Women friendly gun store

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my wife has went into many guns stores, both with and without me.

her 2 main gripes are, if she's with me, the gun person talks to me instead of her, even after we tell them SHE'S looking to buy, and if she goes in alone, most counter people ignore her, or ask if she's looking for something for hubby/significant other.

there's one store in town that greets her by name and asks what she's looking for.

guess where she shops?

the gun store commandos turn her off too, but she got the best of one of them.

she was in the fav. local store looking around and was checking out the .45's.
one of the commandos said a .45 was too much for her, and then the owner came out and said your mil spec came in today.

she signed the papers, showed her cwp and walked out. the look on his face was priceless.:)
 
To the OP: Ha! HA HA! HAHAHAAHHAhAHAHA!

hurr

she was in the fav. local store looking around and was checking out the .45's.
one of the commandos said a .45 was too much for her, and then the owner came out and said your mil spec came in today.
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That is awesome. :D
 
Boy, everybody has it out for the "dead animals". As a male gun shop customer, and I have spent a lot of money at gun stores, and as a male gun shop customer, that represents something like 90% of the market, I don't want to go to a gun store with flowers, perfume and lots of girly stuff. I like the dead animals.

My suggestion would be to have hip womens' clothing and accessories and to train your sales staff to be courteous and polite to women, but never forget your core customer. That will put you out of business fast.

I do like, however, the idea of keeping the store clean, occassionally vacuuming the dead animals hair, having free coffee and keeping the restrooms clean. Sponser a womens' night at the local range, and teach your female customers how to clean their guns. Those are all good ideas, just keep your marketing efforts in the realm of reality. Maybe you can keep the men and attract women too. That would be great.

Just never forget your core customer.
Mauserguy
 
hip womens' clothing and accessories
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Who cares about hip? I'll settle for shooting and hunting gear in sizes and shapes that actually fit me..holsters that don't expect I have a 38" waist to work with, trap vests that don't reach mid-thigh, and hunting gear that isn't designed for a 12 year old boy.

Clean is good. The ability to speak to both women and men respectfully without asuming they either know nothing about firearms and can be fed a line of bull, or that they know everything about firearms and are idiots if they don't.

Cutesy isn't required. Special massage and ammo packages aren't required. I'd like staff that doesn't guide me towards guns they perceive to be easy to shoot, but bother to listen to me when I tell them I already know what I want.

Lady itself doesn't really bother me, although I've noticed a lot of time people who use it tend to patronize women, often without realizing they are.

The term "Women and Children" tends to annoy the bejeebers out of me, though.
 
I've gotta know what the problem is with the stuffed trophy heads. My wife doesn't like them either. Good thing I'm not a hunter.

I also have to stick up for the musty, cluttered garage look. I like a gun store with that musty-web-gear-and-used-boots surplus store feel. Then again, if you want to attract more women than men...


The term "Women and Children" tends to annoy the bejeebers out of me, though.
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If you wanna go all feminist on us, I'll oblige you, miss. :)
 
Side note, if you want to have coffee in a store, spring for a good coffeepot, good coffee, and an airpot to keep it in.

A grungy 1970's-era Mr. Coffee boiling tar all day and a few dusty mugs doesn't cut it.
 
Thank you folks, many excellent responses.

A couple of issues:

I don't hunt so I have no trophies to put up.

The owner of my local gunstore has it as a policy that everyone on the clock open carries a gun. So in this instance it is not the clerks trying to prove anything, they have no choice. It does not bother me, and it did bug my wife on her first trip to the store but after that it stopped being a problem for her.

I'm not sure where I'm at on the issue from a store owner's perspective though.

I know men are the core market and a big part of that is there has been little effort to bring women into the ranks. So having a store where women are encouraged to visit, treated right when they do and where they don't have to worry about stepping into a big pile of macho every time they ask a question will make money.

Love the coffee/magazine area idea. Makes a lot of sense. The thing is how do I keep the area from being overrun by GSCs or COTs (crusty old-timers) without driving them away? I want them to continue to buy from me but I don't want them not to be barnacles on my ship of commerce.

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I was thinking maybe make it a total self-defense store. Have the entire range of options represented. Have an area for sprays, one for stunners and finally off to one side the gun stuff. Mostly I've noticed that electro/chemical stuff gets short shrift in gun stores. So I'd make them more prevelent.

Have pastel colored walls, nice carpet, nice music playing, women featured Oleg posters (and other informational type works), sales people who dress well (like what you would expect from a salesperson at a JC Penny's or Sears. Professional but nothing too high end.)
Add to that lots of CCW clothing and gear on clothing store style racks and the shop could look a lot different from the average gunstore.

In short, make it look like a mainstream retail outlet instead of a grubby hobby/enthusiast pit.
 
