Gold ? BCM Gunfighter Charging handle

[rivetc78]

I would also like to point out, my original post was about someone paying $120 for a Gunfighter from the EE here on CGN, that can be picked up for $55-ish.
Not about the operation of a retail business.

I agree with the 'Each business has a different cost structure'.
Storefront, no storefront, 2 employees or 8 employees, $150K of stock or 500K?

You almost make it seem like a no-win situation?
Volume sales - to much work or to low a price - no profit.

Obviously you know your requirements to operate successfully and we see you sell just about everything you bring in.

As a point, Fabsports is selling the Gunfighter for $59.95. With tax and his $10.95 shipping fee. That makes it pretty much $78.... I'll order from brownells to save the $20.

Maybe the Gunfighter is a bad example to use since it is readily available to everyone.
When items become easily accessible, pricing has to adjust or it will be hard to sell any.

Of course when it comes to restricted items that require import certs and all that other good stuff, it is a different ballgame.

 

[Questar]

Mark, I'll take a shot at answering your question. Obviously this is only my opinion but in the age of the internet we have truly become a global economy. Why pay more for an article to get it from a Canadian dealer when I can simply go online and order it myself? The item is getting shipped either way.

Brownells has a dealer program in place and sells to them at a discount, your markup is built in but let's use your example;

$41.03 dealer cost
+$5.35 shipping
+$5.00 Canada Post brokerage fee
=51.38 like you already stated

If you change the item cost to the retail figure that Brownells charges you'd get a total of $58.34 with a markup of approx 14%, what's wrong with that? Is their a lot of profit built in? No, but it's a small item. Round it up to $59.99 and be done with it. You're likely to sell more. Higher volume, even at reduced prices can turn into larger profit in the long run.

I'm not in the business, so I may be offbase here but I've heard that markup in the firearms business is small, 20% is a figure I've heard thrown around so those numbers don't seem totally unrealistic to me.

If we take those same numbers;
$41.03
+$5.32 shipping
+$5.00 brokerage
+61%
=$76.41 which is just below what Questar charges.

I normally wouldn't comment on the prices that a dealer charges in Canada but you put the question to us. Is 14% markup too little? Maybe, but you put the price much higher and you run the chance of people shopping elsewhere.

I think the question here should be is 61% too much? I think so.

This doesn't even factor in the fact that you can purchase two of the charging handles in question without requiring paperwork and cutting your shipping and brokerage in half.

Excellent points... and I agree with much of what you say.

For many people there is no acceptable amount that a Canadian Retailer can add to the Brownells price to make it acceptable... they want it at the US price and that's it... and I agree with their decision to purchase it from Brownells. What I don't agree with is when some people ##### about the price that others are selling stuff for... if you don't like someone's price then don't buy from them.

I would suggest to you that anyone selling small items like this at 14% gross margins (your figure above) is losing money on every unit they sell and will be out of business as a direct result. If I'm losing money selling 1 unit I have no desire to sell 100 so I can lose 100 times as much .

When you hear talk about gun stores making 20% margins they are talking about the big ticket items ($1,000 + guns) and on big ticket items the handling costs (as a percentage of value) are lower than small ticket items... you are also not being told about the big ticket items they are making 25% and 35% on. A small gun store will need 25% to 30% overall margins just to pay the bills and eke out something at the end of the year. In order to get those margin averages the small items will need to bring in margins of 40% and 50%.

Items like this charging handle will simply be discontinued by Canadian Retailers if Canadians don't want to pay the added markup and instead choose the buy from Brownells... and I don't have any hard feelings against anyone who chooses to buy from Brownells. What I'm trying to say is that we won't (we simply can't) sell it for those prices... so if they stop selling we simply won't offer them anymore. I expect that other retailers will make the same choice. It is unrealistic to believe that someone will sell below their actual cost just so they can "make the sale". Those sales just aren't affordable to make.

Mark

 

[Leg]

Mark, Thanks for your input. Obviously if you can't make money on an item their is no point to selling it. Like rivetc78 stated above his original post was about a price in the EE so some of us (myself included) have strayed from the original topic. No matter how you cut it why would anyone in their right mind pay almost $120 for something when you can easily get it for less by paying full price from a retailer, including shipping and taxes.

Don't like it? Don't buy it. A fair statement I suppose but don't get all pissy when someone tries to warn others that it can be purchased for less. When it comes to the EE one must do some research, caveat emptor.

 

[50calshooter]

Good discussion for the last few pages.

Retail store fronts create a different angle to this though. Sure that charging handle may be bought elsewhere online for cheaper, but what about local walkin customers? I know if I had a store locally like Questar I would pay a little extra for convenience aswell as to support my local business to insure it stays local. Theres nothing you can really do with small ticket items, price wise. You buy in bulk and perhaps piggy back it on another order to help with freight costs and paperwork, but thats it. Like Mark says at the end of the day you got to make enough to keep the lights on.

I just thought I'd throw that local store front angle in here. It defiantly would make a difference for me.

 

[Leg]

Convenience of picking something up locally would make a difference to me but no one in the Ottawa valley caters to the black rifle crowd. Odd considering they could do good business with those deploying overseas. Their is one place that brings in black rifle stuff but it's mostly cheap, made in china crap that he convinces the person is actually what they need instead of KAC, DD, etc...

 

[Curtton]

CGN policy is the sellers can choose any price they want.