One needs to understand that maker's name is about brand value and that original quality grade is about how much time/money the maker put into the gun. Surely we all understand that the brand has an impact on retail price and that quality grade of the product has an impact. Maker's name, maker's location, and quality are not synonomus. The Brit trade was a trade indeed. Technology, material, and skill tended to be mobile. What any maker needed was available from another shop for a price. Note that most shops were owned or supervised by master makers; masters knew who did what work, how good they did it, and what prices they charged. It is entireley clear that most, if not all, shops (reguardless of location) were perfectly capable of delivering a gun of original quality grade equal to any comparison. The issue was not capability, rather, opportunity. Opportunity came in the form of a commission; basically nobody could afford to stock "off the peg" best quality guns. Since best quality guns were expensive, no matter who made them, commissions tended to come from society groups that were both more affluent and more inclined to shooting as entertainment. Some society groups were fairly specific as to which gunmakers should be patronized.
From the gunmaker's point of view, it was about making the best living possible. A machinist in Birmingham might very well make more money that a store front in London. A top worker might well profit most by lower cost living in Birmingham while accepting work from the London shops as available and from Birmingham and provencial shops as fill-in (rail connections were quick and sure by the time frame under discussion). Shops did as much work with in-house workers as possible. But, they used out-workers as needed for specific skills and for overflow. The gun trade had all the usual business problems and used all the usual techniques to solve those problems.
I do not believe that London had a lock on design, materials, skill, or handling. But, Boss, H&H, Purdey, and Woodward did succeed in elevating their brand value in the current market. The second level of brand value contains makers from many locations, as well as London and Birmingham.
