Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Adding Firearms to my Archery Shop

From 02 to late 04 I was a frequent reader and semi frequent poster on 24hourcampfire. However, a young family and starting an archery business in Texas has kept me too busy to stay in touch with 24hourcampfire or even shoot my rifles like I want to.

Now, that I have just about gotten the archery business to where I want it I am ready to start growing the firearms business with the large base of hunters and no dealer in my immediate proximity we already have it is a natural fit to do transfers and order on demand while slowly growing my firearm inventory.

My natural question is if I had to pick 10 guns to stock that would turn over fairly well and not sit on my shelves for years what would they be.

Here is what I was thinking.

1. Remington 700s
2. Savage 110s
3. Springfield XD/XDM
4. Glocks
5. Benelli Shotguns
6. Remington 870s
7. ARs- Remington R-15s (impossible to get a hold of right now)
8. Taurus Judge
9. Taurus Millenium
10. Ruger 10/22

Any other opinions are welcome. Please keep in mind we sell Mathews, Hoyt, BowTech and Elite Bows as well as some others and many of my customers could afford Weatherby's, Kimbers and Sako's or custom grade rifles but I see the gun business to be more about volume and value than necessarily exclusively high end.

Also, optics will most likely be Nikon and Leupold.

What kind of rings and bases for ARs? Back in the day it was all about Talley LW for Remington 700s.

Also, are the new Remington VTR barrels worth a darn? I just got a Desert Recon VTR in 223 in my shop and it's getting a bunch of looks.

What would make a great lady's handgun? Auto of Revolver?

Texas is a state of deer hunters but we also have many people that varmint hunt and hunt hogs year round. Conceal to carry handguns are popular as well.

Ruger for rifles and revolvers.

Springfield Armory and/or Kimber for pistols.

Sigs for law enforcement?

Volume is where it is at. Glad you see that. Build your business that way and offer some of the high end stuff as you can. If you have customers that will buy them cater to them too as needed. Our local shop folded. The previous owner did a lot of gunshow business and always came back with some great stuff. It was alwways a race between us loyal customers to get there Mondays after a show. He always dealt fairly and did well at shows. We did well when he got back!

As for AR mounts get hooked up with ARMS and GG&G to start with. They deal well with small dealers. Not sure about LaRue but they offer a very high quality product.

I think Taurus is a good product. Keep some in stock but offer to order what your customers want.

You seem to be on top of this. You will do well!

I would also keep a ring binder with a list of rifles/shotguns/pistols that you will special order.

Maybe one type of weapon per page with availible calibers and specifications as well as the price you would charge. Have a picture of the weapon. You don't need to list every gun ever made but lots of folks will come in and leaf through the book and they can see things that they wouldn't have thought of.

There is a walmart around that does that and I have bought two guns from them just because I saw it in the book and I thought it was a good price.

Find a distributor that can get you firearms quickly like over night. Then only keep one rife/pistol type in stock. If the customer wants a diff caliber order it from your distributor. I think that customers would be OK with this.

Talk to local gun clubs. They probably have an FFL and order guns at cost through them. Try to get them to use you for cost plus a small handling fee. Helps to increase your volumne.

Determine what guns to stock. Talk to distributers to find out what volume/types/calibers of guns other dealers sell. Talk to police/sheriff departments to find out what guns they buy. Also, talk to police/sherifs to find out what they want. Use this info to determine what guns to stock.

Just curious, what part of Texas are you in?

I'd suggest a bolt action 22 rimfire for your list.

As for a lady's gun, my wife has a 380 auto (Bersa) and a 38 snubby (Rossi). She tries various models and buys what feels good in her hand.

Dale

Some of the stuff you have listed I'm pretty sure there's next to no markup or very little. Stuff like Glocks it's goign to be hard to compete with places like Academy on price who stock large numbers of Glocks.

Now if you just want people to come and look/buy and might make money on other stuff then that's another story.

Again depends on what part of the state you are in. In my part nothing over $500 sells for jack. We have a gun shop and he started otu with the nice stuff. Within 6 months he had dropped down his inventory to stuff $500 or less because he said he couldn't move it even at cost. I've probably been in 10 gun shops in my region in the last year and haven't found one gun I would personally think about buying, with the exception of maybe a glock or some such.

