Hello all,
I'm in the process of purchasing a retail gun shop with shooting range. The business is well established and has been at the same location since inception. The foundation of the business is solid. My first order of business will be to freshen up the sales floor and interior of the building. Inventory needs a lot of work, as I feel the current products are not geared to the interests of the shooters of today. With that said, if you were in this similar situation, what would be the first things you would focus on? Inventory (tactical gear, gun selection, handguns, rifles, ammo, etc.), instructional classes, and anything else you can think of? In other words, what are the key areas that make this type of business most successful? Thank you in advance for any comments and I look forward to reading the replies.
I think the shooting range is going to be the easiest and most passive income source to get started on. Get that ready and open the doors, in the mean time I would order bulk ammo and sell that to the shooters at your range. If you still have some initial capital left try to buy your rifles in bulk as well. I'm sure you could make 50% on an upsell if you buy a pallet of 100 rifles. Good luck and congrats on the big move!
versacepython, thank you for the comment. I agree that the shooting range will be the main source of income until I can purchase enough inventory to attract the retail shopper. The problem with buying and having a ton of handgun and rifle inventory is that it ties up a lot of capital. Unless the inventory is turning over quickly, I have to sit on the excess. Example: there's an H&K sitting in the showcase for over a year, and that's an expensive handgun. Do you think I should stick with Glock, Springfield, and Ruger for the handguns and AR's for the rifles?
I think researching the handguns and rifles with the most demand and stocking those first is the best route. Eventually you'll want to have it all because when that oddball customer wants to by an FN Scar, if you have it, you could make a pretty penny.
If I were you I would stay away from "tacticool" guns and expensive gear, unless you want to invest in them purely for advertisement purposes. Everyone wants to see a $2700+ SCAR Heavy up on the wall buy will anyone buy one? Probably not. I would focus on guns you will sell a lot of low/mid/high AR platforms, common hand guns and accessories, think of things people will want while they are shooting, not things they could wait and order for cheeper online.
Also, as much as I personally hate it if you require customers to use store bought ammo you might drive away a few die hard re-loaders but for the the casual shooter they will just buy it from you, and that improves your bottom line on ammo.
I would add that having some kind of inventory that's friendly to the rifle builder. I would also suggest to have something to go with an AR build. You can go to any gun shop and find AR parts for a build and that's all they carry. I still haven't found one gun shop that carried anything for a build that was for something other than an AR.