Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

Quite an eye opener article. I did not think until today to the threat of internet for the 2nd.
I'm curios (and anxious) about what comes from this profound change.
https://www.ammoland.com/2017/07/grim-f ... sales-u-s/

"... Gander Mountain, Sports Authority, and the failed parts and pieces of Sportsman's Warehouse (from a few years ago), the gun industry and its consumers are in trouble..."

Eeeehhh, I dunno about that...

Most of the gunshops I know are rolling with business. The examples they provide are the over-priced, under-service, "big boxes".

I can vouch that GreenTop's parking lot is ALWAYS FULL... Dance's appears to be full. And from the folks I know that work in gunshops, they're doing amazing things using the internet to sell guns, and gear.

I think those retailers who haven't opened an avenue INTO the internet are the ones going away!

^ I agree. Green Top is not just well known to Virginians, but as I've found out on other gun forums they are very well known on the east coast in general.

I have been by there on any given weekday and they are always busy.

The box stores, Bass Pro, Cabelas, Gander Mt, while "cool", I really wouldn't care if they flopped. They aren't focused on gun owners and rarely have great deals.

GT and my other LGS, Hopkins Gun & Tackle, aren't going away anytime soon. So I'm all

You know the one avenue that gunshops could REALLY rack up some fundage? Low cost transfers!

$25 seems to be the lowest, but if they carried short inventory, BUT set up computers IN their stores for you to order from well-known auction sites/gun dealers, with the auspices of getting that transfer fee, and say the fees for paperwork, they might get some extra ducats in the register.

Think about that, go to the section for "Web sales", set it all up, come and pick it up later.

LGSs in rural areas may get hurt worse because they just don't have the population to sustain them after the cotton-pickin' internet siphons off a chunk of their business. Hope not.

BUT set up computers IN their stores for you to order from well-known auction sites/gun dealers

doesn't just about everybody have a phone with .net access? then why go to a store, use their public computer to do something I can already do on my own device?

Think about that, go to the section for "Web sales", set it all up, come and pick it up later.

Davidsions, gun genie, basically it already exists.

The basic problem for any retail gun business is inventory. There are a small handful of guns that sell in large volumes every week. But if that was all that was in the store people wouldn't feel like they had choices, even if they end up buying one of the frequently sold items. So you have to hold inventory in some things that sell slowly.

Also sometimes your distributor says sure I can sell you gun X , but you'll have to take this slow moving turd we've got in our inventory we can't sell. Often happens with highly sought after limited supply guns.

If you consider the total time an employee has into making the transfer, you'll discover $25-ish is just about break even on the job. Many guns come in under-marked so matching them up to ordered them is sometimes tough. Some customers take 5 notifications before they come and pick up the gun. A disturbing number of people don't get instantly approved and have to come back later, and sometimes do all the paperwork again.

All of these take time to deal with, and that all costs employee time, when they can't be doing other things and helping other customers.

Retail is changing, or in most cases already has changed. You either figure out how to adapt to the new rules of the game. Or some upstart comes in with a new way of doing business and takes all your customers.

Total time for a transfer is under 20 minutes, that includes the paper work.

If everything goes perfect.

My LGS, Greentop and Town Police are always pretty busy. Cabela's is normally hopping also. There is also a new LGS near me that pretty much just does internet transfers, it's New American Arms. I have yet to try them out but I did stop by one day.