Skip to main content
Help Center Community Shop

why,when ruger?

kms1961
hello all when did ruger drop the s off the logo? and why did they?
Thanks kevin
0

Comments

6 comments

Date Votes
  • rufe-snow
    If none of our folks can help you, you might consider posting to the Ruger Forum site.
    0
  • EVILDR235
    I do know everybody always called the guns Ruger.Nobody called them Sturm Ruger.When all the original owners sold their stock in the company,the new owners dropped the Sturm name from the company.That was about 5 years ago.Some Ruger items still had the Sturm Ruger logo after the take over by the new owners.

    EvilDr235
    0
  • fideau
    Bill Ruger started the company with his friend Alex Sturm in 1949. Sturm was the one with money, Ruger with the ideas. Sturm was an artist, he made the Phoenix SR logo, in red. He died after only a couple of years, but Ruger kept the logo, only making it black when Sturm died.
    Bill Ruger died couple of years or so ago. Don't know about any logo changes but not up on Rugers lately.
    0
  • Txs
    They officially made the change 5-6 years ago, but continued to ship out guns with Sturm marked grip panels from stock on hand.
    0
  • 3404speed
    The logo has changed but the firearms manuals still say Sturm, Ruger & Co.
    0
  • beantownshootah
    Talk about resurrecting an old thread. . .the original question here was asked in 2011!

    quote:hello all when did ruger drop the s off the logo? and why did they?To answer, and to respond to some comments above, you have to realize there is a difference between a. what the company LOGO looks like, b. what the ACTUAL name of the company is, and c. how the public knows the company.

    In this case, the official name of the COMPANY (ie for legal purposes) has always been, and is still "Sturm Ruger & Co, Inc". That's how the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and all legal documents refer to the company that way.

    But that said, the company and its guns have usually been known to the public as just "Ruger" even going back to the time when Bill Ruger was alive (he died in 2002). Most people today now know the company as only "Ruger", and call the guns by that name. Many shooters today weren't even involved in shooting while Bill Ruger was alive.

    It seems plain that Ruger Inc, which is a publically traded company and beholden to its shareholders (ie bottom line first) has responded to this public perception by (re)branding all its merchandise, guns, and other corporate products with just "Ruger". If you look at the Ruger website, everything is listed as "Ruger-tm". From a corporate "branding" sense, that makes sense; they want the products to be consistently labelled as the public knows them, to help build/maintain brand identity.

    So along those lines, Ruger Inc undoubtedly took the "S" off the logo as part of this corporate branding policy. The change happened in late 2007 or early 2008, though as mentioned, Ruger still put out product with the SR logo on it for several years after that while using up all old stock. I can't say why the change happened at EXACTLY that time, only that there was a well-noted change in the direction/operation of the company after Bill Ruger's death, due to new management, and this was part of it.

    Bill Ruger himself never would have permitted this change during his lifetime. His friend and artist Alex Sturm bankrolled the original Ruger company, designed the original red Ruger Eagle (some say its a phoenix) logo, and there would not have been a "Ruger" without him. Bill Ruger deliberately made Sturm's name first when he named the company, and after Sturm died in 1951 (he was only 28 years old!), Ruger had the logo changed to black to honor his friend.
    0

Please sign in to leave a comment.

Recent Activity