Acusport is nearing the end of its journey to its final resting place with United Sporting Companies and Ellett Brothers. United Sporting Companies now owns Ellett Brothers, Jerry’s Sport Center and Acusport which are all distributors of firearms and related goods. After facing many tumultuous, roller-coaster years like all of us in the firearm industry coupled with a fast return to normalcy, Acusport eventually filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

Ellett Brothers, a subsidiary of United Sporting Companies, signed an asset purchase agreement which allowed them to take on the distribution capabilities of Acusport and their IT assets as well without assuming any of their debt. This was announced to the public in early May this year.

Now fast forward to June 29th. The Bellefontaine Examiner, a hometown newspaper for Bellefontaine, Ohio where Acusport is from broke the news that a U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge approved the sale of Acusport to Ellett Brothers. Specifically, Judge John E. Hoffman Jr. cleared the way for Acusport to be sold to Ellett Brothers, and effectively United Sporting Companies, to the tune of $7.35 million. As a part of that agreement, Acusport will also pay out $400K in expense reimbursements and a $300K break up fee. In this final agreement, Ellett Brothers reserves the right to use the Acusport name, if they so desire.

Whenever companies are faced with the decision to file bankruptcy it can be a tremendously difficult path to travel. This can be excruciatingly true for the hundreds of employees involved. Thankfully, there have been over 100 of the former Acusport employees who will be hired on at Ellett Brothers. Even more prominent figures from Acusport have found homes elsewhere. John Flanagan, formerly the Chief Financial Officer for Acusport, has been hired on as the new CFO for Remington Outdoor Company (ROC).

Amidst everything that has been going on the CEO of United Sporting Companies, Brad Johnson, has been rather quiet. This is not a knock on him. He likely has been overwhelmingly busy. With the sale of Acusport finalizing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court he shared these words on July 10th about the acquisition of Acusport into the United Sporting Companies’ family of brands:

United Sporting Companies is pleased to have completed the acquisition of the state of the art distribution and IT assets of AcuSport. Further, we are delighted that we were able to retain and provide employment to over 100 of AcuSport’s former employees. We believe this purchase synergistically combines the best of AcuSport and United Sporting Companies to create the industry’s leading shooting sports distribution company.

At this time, United Sporting Companies is anticipating that shipments from their Utah distribution facility will resume in July while the Ohio facility should do the same by fall 2018.