Estes Industries was founded in 1958 by Vern and Gleda Estes in Denver, CO. While not the first
model rocket company, it was the first commercially successful model rocket company, and remains
the largest. In 1961 the Estes family moved the company to Penrose, CO, where it grew rapidly.
In 1969 it was sold to Damon Scientific, who also acquired Centuri Engineering around 1971.
Subsequently the Centuri brand was wound down in 1983.
In 2010, Estes was again sold to Hobbico of Champaign, IL, the owner of Tower Hobbies and a major distributor of RC and hobby products. In January 2018, Hobbico declared bankruptcy and shortly thereafter indicated that it would run out of operating cash in ~60 days and thus would liquidate its assets. Ultimately, Estes was sold in March 2018 to Estes Industries LLC, a group headed by the John Langford family, who have been active in both sport rocketry and commercial aerospace.
The corporate history of Estes and the companies that have been combined with it is complicated. Damon acquired Estes in 1969, which was publicly acknowledged in the Estes Model Rocket News almost immediately. In 1971, Damon also acquired the much smaller Centuri Engineering run by Lee Piester of Phoenix, AZ. Centuri itself had previously acquired Enerjet Inc. and Coaster, which were the leading developers of higher power E/F class composite and black powder motors, respectively.
The Centuri acquisition by Damon was not publicly disclosed at the time; it was finally acknowledged at the manufacturer's forum at the PITCON-1972 rocketry convention by Larry Brown, who said that Damon was trying to avoid perceptions that Centuri was the same company as Estes, and that the Centuri catalogs and marketing materials didn't mention being a division of Damon for that reason. The acquisition had apparently happened around June 1971.
Immediately before its acquisition by Damon, Centuri had a division called Enerjet, resulting from its prior acquisition of Enerjet, Inc. It was also selling the large black powder Mini-Max motor line that was derived from another previous acquisition of Coaster. Enerjet was distinguished by offering composite propellant motors in E20, F54 and F67 types, along with larger kits suitable for those motors. Today they would be called mid-power, but in 1971 they were the most powerful model rocket motors in existence. Around 1971-1972 Enerjet actually issued a completely separate glossy catalog; in the mid 1970s the Enerjet line was included in the Centuri catalog. The Enerjet brand went to Damon with Centuri, so the trademarks and designs are now owned by Estes, but they have made little appearance since the Centuri/Enerjet line was terminated in 1983.
According to Funding Universe, Estes and Centuri operations were merged in 1976, though the Centuri brand would continue until 1983. In 1981, Damon moved its previously owned Hi-Flier kite operations to Penrose and placed them under the Estes organization. In 1982, Estes reached the 200 million mark on motors sold, and revenues were $8M. Damon operated the combined Estes/Centuri/HiFlier company until a hostile takeover of Damon caused Estes to be sold to TCW Capital Partners in 1990, at which time Barry Tunick became president of Estes. Tunick was reported to have never previously flown a model rocket and was principally known for marketing of the Cabbage Patch dolls at Coleco/Hasbro. Estes revenue at the time of the sale to TCW was reported to be $15M annually, with 200 employees.
In 1994, TCW sold Estes to Hobby Products; the surviving entity was called Centuri Corporation. In 1996, Hobby Products separately acquired the assets of Cox Products of Corona, CA, a model airplane manufacturer dating back to 1945, and merged it into Centuri Corporation, moving Cox operations to Penrose. Revenues for 1997 reached $35M, likely an all time high.
In 2002, the combined entity was sold again for $15M to Barry Tunick, and was renamed to Estes-Cox Corporation.
On January 15, 2010, Estes-Cox was sold again to Hobbico for an undisclosed sum; the name continued to be Estes-Cox Corporation. The use of "undisclosed sum" indicates that disclosure of the price would either be competition sensitive (not the case since Estes was the only major player in the market), or be negative news. Thus we can infer that the sale price was likely not especially favorable for the seller. Barry Tunick left Estes at that time.