I don't know what it is. People will drop $600 on a new bow every other year and another $500 worth of stuff on it but balk at buying a decent rifle for $700 that will last forever.

Most of the current and past gunshops around here also stock a lot of used guns. They can be bought very reasonably or accepted as trade in. The mark up gennerally is MUCH higher than on new guns. Don't get overstocked on 22rim fires, easy to do, hard to unload quickly. I too would suggest Ruger pistols and rifles. If there is a lot of handloading around you primers, powder and bullets do well also.
Best of luck to you for success in this undertaking.

I would be careful about stocking anything Walmart carries, hard to beat them on price, and when they discontinue stuff, they knock off 25% of their already low price.

I wish I knew the combination of high end stuff to bring in traffic, and low end to make sales.

If you did scope mounting/bore sighting, you might do more business. anything Walmart won't do, I think.

Also, keep an eye on the discounters like CDNN, and they may have a couple items you don't have to put much money in.

Best of luck, I love a gunstore!

Sycamore

Look at CZ. I do not know of another rifle that will shoot as well out of the box as CZ. Priced to sell too.

Welcome back, glad to hear your doing well.

Best guide to product to stock is based on the local demand, type of hunting, season schedule, what works best for the price point for the largest number of buyers in the area, and solid quality gear. A long while ago, we had a gun shop in a small PA town, stocked the sellers, Winchester, Savage, and Ruger, everything else was special order. It worked, never failed, if it was really an unusual out of the norm firearm it sits until the exact person walks through the door and finds it (that happens with the internet now not the walk in buyer).

Now I help out a local shop, the owner sells a lot of Sigs (226, 229 and 239 as well as CPO Sig guns) and Glocks, he keeps the most popular in stock, 17, 19, 22, 23 and some of the small carry pistols 31, 32, and 33. Stocks and sells Kimbers and Wilson.

Most of his walk in traffic is looking for tactical/black fireamrs, optics and gear. Most of his sporting arms are ordered, buyer knows what they want or has a short list (Remington 700's, Tikka and CZ's), decent discount and prices can be competitive (even with the internet buyers). He has a couple of real good wholesalers he deals with, can get firearms in overnight for the 'immediate gratification and impulse buyer' requirement, which is a very large number of customers. The wholesale sales reps he uses help him to get tough to find items and he participates in their dealer programs.

He does a lot of FFL inbound transfers. Stocks reloading gear for the Trap and Skeet crowd at our Gun Club. Prices are competitive to sell in the store, he competes with the internet surfer/browser smart buyer. Spends the majority of his time doing special orders for customers, many just call in, place an order and show up to purchase.

The big difference with his small shop and the local big store (Dicks Sporting Goods), he will get you what you want, asks pretty smart questions, will answer questions if you ask, will help you if you ask, will shoot the breeze with you, and adds value to the transaction so he gets a large number of repeat customers. The big store doesn't get close to all of that in a transaction.

I have ordered through him, purchased stuff he had in stock that was on the shelf, gone to the range with him, learned a lot from him, help him out at the shop/gunshows, and made FFL transfers.

Always a great place to stop in, talk with him and see what is going on with the customers, now it is rare to not have a couple customers in his shop.

Conratulations!

I would stock what Walmart does NOT.

Smith and Wesson 642s are NEVER in stock locally. The get 4 a month and 2 or 3 are presold.

Its easy $$ for the proprietor.

BMT

I agree on the Ruger bolt guns, as they're kind of a higher end of the entry levels, most everybody likes the Remington 700's, even if I don't like the newer ones, CZ 452 .22's are getting almost a cult like following, but quite a bit higher in price than the Savage or Marlin's that Wally World carries. I know a lot of people that would give their right arm to have a decent local place to buy reloading supplies. Asked a local pawn shop about trading a pair of 870's on a rifle he had, used market it should have been close to an even trade, but he said there is no market for shotguns anymore around here, which makes sense as there aren't any quail to hunt around here like there were 30 years ago. Looking at his rack I could understand as he had a pile of 870's, 1100's, and various other common shotguns, that after going in there for the last couple of years are still on the shelf, and at decent prices if a guy was really in the market to get that particular model. What moves around here are used rifles. I make a run through a lot of the shops once a month or so, and if they're not pricing it into new territory, they don't last.