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a WTF moment: small gun stores that screw you

amb said:
You need to shop around, I just paid a mere $28 and it came with a free gun!
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There are some places that still have shit at old prices but those tend to be an exception rather than the rule.
 
nordic alien said:
most of the time i try to buy local and support small gun shops, seems like there are 2 in my area jacking up ammo prices by charging more than twice the price; $35 for 40 S&W 50 rds. went to cabelas, hudson ma and they were in shape. $16.99 50 rds. 5 box limit
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Go apply for ammo sales license at local PD then open a ammo only store and CRUSH local competition!!!
 
My LGS is tiny and has their steel 9mm ammo at like 80cpr and brass .223 at like 95cpr. I wont buy any for that but i wont stop going there occasionally to investigate or buy 12ga for their reasonable prices.
 
mac1911 said:
also keep in mind here in MA even LGS have ammo limits, local fire chief can put further restrictions on them also.
IIRC this is how fourseasons started the ammo trailer sales.
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Anyone that can roll a lot of ammo cares very little about that garbage, that's not really a huge obstacle in most
cases. The real obstacle right now is.... just getting ammo. Like as in, getting... anything.
 
Your small local shop doesn't buy from the manufacturer, they buy from a distributor/ middleman. An additional layer of retail markup. At $12.99 a box pre covid, the shop was probably making $2-$3 a box. At $35 a box, they're probably making $4-$5 a box. It looks like they're making more profit but are they really? The shop is laying out 3X they amount of money and tying up his $$$$. Not only that, the shop can't rely on volume to make up the difference.

I was at the Mill on Saturday and was shooting the shit with one of the shops. He had 9mm ammo at $40 a box. He told me he was making $5 a box, but he had to lay out almost $700 a case. I have no reason to think he wasn't telling the truth. You buy 10 cases and that's alot of dough.
 
appraiser said:
35 dollars for 50 rounds is the new normal, get used to it.

As to Cabela's, they may have had a ten year contract with a manufacturer to make their store brand ammo, and the manufacturer is now getting the sh*t end of the stick selling to them at 10 dollars a box when their manufacturing cost all in is double that
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I wouldn't call it "new normal" but it is the "right now" price.

Cabelas is just selling it at their old price (or whatever their winter 2020 price was, after the manuf base increases) because its probably not a substantial profit center in their business with all the other junk they sell in the store. There's enough chinese junk at a cabelas that they're probably turning 40 points on or more that they don't feel like going overboard on ammo. Also they have enough "attractive nuisance" product around to get people to come to the store. A gun shop that sells mostly guns, accessories, etc, and has no ammo? Your foot traffic plummets when word gets out that you have no ammo.

Also in an LGS ammo sales makes up a greater % of their profit sources. So let's say, hypothetically, you have 3000 rds of .40 that you got for $20 a box. You sell that for $35, great, you're
thinking... wow 15 bucks a box thats a lot. But it's only $900 profit for 3000 rounds of ammo. And after that 3000 rounds is gone you don't get shit in .40 for another week and a half or
more. So that's "lost opportunity" on sales you could have made. So people braying about how shops are making all kinds of money.... right now? that's partially true but in a lot of cases it is not as dramatic as you would think it is due to the supply problems.
 
drgrant said:
Anyone that can roll a lot of ammo cares very little about that garbage, that's not really a huge obstacle in most
cases. The real obstacle right now is.... just getting ammo. Like as in, getting... anything.
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I get that, but its all tied in. Lets say local Fire chief is a ammo douche and says to local store you can only store 50,000 rounds total. No primers or powder. One of a few things that put a local shop here out and another moved to NH because of the BS that the can be pulled.

Again , to the OP or anyone who thinks they can open and run a ammo sales store and sell at walmart/cabela/bass prices or less than anyone around PLEASE do it.
 
