Ready-Made Mix & Match: The Smith & Wesson CORE (Competition Optics Ready) variation of the Military & Police pistol and GLOCK’s MOS (Modular Optic System) series are examples of today’s breed of pistols purpose-built at the factory with a mounting space already in place, covered by a removable plate if the shooter chooses to go back to iron sights. Lots of other makers have followed suit with similar pistols.
This approach allows the customer to mate the pistol of his or her choice with their particular choice of optical sight. It’s easy for them to do the mounting themselves. This has the added customer attraction of the DIY factor: “I put this together myself” adds a bit of pride of ownership, not to mention the customer satisfaction of having exactly the combination he or she wanted.
Ready-To-Go Off The Shelf: For the impulse buyer, a pre-assembled package always has a sales advantage. They can pick it up, try it, like it and reach for their wallet. Instant gratification: It’s the American Way, right? SIG SAUER led out of the starting gate with this concept. They were the first to put together a package with all their own gear, starting with their proprietary ROMEO red dot atop their hugely popular P320 pistol.
Carry Optics: A Red-Hot Segment
Even before 2020 ripped the script, optics-ready subcompact pistols were selling like hotcakes.
Growth in this category is a near certainty moving forward.
Carry optics — a compact non-magnifying red dot sight on a handgun, usually a semiautomatic — has become an extremely hot trend. It hasn’t taken over the market yet, but it’s growing at a rapid pace.
The players in the market include Trijicon with its trendsetting RMR (Ruggedized Miniature Reflex) and the larger, more recent SRO (Specialized Reflex Optic); Aimpoint’s Acro; Leupold’s DeltaPoint, along with Vortex, Holosun, and SIG SAUER’s ROMEO series and more. The field continues to grow.
Let’s look at “who buys them and why,” which — after all — is the cornerstone of knowing “how to sell them to who.”
Customer Profiles
Who might buy carry optics? There are lots of customer categories.
The Techies are the folks who program their own computers and are the first to buy an Apple Watch, iPhone number whatever, etc., as soon as they become available. If it’s new and high tech, they want it. In the world of handguns, carry optics are relatively new and high tech. In my shooting classes, the folks who show up with carry optics trend heavily to those who describe themselves as nerds or geeks. They figure the new stuff will give them new capabilities.
With carry optics, it’s actually true.
Old Eyes are a big driver of carry optics purchases. When I was a young bull’s-eye pistol shooter, I noticed the older fellas were much more troubled by aging eyes than by arthritis or the loss of muscle mass and strength that seems to come with advancing years. A disproportionate number of them put 5″ and 6″ barrels on their Smith & Wesson Model 41 or High Standard Supermatic .22 target pistols, replacing 7″+ tubes. As they got older, they often found the shorter sight radius allowed them to focus more easily on their front sights.
When big optical sights came out for target pistols, they were an instant hit. Older shooters who had given up shooting because they couldn’t see their sights well came back into the game with red dots. They could see the sights and the aiming dot on what was, for all practical purposes, the same focal plane. As a rule of thumb, putting an optical sight on their target pistol added another 20 or more years to their “competitive shooting life.” Those sights were big, of course; some looking almost the size of soup cans and some actually more like the size of tomato paste cans. When much smaller carry optics came out, it made sense to put them on their concealed carry and home-defense guns!
The Collector/Accumulator is a staple of gun shops. He wants one of all the popular firearms. In the old days, my brother geezers will remember, he was the guy who had to have a 1911 .45, a Colt single action, a Luger, a Walther P38 … you know the guy I’m talking about. Today, carry optics are hot in the gun magazines and on YouTube, so naturally, he wants one.
Sales Options
What to stock? There are basically three options.
Custom: The trend started with custom milling the top of the slide to affix the compact red dot optic. This can still be done, but you’ll need a properly equipped in-house gunsmith to do it, or will have to be the middleman shipping it out to a ’smith.
One great option is the carry optics slide for some Beretta 92 variations offered by Langdon Tactical Technologies (langdontactical.com). CAD-CAM machining plus proprietary re-designed parts allow the 92’s open-top slide to accept a carry optic that mounts very low to the bore axis. It comes, of course, with backup iron sights. Not cheap, but awesome. LTT is eager to work with dealers; you can get discount pricing and availability information from their dealer liaison Bill Vitiello, bill@langdontactical.com.
If I were a dealer, I’d make sure any carry optic-equipped gun carries Backup Iron Sights.
Strong & Weak Points
The dealer owes it to the customer to point out the strengths and weaknesses of the product. The good news with carry optics includes great accuracy, the ability to see aiming index and target all in essentially the same focus — and a better view of the opponent’s hands in an actual shooting. (If the sights are obscuring the shooter’s view of the attacker’s hands, and he keeps shooting after the assailant drops his gun, it could obviously be problematic in court.)
Springfield Armory Hellcat Micro Combat OSP
The bad news includes the fact while carry optics are no longer in their infancy, they can still be said to be in their “adolescence.” There have been reports of failures. This system isn’t the same as a proven Aimpoint (or equivalent) atop an M4 or AR-15 rifle! Those long-vetted products stay rigidly in place atop the receiver, and absorb only the impact of light .300 Blackout or even lighter 5.56mm recoil. On the pistol, the carry optic is mounted to the slide and rockets back and forth with each cycle of the slide: abusive to small parts and delicate connections. If I were a dealer, I’d make sure any carry optic-equipped gun carries BUIS (Backup Iron Sights).
Another concern is fogging when the user goes between hot and cold environments and condensation is on the glass. De-fogger is a must. The general favorite de-fogger seems to be the one with the least warm and fuzzy brand name: Cat Crap. It wouldn’t hurt to have some on-hand to sell the customer. (EK USA, the maker of Cat Crap, also produces Scope Dope for scopes, binoculars and eyewear.)
Finally, the big problem for the shooter in switching from iron sights to carry optics seems to be quickly acquiring that finicky red dot. You can show the customer a couple of ways to learn to do it … but this is complicated enough to warrant its own column down the road.
Dealers, do you plan on adding carry optic-centered courses in 2021? We want to hear from you: comments@shootingindustry.com.