The assets acquired by Hobbico included most or all of the Estes, Centuri and Cox intellectual property, as legacy trademarks from all three brands were subsequently used. Examples include Centuri kit re-issues (Long Tom, large scale Little Joe II), a new kit design called the "Centuri", and some Cox branded RC planes/drones.
Most recently, in January 2018 Hobbico declared bankruptcy, and in late March, Estes was sold to a private group called "Estes Industries LLC" controlled by the John Langford family. Details are below.
- 1958 - Estes founded in Denver, CO by Vern and Gleda Estes
- 1961 - Estes Industries moved to Penrose, CO.
- 1961 - Centuri Engineering founded by Lee Piester in Phoenix, AZ
- 1969 - Estes acquired by Damon Corporation of Needham, MA
- 1971 - Damon covertly acquires Centuri Engineering
- 1976 - Centuri operations merged into Penrose, Centuri Phoenix office closes
- 1981 - Hi-Flier Kites operations merged into Penrose
- 1982 - Revenue $8M
- 1983 - Sales under Centuri brand cease
- 1989 - Hostile takeover of Damon, hobby division divestiture starts
- 1990 - Estes sold to Trust Corp of the West (TCW) Capital Partners
- 1990 - Revenue $15M
- 1991 - Quest Aerospace founded by former Centuri staff
- 1994 - Estes sold to Hobby Products. Corporate name changes to Centuri Corporation.
- 1996 - Hobby Products acquires Cox Products, merges operation into Estes
- 1996 - Toy Biz of NY acquires Quest Aerospace
- 1997 - Estes sues Toy Biz over motor technology trade secrets
- 1997 - Revenue $35M
- 1999 - Brush fire causes $1M damage at Penrose plant
- 2002 - Estes sold to Barry Tunick for $15M, corporate name changes to Estes-Cox Corporation.
- 2010 - Estes-Cox Corp. sold to Hobbico for undisclosed sum.
- 2016 - Revenue $13.9M
- 2017 - Revenue $11.3M
- 2018 - Hobbico collapses, Estes operation sold to Langford group for $7M
In the 1970s, Damon also acquired the Vashon line of "coldpower" gas propelled rockets. At first, they appeared in the Estes catalog with the gas propulsion units, then as "coldpower convertible" versions that could also use a regular Estes black powder motor, and finally one or two (e.g. Teros) lived on in a new incarnation as a regular solid propellant based kit. Apart from that, the Vashon trademarks disappeared from Estes usage.
NCR is a boutique mid-power company originally owned by Matt Steele, Chris Pearon, and Dan Kafun. Later, from 1996-1999 (source: northcoastrocketry.com) Estes held manufacturing rights to North Coast Rocketry (NCR) products.
The product line included some composite motors (OEM'd from Aerotech) and various mid-power kits, including an RC rocket glider. Matt Steele went to Penrose and worked for Estes for a time. Estes subsequently discontinued the NCR kits, though the Aerotech-made E/F/G motors remained available for use in the Estes-designed PSII kit series. Sometime after 1999 (check date with Matt), Estes-Cox sold the NCR name and at least some IPR back to Matt Steele, and NCR has resumed sales of its own line of kits, now owned just by Matt Steele. As of 2018, the Estes-branded composite motors have been discontinued by Estes.
Besides the recycling of old kit names, there were a few technology holdovers from the merged-in companies.
Probably the most obvious was the persistent use by Estes of the "BT-56" tube size and associated plastic parts, a size that was never in the Estes line before the mergers. It turns out the BT-56 is essentially identical to the Centuri ST-13 tube size. The reason for its continuance is not the tube size, but the fact that Centuri had good plastic injection mold tooling for a quad fin unit (Challenger II), nose cone, and egg capsule in that size, and perhaps an inventory of already molded parts. The high cost of the tooling made it far cheaper to issue a BT-56 sized kit (tubes are inexpensive in any size) than to create new plastics tooling in the Estes standard BT-55 size.