I can't speak for women, but I'm pretty sure that they are just as put off by irritating gun-shop employees as are men. I've only been to a gunshop once and not found the employees to be either coldly rude, creepy, confidently clueless, comedically impaired, or otherwise unappealing. The one thing I hate most is when a store's employees act as though they don't want or need your business, which usually comes from their assumptions about your potential towards being a customer. Window-shoppers are just smarter customers, and they also tend to be free publicity; treating them as riff-raff ensures that they will never go beyond looking. Those outside of the community seem to always have negative experiences with their first trips to gunshops, which tends to preclude a second visit, and event prevents others from making a first.

The macho posters have always struck me as a little on the silly side, and not in a positive way. I've always thought that it would be amusing to go into a gunshop and discover that their "ambiance" music was something unexpected, like good surf music or classical. A smile and a sense of humor go a long way.

I would avoid posters of any kind, especially ones featuring politics. Americans weather advertisement all of the time. There is nothing I love like a store without more ads to read. IF you put anything up, let it be something ironic, like a Winchester magazine ad from the 1950's. (Or far earlier!) Again, don't take yourself too seriously--posters tend to give the impression that you are trying to impress, which is no more impressive in a gunstore than it is in a date. ("You know I can bench-press my body-weight, right?! Wanna see me do pushups.")

The sense of humor, the smile, and the general easy air would be important, I think, because there is hardly a place that is going to make people feel tense more reliably than will a gunshop.
 
Have a store cat! :D

Lighting is important. If you're not afraid of splurging a bit on your power bills, I'll even suggest using non-fluorescent lighting, just because it makes everything look so much better/not dead. Make the place look like a nice place to be, not like some hole in the wall.

I dunno about the pastel walls, but whatever. Keep them clean, keep them to a neutral color. I've always been fond of brick or actual wood ($$$ for something that actually looks good, though) interiors.
 
"Who cares about hip? I'll settle for shooting and hunting gear in sizes and shapes that actually fit me..holsters that don't expect I have a 38" waist to work with, trap vests that don't reach mid-thigh, and hunting gear that isn't designed for a 12 year old boy. "

Barbara, you must be in a real minority here. Yes women make up 51% of the population but women with wastes smaller than 38" probably make up less than 10%. You could hide a pistol grip shot gun on most women I see around here.

Seriously, Barbara, I don't think this attitude will change very quickly. It is just like the cities that want to ban smoking in restraunts. They claim that businesses will make more money if they ban it but the owners think they will lose more money. Once women shooters become a big enough portion of the gun industry and are viewed as lost business, the industry will make a big shift more towards women. It's kind of the whole what came first, the chicken or the egg thing.

Any small or medium sized city has to deal with this issue all the time when it comes to specialty stores. We finally got a Sportsmans Warehouse near me. Big stores think that a city like mine will not be able to support their store so they don't want to come. We have to reach a level of being money lost to these companies before they take notice.
 
If you want an interior decor that's "sportsmanlike" but still tasteful to all parties, go for the 1930's California Arts & Crafts/Mission Lodge look. Seriously. It works for Cabelas.

Those squared-off hammered copper lamps with the amber mica or amber stainedglass shades, straight-sided furniture, and some vintage 1930's-period posters are hardly effeminate, but tasteful to everyone. Even Target has lots of lamps and furniture in the style. Got commercial glass display cases? Spend a day cutting and staining stripwood to line the front and sides of them in this style. Change any fluorescent-lit cases to natural-spectrum fluorescent bulbs, looks like sunlight, not deadlight. And do the floor in Pergo! Wood floor = high class.

livingroom2.gif

Love the coffee/magazine area idea. Makes a lot of sense. The thing is how do I keep the area from being overrun by GSCs or COTs (crusty old-timers) without driving them away? I want them to continue to buy from me but I don't want them not to be barnacles on my ship of commerce.
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Easy. If they're there for more than an hour, politely ask them if there's anything you can show them or help them with. Do that periodically. It's a reminder that yes, it IS a place of business.
 
Thank you, Barbara!

Who cares about hip? I'll settle for shooting and hunting gear in sizes and shapes that actually fit me..holsters that don't expect I have a 38" waist to work with, trap vests that don't reach mid-thigh, and hunting gear that isn't designed for a 12 year old boy.
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Yes we are 51% of the population and those of us who are above size 12 are over 80% of that 51. And yet it still seems the norm is to only have size small & med hanging on the racks of shooting or hunting clothes for women if they exist at all. Real sizes for real women would be appreciated.

The one thing I hate most is when a store's employees act as though they don't want or need your business
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There is a gun shop in town that will NEVER get my business for pulling just such a stunt. I and two other customers who just happen to be male were at the counter while the two sales associates were on cell phones. The associate who was supposedly helping me took a call in the middle of showing me a gun and just left me standing there. I don't know about the two guys who were waiting but I turned around and walked out. That store lost out on my money and will never get any money from me in the future or from anyone I know because I told them all about the incident.

Pay attention to your customers and let a specified employee handle the phone calls.
 
Hit the Nail on the Head!

Manedwolf, what an excellent example of clean, inviting, and customer friendly! Nothing overly feminine or masculine and yet very open and non threatening to either gender.