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alan226 said:
Your small local shop doesn't buy from the manufacturer, they buy from a distributor/ middleman. An additional layer of retail markup. At $12.99 a box pre covid, the shop was probably making $2-$3 a box. At $35 a box, they're probably making $4-$5 a box. It looks like they're making more profit but are they really? The shop is laying out 3X they amount of money and tying up his $$$$. Not only that, the shop can't rely on volume to make up the difference.

I was at the Mill on Saturday and was shooting the shit with one of the shops. He had 9mm ammo at $40 a box. He told me he was making $5 a box, but he had to lay out almost $700 a case. I have no reason to think he wasn't telling the truth. You buy 10 cases and that's alot of dough.
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Some dealers are making way more than that per box but you have to temper that with the fact that they're not getting shit, so the amount of money they make in a given amount of time is
likely not that much different than when the ammo was cheap, and in many cases, it might be a lot worse. Also IMHO ammo drives gun sales too. The only reason a lot of shops have guns
left is because ammo is a pain in the ass to get.
 
mac1911 said:
I get that, but its all tied in. Lets say local Fire chief is a ammo douche and says to local store you can only store 50,000 rounds total. No primers or powder.
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Let's put it this way with the volume of (everything) moved by deli ticket emporium they have offsite storage somewhere. All of the "bigs" usually do.
 
drgrant said:
Some dealers are making way more than that per box but you have to temper that with the fact that they're not getting shit, so the amount of money they make in a given amount of time is
likely not that much different than when the ammo was cheap, and in many cases, it might be a lot worse. Also IMHO ammo drives gun sales too. The only reason a lot of shops have guns
left is because ammo is a pain in the ass to get.
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The guy I was talking to probably got raped on the price because it was all he could get from a distributor he doesn't usually use. I bet the distributors are making more than the actual shops.
 
alan226 said:
The guy I was talking to probably got raped on the price because it was all he could get from a distributor he doesn't usually use. I bet the distributors are making more than the actual shops.
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Yes, there are entire tiers of distribution that sit around waiting for bad shit like this to happen. Then they go full cosby when they can.
 
drgrant said:
The real obstacle right now is.... just getting ammo. Like as in, getting... anything.
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The small shops are really struggling to get ammo. Unobtainium just like everyone else. Every time I'm in one, they are fielding calls and questions about inventory-heck, one even has an inventory board hung by the door and says check the board before asking.
 
AFAR/PFAR said:
The small shops are really struggling to get ammo. Unobtainium just like everyone else. Every time I'm in one, they are fielding calls and questions about inventory-heck, one even has an inventory board hung by the door and says check the board before asking.
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Yeah one of my LGS is just 1 guy. He gets so many calls from people he never heard of. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR GUN GUY OR GAL
 
dgrantdoherty said:
Yeah one of my LGS is just 1 guy. He gets so many calls from people he never heard of. BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR GUN GUY OR GAL
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Universal when you're dealing with small business regardless of the industry. I don't really want to say the customer owes the business something before buying, but the customer has to establish some sort of relationship before asking for favors.
 
OP,

You should know better than to post about the dreaded, ghey .40 on this forum. You seem like a decent guy so allow me to share the little known secret to success:

9mm guys spend 4X more time preparing for range trips than the time they spend actually shooting.

5b9c13b03d6e3.image.jpg


Cool Glock, brah!!!
 
My go to LGS has been selling ammo at an astronomical rate. But as it’s been said, the distributors are charging him an astronomical rate for it, in turn he’s selling it at an astronomical rate.

He even bought several cases from a shop when he was on vacation to resell in his store. That was the cheapest ammo he’s had during the samdemic
 
appraiser said:
35 dollars for 50 rounds is the new normal, get used to it.

As to Cabela's, they may have had a ten year contract with a manufacturer to make their store brand ammo, and the manufacturer is now getting the sh*t end of the stick selling to them at 10 dollars a box when their manufacturing cost all in is double that
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Are you really suggesting that it co$t$ the big boys (Winchester, Federal, PMC, Remington, etc.) $20 a box to manufacture ammo? These firms are not exactly paying gunbroker prices for primers that they manufacture.
 

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