Estes has been sold once again following the Hobbico bankruptcy in January 2018, triggered after a 33% sales decline from 2016 to 2017 left it unable to service its ~$175M debt. Terms used in some of the filings strongly suggest that key unpaid suppliers cut off shipments, leaving Hobbico unable to operate. From other numbers that came out in the Chapter 11 filings (sales plummeted from $170M to ~$110M), it looks as if Hobbico should have taken bankruptcy much earlier than it did.
It was also announced in 2017 that Hobbico is under investigation by the US Dept. of Labor for failing to fund the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) at the start of 2017. Defaulting on a mandatory obligation to employees is a key indicator of insufficient working capital, and probably should have results in an immediate bankruptcy filing. As it was, the main response at the beginning of 2017 was the ouster of the Hobbico CEO.
At a bankruptcy auction on Mar 28, 2018, most subsidiaries of Hobbico were sold for $18.8M to Horizon Hobby - the other large hobby distributor in the US - but notably the offer did not include Estes. Pre-auction news that Estes wasn't included in the main bid caused anxiety on rocketry social media since it created a perceived threat that Estes could cease operations.
However, with less advance publicity, Estes-Cox was sold at the same time for $7M to an entity officially known as "Estes Industries LLC" - also referred to as "the Langford Group" in court documents. The sale was approved on April 2, 2018 by the bankruptcy judge. The price went up from the $6M stalking horse value, so it looks like at least one other bid was received, though the identity of the bidder has not emerged.
It was reliably reported to me privately near the time of the Hobbico bankruptcy sale that Estes had been on the market since April 2017.
Public documents show that "Estes Industries LLC" is a Delaware LLC listing Robert Ellis Langford as manager. Robert Ellis Langford is the son of John Langford, a successful aerospace entrepreneur who has been involved in historically significant man-powered flights, and later sold a company to Boeing. John has also been an international NAR/FAI rocketry competitor for many years.
The Chapter 11 filings revealed some recent sales data. Estes had revenues of $13.9M in 2016 and $11.3M in 2017 (19% YoY decline) and assets of ~$7M, including roughly $2.5M each of finished inventory and "manufacturing supplies" (parts), and the Penrose CO facility.
Those financial results are very poor, due both to declining hobby sales in general and mismanagement by the owners of Hobbico. Estes did much better than other parts of Hobbico, but a 19% annual sales decline is still catastrophic.
Estes is the last remaining USA based maker of black powder based model rocket motors. All others that have been active in the last 40 years are gone: FSI, MPC, AVI, Centuri and Quest. All but Estes and Quest are out of business; Quest having opted to switch propellant types. Quest had BP motor offshore sourcing first from Germany and then China before giving up on BP and converting to composite propellant. Estes, which does nearly all parts/kit manufacturing in China, concluded some time ago that they should not shift their BP motor production, and so it remains in Penrose CO where it has been for over 50 years.
There are regulatory and technical reasons favoring composite motors, so it's certainly possible that the new owners of Estes may decide to switch to composite propellant. If that were to happen, it could bring about the end of 13mm motors, with a number of kits going away and ripple effects in the parts lineup.
There would be real hurdles if the new owners wanted to move the BP motor making center, including money and timeline to get regulatory approval for a manufacturing operation involving significant quantities of low explosives. Statements from Estes Industries LLC indicate strongly that operations will remain in Penrose.
In the kit collecting sub-hobby it's well known that Estes kit skill level ratings have been wildly inconsistent over time. The skill level rating system was created in the 1970s and continues to the present, punctuated by various revisions and re-classification of various kits and types of kits, with another major redesign taking place in 2017. There are thus numerous instances of kits appearing in identical form that carry different skill levels.
In most cases, a skill level change on a kit of the same design does not indicate a change in the parts bill of materials for the kit. You do have to watch out for the following situations:
- Kit names are sometimes re-issued with completely different designs (Ranger, Sizzler, etc.), so the new skill level will have no relation to the previous model of that name.
- Kits reissued after a gap in production may come back with different parts or even a partial redesign (e.g. Saturn V, Interceptor) Sometimes this will be indicated by a minor name change (Trident II). In a few cases the design changes could potentially justify a skill level change.