Oh, and someone asked earlier about why the aversion to the dead animals. First of all no one in any store I've been in that has displays of dead animals ever keeps them clean. They all look sad, bedraggled and dirty/dusty/musty having lost all their pride and self respect by being hung on a wall or displayed on a shelf and then forgotten. In one store, that we occasionally visit, among the displays is a tiny dik-dik. The poor little thing just breaks my heart and turns my stomach. It is no bigger than my MinPin and it has been left to collect dust and lose fur. I just don't see how the store owner thinks that this poor little taxidermied thing could possible impress or attract customers, but it is in the store window display of trophy animals.
 
If you want an interior decor that's "sportsmanlike" but still tasteful to all parties, go for the 1930's California Arts & Crafts/Mission Lodge look. Seriously. It works for Cabelas.
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+1 to Manedwolf

Hell I'm a guy and I HATE to walk into a dingy, grungy, disorganized store of ANY type. My uncle used to run a very successful garage under the same principle... his shop was kept neat, tools wiped and put away, and the mechanics didn't go home at the end of the day until the bays were ship-shape. He had an enormous waiting list of customers (male and female).
 
Thank you. :) And yeah, I always liked the Mission look myself, it's clean and makes you relax...and women that I know, at least, seem to like it. It's how my home is. All Frank Lloyd Wright stuff and 1930's angular/stylized posters for airplanes, zeppelins and such in warm colors.

The other sort of look that I'm absolutely astonished that nobody around my area has done...there's NO shortage of Colonial-era buildings and houses around here, or ones that at least are in the style, even old mill buildings. I'm always astonished that nobody's done a gun store by just putting one of those back to its original look, big windows and white interior with crown molding and chair-rail squares on the ceiling and a Franklin stove in the corner. (Doesn't anyone know how to do woodworking anymore?) Put a big thirteen-star flag hanging outside by the door and portraits of Revolutionaries holding muskets on the walls, in gold frames.

Have coffee in a metal heated urn reminiscent of Revere's silverwork, (not expensive) and have an intro case that ties it together for visitors...something like a Brown Bess and a just-served-in-Iraq dusty M-16 side by side, a replica of Jefferson's pocket pistol and a new 1911 side by side, to remind them that yes, it's an American tradition to be armed. I mean, GUNS. What THEY used, IN New England!

I'd sure shop at a place like that, I don't know about other people. :)

(Oh, yeah, one more major suggestion: Since people have to fill out forms, give them a comfortable chair to do it in, and spring for an ergonomic clipboard/lapdesk for them to do it on.)
 
There are many good suggestions here.Though one does not have to get fancy or do any expensive remodeling. The basic idea is the create an atmosphere that is none threatening to women. The store should be located in a nice part of town, with easy access and parking, and near stores women like to go to. The inside should be clean, well lit, organized and have clean professional employees who are able to talk to women without talking down to them. It also would not hurt to have at least one female employee. I like the suggestion on carrying handguns designed for women or smaller hands, CCW purses and an clothing line for women. Also one will have to advertise alot in local papers to attact women.
 
Oh, and someone asked earlier about why the aversion to the dead animals.
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while i do not have the aversion to them Delfine does (which btw HAS made it a PITA to gun shop with her at times...), I do agree they need to be kept clean, and "as tasteful as possible".
reason i mention the "tasteful" part is due to the first mount that actually turned my stomach...

Don't know if the shop is still there, Colonial GunShop Hillsboro NC, and even if it is the piece in question may no longer be present but. when i was about 18 i went by colonial one day to browse the used racks. And wound up in a sort of corner in the display floor where the U-shaped pistol counter came out, and noticed something small and furry sitting atop an old gunsafe, next to one of those "Indian weather rocks" (tripod with suspended stone, "if stone wet it raining":rolleyes: ). walked over to get a closer look and found that the "furball" was a diorama type mounting of a rather tiny, sleeping tiger cub! little thing could have almost fit completely within my two cupped hands. looked like it had barely been old enough to walk around unaided when it died.
I'm sorry the mounting of what amounts to Infant animals is NOT kosher in my personal oppinion. adding to the "wrongness" of the whole thing was that it's placement within the shop was obviously due to someone else having objected to it's presence in a much more prominent place, at a much earlier time. Little guy was shoved into a corner, his base covered in places by a gray blanket of dust and the same dust having made his stripes even more muted than they should hav been.

Looking back i'm not sure that i Ever went back to colonial after that. but that would have also been about the time i had other things on my mind to worry about than guns, and when i started visiting the stores in Raleigh more. so my ceasing to go to a shop that at least at that time was also becoming notorious for high prices and bad customer service, wouldn't have been of much note.
 
All of these great ideas....I wish I had the money and know how to start a store like that up around here. I doubt I could get a lot of non-redneck women shoppers, but I think with all of these ideas to work with, the themeing is no longer an issue. Get the logistics, the man-power, and the funding in place,the right location, and it's a concept that would work. I would avoid gearing only towards one gender, but as long as there's no rainbows painted on the wall, I'd think most gun-guys would shop in a local womens-geared store for decent prices.
 
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