one place to search gun shop inventories

[Boris]

A number of years back, after the state started enforcing the "consumer protection" regulations, I was perusing Collector's web site and saw that they had a used Wilson Combat 1911 in stock. I quickly ran off to the store with a great wad of cash...

Some purchases are opportunity buys. There are probably a bunch of guns I'd love to get, and most of them I'll have to get from mass previous owners. Any lead is better than no lead. If I need to call a few shops that used to have a Tok, it's still better than calling every single shop in mass and get blank stares.

 

[center442]

Interesting comments and viewpoints. drgrant summed up my feelings. Personally, I'm not put off by old style websites. I'm more concerned with accuracy of inventory. I can do without the shock and awe of some websites. Sometimes it strikes me as a restaurant menu, where they use a paragraph to describe a steak. It's like that old saying about selling the sizzle, not the steak.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a particular gun. Four Seasons listed three in stock, so I took the ride there. When I got there, there were only two. When I left they only had one. Was the website 100% accurate? No, but it was accurate enough that it got me to make the 90 minute drive there and spend money. If they had only listed one model of what I was looking for I would have called ahead to verify that it was there before spending the gas and time to visit.

It would be cool if there were a way to conduct an accurate search for a particular gun in a certain geographic area, but I don't know how that could be accomplished.

bobbyg and acme, both nice websites. Just curious, how many man-hours per week do you estimate it takes to keep your website updated?

 

[Boris]

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a particular gun. Four Seasons listed three in stock, so I took the ride there. When I got there, there were only two. When I left they only had one. Was the website 100% accurate? No, but it was accurate enough that it got me to make the 90 minute drive there and spend money. If they had only listed one model of what I was looking for I would have called ahead to verify that it was there before spending the gas and time to visit.

I assume that you looked on their website, through the inventory list. How do you know that there wasn't a shop closer to you that may have had the same gun? Did you call/ looked at website for every single place in your search radius? I'm just curious.

 

[Bob's Gun & Archery Shop]

Interesting comments and viewpoints. drgrant summed up my feelings. Personally, I'm not put off by old style websites. I'm more concerned with accuracy of inventory. I can do without the shock and awe of some websites. Sometimes it strikes me as a restaurant menu, where they use a paragraph to describe a steak. It's like that old saying about selling the sizzle, not the steak.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a particular gun. Four Seasons listed three in stock, so I took the ride there. When I got there, there were only two. When I left they only had one. Was the website 100% accurate? No, but it was accurate enough that it got me to make the 90 minute drive there and spend money. If they had only listed one model of what I was looking for I would have called ahead to verify that it was there before spending the gas and time to visit.

It would be cool if there were a way to conduct an accurate search for a particular gun in a certain geographic area, but I don't know how that could be accomplished.

bobbyg and acme, both nice websites. Just curious, how many man-hours per week do you estimate it takes to keep your website updated?

I had 3 weeks of work day and most nights just launching the eCommerce side.. the amount of time spent is hard to calculate but I would say I dedicate another 5-15 hours every week. I am the one handles everything on my own site from the back to front so its just time consuming running the website part and then running the business side every day.

 

[jamesvt]

Acme Armament has a simple but good layout. All the guns have links to pictures. It's not updated every day but is updated often enough. A call ahead to make sure the gun has not been sold is simple enough. http://www.acmearmament.com/index.html

 

[Boris]

Acme Armament has a simple but good layout. All the guns have links to pictures. It's not updated every day but is updated often enough. A call ahead to make sure the gun has not been sold is simple enough. http://www.acmearmament.com/index.html

I like that format too, I can see everything at a glance and there are links to gun's photos. Perfect!