which is well known around the world why not get it going again. So that’s what we do as a hobby. We also have a team of 12 outworkers, it’s like a lot of these that I call cottage industries. If you look at the car manufacture, you got big names but they rely on getting autometed parts from all over the place. Gunmaking is the same, if we need the spring-maker we get our springs from York, we got a barrel-maker down in Bournmouth, we got a stocker he’s in Coventry, another is in London. The engravers we got two in Wales, one in the Midlands we got one in Swindon. The best engraver in the world is in Swindon, he engraves other people’s guns but he engraves ours the very best ones. The barrel blacker comes from Radstock just down the road. We have just the very high skilled team of people. If you look at the English gunmaking now today, there isn’t a demand, because of the cheap foreign imports. What you have to look at in business is where you can get your business done for the cheapest amount of money. At the moment it has to be China or India. So that’s why the industry has gone there. When the standard living of those people rises to a certain level, then they will find the same problems that we have here. We had those waves of industrialisation sweeping through countries of the world. It started in England, then it went to Europe, America, So called Asian Tigers: Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong and South Korea. The only difference from West countries was that a lot of businesses were owned by foreigners, which used a cheap labour power working for almost nothing. Most of the owners treated their workers dreadfully. The reason that we can keep going is because we are at the top end. We got rid of the rifle control shotgun, because what you can’t do in this country anymore is go for the massed produced that I call rubbish. It’s not that we ever produced rubbish, but you can’t mass produce a gun, which is a rifle control shotgun, based on 1920’s technology. The reason that we can keep going is because we are at the top end. Brazil can produce and sell a single barrel shotgun of a similar type that we are using for £50. If you want to compete with that, because they’ve got low production costs, and they’ve got low production costs because they pay their workers ‘peanuts’.
So the secret of success now is not necceserelly you have the best design, but is whether you can get it produced for the cheapest price. If the unit labour cost is low, it means that you can then keep your price down. You’ve got labour and material. The material cost is going up at the moment, which is metal and wood. The reason is that the world is running out of resources. Where do you go once you’ve saturated the market? Every empire rises and falls, we were on the way down. However you can extend the life of it by going up market. Because if you going up market, and make the very best, there will always be people out there who are willing to pay more for something. Why is that? They pay more because they can. And they know that if they get one of our guns nobody else can have them, because they can’t afford them. Our guns are now starting from about £50.000 for a gun. That’s why we are not competing with people in Brazil and slowing down. It is far better for us to make one gun and sell it for £50.000 than to make 100 and sell them for £50 each. It takes about two and a half years to make a gun. We are making about 10 guns a year. Half the cost is material. A piece of best quality cercasian woolnut wood for a gun costs about £1000. For barrels you start with a piece of material, which is the best forged, you need to do a hole through it, then you have to refine it, bore it, hole it smooth it, shape it, etc. Then you have to put two barrels together, put lumps, or fix them afterwards, then you have to get the action, and get the keyways cutting it for various components to go in. Then we make different components to go in and they are from spring steel. Once you’ve made the gun and fitted all together, you’ve got to get it proof tested, to make shure it’s gonna withstand. Theres no guarantee that it will, and we have to start again, what is very expensive. Then you fit the wood on the forend and the wood on the stock, and then you get it engraved. When you got it engraved you get it hardened, because the action is made from the mild steel, and the mild steel is fairly soft, as middles go, so hardening, that means you cooking it in the oven with charcoal, and some of the charcoal is infused into the metal making the metal hard. But the problem is that process actualy twists things, so you may have to free things off, otherwise it might not work properly. So it’s a very complicated business with a laborious task. There are few gunmaking businesses left in England. Purdey’s they make the very nice guns, is owened buy Gunhill. Holland and Holland that’s biggish is owned by Channel, both have their own factories and workshops. Boss got a small workshop and is owned by
22/04/10 At Graham’s private house
33/ Interview with Graham Greener
an American, and he’s trying to sell it. Churchill’s don’t make guns anymore, they just import guns from Italy and just put their name on. Westley Richards is owned by English, they are not competitors of ours. William Powell guns is owned by English, but not english. We don’t have any competitors. You can say it’s rise and fall of the family business over the five generations.
35/ Awards
1855 Paris Exhibition 12 bore percussion muzzle loading shotgun