Where is the boost happening?
- Have manufacturers tripled their prices?
- Are distributors getting ammo from the big ammo companies at pre-shortage prices and getting the windfall?
- Are dealers reaping a windfall, or increasing their percentage above acquisition cost?
It's no doubt a mix, but everyone in the chain seems to be blaming on the "elses", except maybe distributors who have been mimes on the issue except to announce new prices and allocations. And even allocations suggest distributors are not raising prices as much as they could.
Manufacturers have tuned up the $ but most of this stuff seemed to stop at the supply end by April or so because they had already started going balls to the wall
by then. In relative terms that increase is also small, too. Most of their increases they hid within their annual or semi annual price increases this spring.
Distributors? Depends on the distributors. The third tier ammo distributors have basically going full cosby mode since this started- but that's because those people wait around to rape whenever they can, it's part of their business plan.
More mainstream distributors not quite so much, but it is much more difficult to get ammo from them. Much, much more difficult.
Shops and direct to consumer ammo sellers? (like tsusa etc). Yes, they are making more money too, but people need to bear in mind, there are basically two problems:
-LGS might not be getting much of the "normal priced" ammo, and even if they can get some, its not very much, volume wise. So even though they make more money per
box, they're not getting shit for boxes. Empty shelves = lost profit, and they have to make up the difference somehow.
-Some LGS and Ammo sellers (like TSUSA) have possibly resorted to buying their ammo from the third tier rape artist distributors because those are the only guys that often have ammo right
now..... so you take a rape dist price and even tack a lowly 10%-20% onto it (which is nearly nothing in terms of profit) and that's how someone ends up with 9mm at $35-$40 a box at
retail.