Utah FFL dealers, penny for your thoughts...

Have no idea about a FFL but in the bicycle business, without a store front, you don't have access to many distributor's and manufacturer's goods. They just won't sell to you to protect brick and mortar. They are concerned about low overhead places selling way below MSRP, MAP or MMP...

FFGColorado said:

Have no idea about a FFL but in the bicycle business, without a store front, you don't have access to many distributor's and manufacturer's goods. They just won't sell to you to protect brick and mortar. They are concerned about low overhead places selling way below MSRP, MAP or MMP...

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<-----home based FFL for twelve years.
"Many" isn't true, very few distributors sell only to brick and mortar. Zanders, RSR, Lipseys will take my $$$$ as fast as they can.
Those distributors that required a brick and mortar started going belly up about five years ago.

Enforcing MAP is easy, they just put you on a "do not sell to" list.

FWIW I've dealt with two home-based FFLs in Utah county for the past 15 years. One charged me $20/transfer and is no longer in the business. The current one charges $15/transfer but I give him $20 or $25 because he's close to my location and he takes care of me. He does it as a side job and I really doubt he sells or transfers enough to make it worth his while but he still does it for me as a favor I think.

IMO it's going to be tough trying to make a real profit as an FFL in this area if that's ALL you do for work. There's a lot of good competition. As a side job/hobby you might make it worth your time. However in the current market perhaps there's more profit to be had than I imagine. Plus Cabela's has made it a royal PITA to purchase any guns there, and Sportsman's Warehouse just got bought by the same yahoos so they'll likely go the way of the dodo soon, especially if they adopt the same idiotic processes for gun handling/purchase.

Keep us informed if/when you get set up. If you're close to me I might give you some business. I recommend you don't charge more than $25, and that you do accept shipments from individuals (my FFL does).

They recently adopted the new bass pro policy of not letting anyone dry fire any guns at all at the counter. You have to go into the back room under direct hands on supervision and dry fire into a bullet trap. If they’ll even let you. You have to be pretty serious about buying. And they make it a PITA to order anything and have it shipped there for them to act as FFL. It’s pretty much not worth the hassle. Then they have the online paperwork process which takes half an hour or more to complete and wait for. Plus the fact that all their prices are about 50% higher than they should be.

dogtown tom said:

<-----home based FFL for twelve years.
"Many" isn't true, very few distributors sell only to brick and mortar. Zanders, RSR, Lipseys will take my $$$$ as fast as they can.
Those distributors that required a brick and mortar started going belly up about five years ago.
Enforcing MAP is easy, they just put you on a "do not sell to" list.

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I think I mentioned that I had no idea about an FFL, just conveying what the bike biz is like. If, as a brick and mortar in the bike biz, you sell way below MSRP or MMP, they do just that..the distributor stops selling to you..In the US(Europe different), price fixing is illegal but putting a bike shop on a 'no sell to' list is easy.

If distributors want to sell to no store front resellers, that's up to them. It can be argued, that having a FFL license means you also have a tax ID number, which means you are a 'biz', even w/o a technical 'store front'

As a thread drift..I wish ammo manufacturers and distributors would take a stand on online only resellers, who 'seem' to not only favor big online places in terms of supply but also turn a blind eye to them charging twice the LGS $ for ammo..

I cannot speak to Utah dealers as I’m out of VA and home based. To me it hasn’t been worth it. We got the FFL as a add on to another business we have (firearms and safety training)…figured since one of the requirements for safe firearms handling is the gun “fits” you, we suggested going to a local Gander Mountain and trying out all the guns they had then going on line to purchase and we would do the transfer for free. We did/do around 100 transfer per year and sell maybe 6 guns in the same time frame…we charge $20 per transfer unless LEO, military or vet, then $10, so in a year it’s $1200(ish). Now take out taxes, license fees (FFL, state and local) and whatnot and there isn’t a lot remaining. As mentioned I’m home based and cannot get anything that’s allocated at any of the distributors since I do such a low volume of sales. Since we’ve had our FFL I cannot count the number of sales we’ve lost because of that, I understand why, but at the same time it pisses me off…in the end I end up purchasing from other places. Our license runs out in June of this year and probably will not renew it. One other thing…getting anything now is almost impossible…walk into any gun shop…

FFGColorado said:

As a thread drift..I wish ammo manufacturers and distributors would take a stand on online only resellers, who 'seem' to not only favor big online places in terms of supply.

