Gun Pricing ??

Gun Pricing

I don't have the complete picture, since I haven't studied or thought about it for a while.
Under Clinton they stopped the gun manufacturer to retailer direct sales.
Then they added surcharges on shipping ammo and cut out the Post Office from handling some of it.
Big Brown Investors got the Government to t make the Post Office a for profit no government agency. Their idea and it has worked to skim off the items that made the money and kept the Post Office solvent.
And they raised rates.
Now the Firearms Manufacturers are not about making guns but making for Wall Street , or rather that is Wall Street's concern.Margins are much higher at their demand.
They don't sell direct unless you are buying for Walmart and Big Boxes.
So the little guy was squeezed both ways. I always bought at a couple of gun shops that were in Folks garages or small store front and prices were hugely better.
So it is not market drive or customer demand determing pricing/profits.
It is top down economics or tinkle down.
I was pleased if I cleared 4% net for the year. I can't imagine the 20% demanded by Wall Street.
 
Larger suppliers and retailers get discounts for buying in volume. I have some friends who are in the business and they will get offers similar to this. For every 10 Benelli Super Blackhawks or M-2's you purchase you get 5 Benelli Nova's thrown in free. But they wouldn't even talk to them until they committed to buying at least $50,000 in Benelli products. You gotta have money to make money.

Small shops simply cannot compete price wise on the same merchandise sold by bigger stores. The small guys have to find a niche for selling less popular guns that aren't bought in large numbers by the big guys.

Many of the smaller guys make a good business buying, trading and selling mostly used guns. They keep a few new guns and will order one for a customer occasionally. If you know what you're doing the profit margins on used guns is actually higher than on new. But you can't be like a lot of pawn shops and ask insane prices. It is possible to make a decent profit and still sell at a fair price.
 
Thanks for all the insight, I agree with most of what has been brought up. It has been a very frustrating thing to deal with, mostly just recently. I am trying to expand my operation, and now I've had to deal with this problem more frequently.

I keep fair prices and take pride in being able to beat prices on a lot of things, as this isn't my main source of income and I like doing it. I was just baffled when a customer (one of my best and frequent customers) asked me to price a gun for him, and came back with the "I saw it at this place online for $XXX shipped", which ended up being about $75 cheaper than I can even get it from any of my wholesalers, and then he found out he doesn't have to pay sales taxes on it on top of that.

I stick to my values of fair prices and good service and I'm constantly trying to grow my selection and inventory. I value the feedback from everyone and will keep an open eye and ear. I guess I will just have to live with the Giant Online retailers always undercutting small guys, and keep pushing forward.
 
Where you can beat the big guys is to carry things that they won't - holsters, certain ammo, certain reloading supplies - especially if there's a niche group where you are - cay BPCR shooters or something like that. Find out about them, ask them what they would like to see and bring some in. In the opposite vein, there's no sense in bringing in a lot of turkey hunting stuff if there's no turkey to hunt in your area.
 
I'm a terrible business man so this may not help. You say you have a gun shop and can't compete with that Texas retailer. Well gun shop's trying to make a living selling gun are up against the wall unless you can either buy in volume of specialize in truly expensive gun's. So I think what I would do is sell reloading supply's and excessorie's. Can't see where it's worth while to but heads with a lot bigger guy than yourself. What you should sell is thing's that move well in your area and for gun's I think I'd get some speciality guns or caliber's. You have to offer more than gun's, no money in them unless you move a truckload every month.
 
OP,

Thanks for posting. I often daydream about opening a gun shop. Talking to people about guns and helping them make choices sounds like a wonderful job... but it's clearly not that simple.

On that vein, you'll never compete with CTD or any of the other bulk wholesale type shops out there. I think the solution is figuring out the advantages you have as a local shop, and leveraging those advantages to serve customers. You can't beat them at their game, so differentiate yourself from them by offering a service or a product they don't.

Maybe consider:
- Learning some gunsmithing
- Building a shooting range and renting guns
- Selling used guns
 
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