As someone who works in public relations, I scoured through the press release to analyze it. I've had to write several of these types of releases myself for my company as we are constantly in this situation.

Anyway, my conclusion, for what it's worth is that you'll see little to no change in the quality and innovative design by T/C. In fact, I think S&W will be using it to their advantage to develop co-branded rifles and MLs in the future. They want Greg Ritz (spel) and his knowledge of building quality rifles to stay around otherwise they wouldn't have named him president right after they announced this. Its been my experience that if they plan on getting rid of somebody just to buy the company itself, they won't make a move like this.

In fact the release essentiallysays they plan to use the T/C knowledge with their manufacturing processes/size to create a quality rifle more efficiently (read this as more cheaply for them).

As for customer service and support, the release doesn't really speak to that, so who knows. Most companies consider something like this, though when they buy somebody. There may be a honeymoon period but don't expect it to last if S&W isn't that good about it now. T/C will be in charge of making the rifle but not how its delivered to the customer in all likelihood. Seems like you can't have your cake and eat it too in today's world.