Joining Business With Hobby: A Case Study

Many a gun-shop owner chose to enter the firearms industry because guns and shooting were his or her hobby. Let’s examine a case of such an enthusiast who grafted a gun shop onto his already successful prior business.

John Strayer and his wife Terri established John’s Lawn Equipment (JLE) in 1995 in a rambling building constructed in 1978. The location was “way down upon the Suwannee River,” in the city of Live Oak, Fla. (population 6,890). John’s masterful skill in repairing mowers, chainsaws and related equipment — coupled with a winning personality in retail sales — resulted in the business quickly prospering. Soon they won awards from manufacturers for their huge sales, and still do.

The Strayers were both enthusiastic shooting hobbyists, and became interested in competitive shooting in 2004. Terri was soon IDPA’s state woman champion, and John became one of the first 5-Gun Masters in Florida.

They put a toe in the water in early 2008 by dedicating a small office-size space to the first iteration of the Pro Arms Gun Shop. It was apparent from the beginning a 10×20′ space with a couple of showcases wouldn’t do at all, and John and Terri realized they would need to allocate more space in a new building.

The new building was constructed and ready to open for business in 2012: 8,500 sq. ft. were dedicated to JLE, and 1,500 sq. ft. to Pro Arms. Since the gun store’s inception, a gun-savvy retired cop has held the role of general manager, also serving as an instructor. Steve Denney served in this capacity until 2015; after Denney’s retirement, Allen Davis stepped into the job the day after he retired from a career as an investigator for the Florida Department of Agriculture.

Core Tenet Of Business

John and Allen have come to agree on one principle in this business: You won’t succeed by selling what you personally like, you’ll succeed by selling what your customers want.

In 2006, when he began planning for the gun shop, Strayer envisioned one-stop shopping for the serious gun professional: The best high-end firearms, the highest-quality holsters and other accessories. He hadn’t planned on selling economy-grade hardware.

Alas, north central Florida is not the most economically prosperous part of the Sunshine State. While a given day might find pricey Wilson Combat, Staccato (formerly STI) and Nighthawk guns in the showcase, the bread and butter of sales turned out to be more “popularly priced” guns and gear.

“We sell a lot of SCCY pistols,” Davis shared. “We’ve only had two ever come back, and SCCY did a wonderfully quick job of making them right for us and the customers. We also sell a lot of Taurus handguns. Our customers seem very satisfied with the G2 and G3 semi-autos, and with their Model 85-series small revolvers.”

Rugers sell extremely well at Pro Arms, and not just LCPs, LCRs and 10/22s. He added, “Our best-selling Rugers — in fact, some of our best-selling guns, period — are the compact 9mms, the LC9 and EC9. They’re small, very ‘shootable,’ highly reliable and the price is remarkably reasonable.”

Davis continued, “With long guns, our market is seasonal. Shotguns in bird season, rifles and some shotguns in deer season. Our best-selling shotguns are the Mossberg 500 and — particularly in tactical models, all year — the Remington 870. During hunting season our best-selling rifles are the Savage bolt actions and the Remington Model 700, which has a huge following traditionally in this part of the country. A big help in selling both brands is the package deal of rifle with scope.”

The AR-15 is a steady seller year-round for the personal defense market and, as elsewhere in the country, has vaulted into the forefront of sales due to recent events in the U.S. Palmetto State Armory is their best-selling AR brand.

“Hunting rifle and shotgun sales are driven by hunting seasons, but AR-15 sales are driven by politics,” Davis observed. “We sell hundreds of them, and if I could get them, I’d be buying 100 at a time from the distributors today.”

GLOCK, Smith & Wesson and Springfield Armory are steady-selling products at Pro Arms.

Davis remarks with a chuckle, “When we had the influx of first-time buyers in 2020, I couldn’t help but notice how many said ‘I want to see a GLOCK,’ and it quickly became apparent they had never handled one or thought about what size or caliber they wanted. If we showed them a Springfield Armory XD pistol they’d see ‘Made in Croatia’ and ask, ‘Where is Croatia,’ but none of them ever looked at a GLOCK and said, ‘Where is Austria?’”

You won’t succeed by selling what you personally like, you’ll succeed by selling what your customers want.

Pro Arms also advertises their willingness to accept trade-ins. A gun on the used-gun display is still a gun to sell, and the profit rate may actually be higher than with new firearms.

When asked, “What about ammo?” Davis replied, “We’re in this for the long haul, and we’re not going to gouge our customers on prices! When we saw this coming, we stockpiled enough ammunition that even if our ammo shelves are empty, any gun we sell we can accompany with two boxes of ammo to feed it. And the ammo is at standard price, not inflated price. When things return to normal, our customers are going to remember who gouged them on prices and who didn’t.”

Community Focus

From the beginning, Pro Arms reached out to the shooting community and indeed, the community at large. They donated prizes to Friends of NRA banquets and shooting matches, and even donated gift certificates for rodeos and other sporting events. They sell prize guns and shotgun ammo at cost to the local American Legion for shooting events, and it has made Pro Arms the go-to shop for Legion members and their families.

In the end, 20% of the combined income of JLE and Pro Arms comes from the gun shop, which takes up only 18% of the combined space. The lawn equipment side of the house employs 15 people, and the gun shop, two — Pro Arms is bringing in 20% of the combined income with only 13% of the staff. Clearly, turning a hobby into a business adjacent to their regular business was a wise move for owners John and Terri Strayer.

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