I got my Shield 40 yesterday. Must admit, I am impressed with the quality. I'll probably take it out ant fire it today. I am a little disappointed in the Slide, though. Very very stiff. From what I hear it takes a couple of hundred rounds to free it up. Don't know how S&W can make a gun for so little with so many features and quality.
Then you'd be surprised to learn that the M&P line of Tupperware pistols are their highest margin guns.
They can thank Glock for that, in fact, everyone can. But those pistols, no matter how great they are, don’t cost much to manufacture at all. The slide is milled from barstock, which isn’t cheap and does take some time. But one guy can run multiple CNC machines which is the equivalent of only paying one machinist when 5 or more are working. Barrels are made on the CNC machine, but the rifling is done by wire EDM which is a very slick way to rifle a barrel. Not only is it cheap & fast, but you end up with barrels that tend to be very consistent right out of the EDM machine. Normal barrels will leave you with some grooves a little deeper than others, high spots, low spots in the bore, and rough spots that have to be lapped smooth. S&W’s process is still a barrel made from barstock, but after external machining is done, the rifling process takes a fraction of the hand labor that other traditional processes did. The frame is injection molded and cost next to nothing to make; yet specs are held very tight and frames are very high quality. Several internal parts are stamped which is a very cost effective method of manufacture. Others are MIM which, while not necessarily cheap, nets a part that is strong and dimensionally perfect, so it drops in every time. All of the striker fired polymer pistols are designed in such a way that mass production is fast, cheap, and very precise. AND, these processes which don’t require the human Mk-1 eyeball for precision are all so precise, that the gun goes together with pretty much no hand fitting, and once together, the failure/return rate is extremely low, which is another factor that markedly reduces their costs.
Glocks invention was brilliant on so many levels. When he brought his pistol to the US, he intended to sell it for a fraction of what semi-auto pistols sold for. He thought he would just radically under-cut every other maker out there and own the market. What he didn’t get was perceived value, and pricing to meet what the market would bear. When he hired a sales director for the US market (can’t remember his name off the top of my head), he VERY WISELY advised Gaston to NOT price his pistol at 1/3 the price of the competition because it would be immediately perceived as “cheap junk”. He was right, and the rest is history. Those are the most profitable pistols probably ever made. So that $245 Shield probably still netted them as much cash in their pocket as an $800 686.
It's a win/win. You’re delighted to get a fantastic pocket pistol on the cheap, and S&W moves another pistol and makes a decent sum.