The skill level system is nearly unique to model rocketry. In most other craftsmanship hobbies, indications of difficulty are usually textual ("beginner", "intermediate", "advanced"). This is true in model railroading, ships, RC cars, drones, and others. In many of these genres, kits reach levels of difficulty never seen in model rocketry, so it's unclear why model rocketry has to have such ratings.
Bob Sanford reported on TRF that Dane Boles of Estes told him that the skill level system was invented in the 1970s purely as a marketing maneuver during a time of declining sales. The idea was to encourage customers to buy more kits by going through the progression of skill levels. It's not clear if this was effective, and it would not have been easy in those days to design a valid way of measuring its value. It probably is still not easy because of the difficulty of segmenting the product packaging, advertising deliveries and measuring responses in a small demographic. Nonetheless, the skill level system continued after the Hobbico acquisition, and was recently extended to non-rocket products (citation needed).
Classic Estes rocketry involved black powder motors in 1/4A through D types. The D motor was introduced around 1971, and it was a long time before an Estes branded E or higher motor appeared. Centuri had made E and F type "Mini-Max" black powder motors, but these were discontinued when the Enerjet composite line appeared, and never re-appeared. Estes did have the 1/100 Saturn V model, which was underpowered with a single D, but the sales volume was never there to support making a larger motor for it. They were frequently flown with an Enerjet E while those were available, and later with Aerotech E30s. In the 1980s and 1990s up to the NCR acquisition, Estes once again sold nothing above a D motor, and didn't make any kits that warranted more power. Other kits that would have been suitable for E/F power disappeared with the end of the Enerjet line.
With the NCR acquisition, Estes simultaneously went back into the mid-power kit and motor businesses. But there were various obstacles such as the mid-power kits being physically too large for the shelf space allocated to model rockets in retailers, higher kit prices seen as discouraging sales, and the fact that Estes had to OEM the motors, greatly cutting the gross profit on the key consumable.
Post-acquisition Estes/NCR kits are scarce and thinly documented, and it's likely they contain parts not otherwise indexed under the Estes product line. That said, it is also pretty likely that the NCR designs were based on LOC parts.
The end result of the NCR saga was that Estes decided to wind down the NCR business (selling some rights back to the original owner) and start its own line of kits coupled with new design 29mm E16 and F15 type black powder motors. In theory this change would allow Estes to get their accustomed gross margins on the motors. The new kits had to be smaller and lighter (and cheaper) than their NCR predecessors due to the low thrust of the 29mm BP motors. This effort has hit some challenges; circa 2016 Estes had to stop using plywood fins due to unavailability of USA toy-rated non-toxic plywood in China. As of early 2018 the original PSII line (with plywood fins) has been discontinued, replaced by a "PSII E2X" line with either balsa or molded plastic fins.
We have a good database of original series PSII parts, and next to nothing at all on the newer PSII E2X parts, which all have fallen into the era of "no specs or part numbers publicly available".
Another development in the early 2000s timeframe was the introduction of 24mm E9 and E12 black powder motor types. These were a little under 30 N-sec - not very close to a full 40 N-sec E motor. Their application in the product line was more like a "D+" that could add 40% altitude to a D flight. The E9's were beset by a high blowout rate in one of the early production runs. Supposedly this was tracked down to a large shipment that sat too long in the sun in Arizona, but some level of failures has continued. There's been speculation on rocketeer social media that the E9 may be dropped soon, amid commentary that it won't really be missed. This will probably have no impact on what parts and kits are made, as long as the E12 remains in production. If both the E9 and E12 go away, then some kits might be dropped.
Because of the relatively low volumes, both the 29mm motors and PSII kits are made in small batches spaced out at long intervals (months), causing lumpy availability and possible undocumented parts changes. With the recent demise of Hobbico and transfer of Estes to another organization, there isn't much to go on regarding whether the mid-power product line will continue. If it doesn't, cataloging the PSII E2X line will be hard.