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It's not a policy favoring "online only", but taking care of your biggest accounts.
Ask a salesman in any business.....would he rather have twenty accounts buying 100 pallets of product a week, a hundred accounts buying 200 cases of product a month or 5000 accounts buying 300 cases a year? That's the reality.

but also turn a blind eye to them charging twice the LGS $ for ammo.

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Sorry, that's a fallacy. Not to mention a manufacturer cannot set a maximum price for his product. MAP policies exist so dealers don't advertise below a certain price, to ensure that every dealer enjoys the same minimum profit margin as the rest. MAP doesn't prohibit a dealer from charging as much as he wants, just a price point he cannot advertise below.

During the first Obama Panic I read where a local gun store "hasn't raised prices!".........yet they had nothing in stock. That what you call nonsensical reasoning. It's like advertising 99% off with empty shelves. If local retailers are half the price of online retailers guess how much the online retailer will sell? Nothing. But that's not the case, LGS's that didn't stock up are out of stock and the online retailers will price product at a price point to sell. It doesn't matter one bit if Cheaper Than Dirt prices their 9x19 Tula steel case at ten times the normal price, if no one buys it they aren't selling it. They make how much profit on a box of ammo that doesn't sell?

Everyone loves capitalism until its time to buy, then they want socialism and low fixed prices. Ask Venezuela how that cheap bread tastes and where's the toilet paper.

GE-Mini-Gun said:

I cannot speak to Utah dealers as I’m out of VA and home based. To me it hasn’t been worth it. We got the FFL as a add on to another business we have (firearms and safety training)…figured since one of the requirements for safe firearms handling is the gun “fits” you, we suggested going to a local Gander Mountain and trying out all the guns they had then going on line to purchase and we would do the transfer for free. We did/do around 100 transfer per year and sell maybe 6 guns in the same time frame…we charge $20 per transfer unless LEO, military or vet, then $10, so in a year it’s $1200(ish). Now take out taxes, license fees (FFL, state and local) and whatnot and there isn’t a lot remaining. As mentioned I’m home based and cannot get anything that’s allocated at any of the distributors since I do such a low volume of sales. Since we’ve had our FFL I cannot count the number of sales we’ve lost because of that, I understand why, but at the same time it pisses me off…in the end I end up purchasing from other places. Our license runs out in June of this year and probably will not renew it. One other thing…getting anything now is almost impossible…walk into any gun shop…

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Wow.
A hundred a year? Did you have a business plan or start off winging it like I did?
I beg aspiring FFL's to scribble out a business plan and make notes of the local market. I was lucky, I have over a million people within a twenty minute driving radius of my house. I know my situation isn't unique, but I wouldn't do 2,000 transfers a year if I lived just twenty miles away. Competition? There's at least twenty other home based FFL's in my zip code, with dozens of brick and mortar gun retailers and ranges within a ten minute drive.

Find your niche. I don't sell new Title I guns, doing mostly transfers. But I do sell a ton of silencers.

We had a plan for the other business and figured since we do firearms training, might as well sell them also. We don’t sell new guns…I’ll order them, but I’m 100% up front that they can more than likely get them cheaper elsewhere...mostly transfers. Competition, yep but nothing to really speak of…we are the cheapest transfer place within 40 miles and as far as we know the only place that offers discounted transfers to LEO, military. It’s an interesting area, people get loyal to a place and never leave it after…I could be located beside a local place that raises their transfer fee or prices 100% and I’d pick up 2-3 of their clients...boggles my mind and the fact very few people purchase guns on-line here…at least that’s what I hear at the range. Guys talking about a new gun…where’d you get it…got it at Miller’s, paid “X” for it and I’m thinking, you could have purchased that from Bud’s for $100 less…including the transfer fee!!

Funny you mentioned selling suppressors…we got our SOT after getting probably 100+ calls asking if we did it…we advertised all over the place after getting it…we got 4 calls and never transferred one item. Five places in the area had/have their SOT, we checked with them about transfer fees…cheapest place was $100 and one place would not transfer in anything they could order and they’re $75 or more above MSRP. We were going to charge $50 and allow them to shoot their stuff twice a month on our range until the approval came back…never heard from anyone and we advertised for that as well.