BSA Guns

Case Study


BSA Guns Case Study

The Company

BSA Guns is a long established manufacturing company based in Birmingham, UK.

It was initially founded in 1861 and is famous for the Lee Enfield .303 rifle, of which 1.25m were manufactured during World War Two. Following the war, the company has concentrated on air rifle manufacture, which is still its core business.

In 1986 it was acquired and became part of the Gamo Group, a Spanish air rifle manufacturer. In addition to producing air guns, the business also supplies a range of accessories and consumables.

The Challenge

Having had a long history of producing armaments, BSA Guns has an extremely strong brand name in the UK, but had poor penetration into export markets.

In contrast, Gamo’s brand was less known in the UK, but it has a far greater global reach and penetration. The businesses also differ in their product offerings, where Gamo has only ever manufactured spring guns, BSA Guns have manufactured both spring and air powered PCP guns.

After the takeover, manufacturing was rationalised, with all spring guns being manufactured in Gamo’s Spanish facility and all PCP guns manufactured at the BSA Guns site. Given the history and varying competences, the key challenge for the business was to determine how these two brand names could grow profitably side by side, in both the UK and worldwide markets.


To initiate the process the Managing Director commissioned a strategic review and then a marketing study focused on the UK market.

The key outputs from the interventions were as follows.


A review of the routes to market and market pricing


Clear definition of the basis on which the company would compete in each of the three key sectors


Design changes (higher and lower specifications) to accommodate the end user requirements for each price point, in each of the sectors