Unlocking The Value Of Gun-Care Products
Image: Otis Technology (12 GA Ripcord Deluxe Kit)
Gun-care products are as essential to shooting as ammo and targets; the trouble is many shooters don’t seem to recognize how important they are. Delivering this message means a better shooting experience as well as an improved bottom line for retailers.
New & Established Brands Make Impact
Over the past couple of years, Sonny Seybold, sales manager at Pantel Tactical in Renton, Wash., has started selling the TRUE BLUE line of gun-care products.
“They’re a local company to us, and I’ve been dealing with them a ton over the past couple years,” he shared. “I first thought their products might have been a little bit of a joke for a minute, but after I used them, I was really surprised. I’d been stuck on my older-style cleaning stuff, but this is really new.”
TRUE BLUE is part of a trend Seybold has seen toward non-toxic products that don’t have the traditional “gun oil” sort of odor.
“Some of the TRUE BLUE products are phenomenal,” he said. “They’ve made the cleanup of suppressors 10 times easier.”
According to Seybold, sales of TRUE BLUE and Otis Technology products run pretty much neck-and-neck in the store. His number-one product, however, is probably the Otis Ripcord.
“The Ripcord is a very neat item that has done phenomenally well,” he informed. “It’s made cleaning the handguns we sell so much easier. I sell tons of Otis products. We probably go through 40 or so of those Ripcords a month, just in 9mm. This doesn’t include the other products Otis has, such as their lead cleaning wipes and their CLP wipes.”
Getting “Range Ready”
Every dollar counts and add-on sales are important, so Seybold looks for ways to encourage customers to purchase gun-care products.
“When the customer does their paperwork and when they pick up their firearm, I give him or her a little bit of a discount on cleaning products,” he shared. “The margins are a little bit higher on cleaning products, so I give them a 5% discount right off the top, and make sure they are what we call ‘range ready.’”
He continued, “We actually ask customers, ‘Are you range ready? Do you have eyes? Do you have ears? Do you have all your necessary cleaning materials?’”
Those add-on sales help both the customer and the store, Seybold informed, especially since the margins on firearms are very low compared to those on accessory products.
“Customers can use that 5% off on anything in our store — non-serialized — on both the purchase day and the pick up day,” he shared. “Those two days where they can save a little bit of coin has definitely translated into a big increase in sales for us, as we make sure customers are range ready to go out and shoot.”
Brilliant Branding
Seybold also does what he calls a “shop shirt day” in Pantel Tactical once a week, and he frequently uses cleaning products and maintenance supplies as the “shop shirt day deal.”
“If someone comes in wearing their Pantel Tactical shirt, we may say, ‘Hey, you get 5 or 10% off this cleaning product over here,” he said. “It increases my shirt sales, and it also increases the sales of other products in the store.”
All of this, of course, is contingent upon customers coming into the store, so Seybold tries to encourage face-to-face interactions as much as possible.
“Someone will call me on the phone to ask questions, and I’ll say, ‘This would be a lot easier in person; why don’t you come on in?’” he explained. “I tell them we can show them a couple guns, put some in their hands and see if we can find something that works best for them.”
Recently, Seybold has started another shop shirt promotion.
“We have a little wheel that spins and when someone comes in wearing their shirt, we spin the wheel to see what they’ve won,” he shared. “They might get 10% off cleaning products, a free pocketknife, a free K-Bar bottle opener or something like that. It has improved our sales tremendously.”
From time to time, Seybold has a supplier rep come in for an event.
“I’m getting ready to do one right now where a vendor will come in and have his products on display and give discounts across the board,” he shared. “It’s just to bring people down and show them the products. I like to do it because getting vendors in here gives us better product knowledge and helps us sell their products in the store. It also gives customers confidence when they purchase those products.”
Seybold thinks the next “big thing” in gun care will be related to optics.
“We’re getting to the point where we put optics on almost everything,” he said. “We need products that will let us clean our optics safely and not get scratches on them.”
The “Tried & True” Still Sell
At Keith’s Sporting Goods in Gresham, Ore., Owner Keith Ward continues to see sales of “tried and true” products.
“The old-timers still like to use Shooter’s Choice and others that have been around forever,” he observed. “However, the latest and greatest is Breakthrough. It seems to be what everybody wants these days. They have a lot of products that work exceptionally well. Everybody loves them. There’s no odor to them.”
When it comes to add-on sales, Ward contends less is often more.
“We’re not real pushy here,” he lends. “We just ask them if they need a cleaning kit and then go from there. My guys are low key. We sell it to them if they need it, and don’t try to sell it if they don’t. If we have a newbie, we will steer them that direction because they don’t have anything, but most customers buy replacement items for what they already have.”
Ward sells about one-third cleaning kits to two-thirds individual replacement items.
Until recently, most of Ward’s advertising was through Facebook. Not long ago, however, his son posted a photo of an AK-47 in gold for a customer. Facebook shut down the store’s account and Ward can’t get them to let him back in to it.
“We can’t get anyone to respond to us and can’t get them to do anything,” he stated. “We don’t know how to get it to go up the food chain and get back on. We weren’t trying to sell the gun; we just wanted to show someone what we had and it opened up a firestorm.”
Ward sells a lot of Otis products; he shared he gets terrific support from his Otis rep.
“Anything I need for my customers they can get for me,” he said. “Their dealer support is great.”
When you sell a gun, don’t forget the cleaning and maintenance supplies. You’ll help your customer and drive dollars to your bottom line. Everybody wins.
