Are Wal-mart guns made cheap

[hak]

i cant speak to akodo's specific references but i can see the influence playing out.

a friend of mine managed a hardware store (true value variant, not Home Depot/lowes). he said when his grand-dad ran the store, black and decker, et al, used to come into the store and say: "our big ole display goes here, or else". now, with sales tracking software, even a small retailer can find a ratio of "shelf space to profit" of any given line of items. and will place prominence on promo and location based on this profitability.

so now, the retailer (big, or small with the right tools) says to the supplier/manufacturer: "look, you're 1450th out of 4000 products in profit per 'board foot' of shelving. you don't get front showing now. show me how you can increase your rankings and we'll talk ... "(then see akodo's post).

 

[Deltaboy1984]

no they are the same I worked at gunshop and the owner told customers to buy their 870's at wal-mart because he could not come close to their price since WM bought 10,000 at a time and he could only buy 5.
It is simple economics 101

 

[22-rimfire]

Interesting thread actually. I find it hard to believe that Huffy only made $3 per bicycle sold to Walmart. Ammo? Rifles & Shotguns? Rubbermaid? Heard the Snapper story before... it was a no-go for Walmart. I wonder if their TV's are equal in quality to things sold by places like Best Buy and so forth? The answer would seem to be No.

 

[rust collector]

As much fun as it is to blame Walmart for the cheapening of consumer goods and destruction of the local retail economy, it stems from our willingness to sacrifice quality and the main street hardware store to make things more affordable. It's a matter of marketing, and WM is figuring out what we want better than many retailers. We have met the enemy and he is us.

I used to think I needed pro-grade powertools, but I got tired of lugging them around and paying for them. The batteries still went bad in 6 months. It's a bit like the IBM Selectric typewriter--why get a 30 year typewriter when the capability of new machines doubles every couple years? I no longer buy powertools by the pound. If I were a tradesman, I probably would.

Your father's Oldsmobile had a Chevy engine, Oldsmobile is no more, and my Pontiac Vibe has a Toyota mill. As they said long ago, caveat emptor.

 

[GregGry]

I can tell you that i have bought numerous products from wallmart in the last year that where marketed under a brand name and design, only to find out internally they were different then the actual product I saw on tv or somewhere else. A quick example would be the perfect pushup handles I bought for my friend in Iraq. I paid 20$ at walmart, and they are 30 on the tv. After looking at the box and then looking at the TV, I saw the ones on the TV had a chrome plated handle (Who knows if it was steel) with what appeared to be a foam grip. The box of the walmart handles had no chrome, the grip appeared to be plastic too. The total grip area seemed smaller then the TV set as well. I wasn't bothered since my buddy says they work fine.

With their firearms I would think their buying power would net you more rifle for your money.

 

[hksw]

There are some gulible ignorant people here. Funny to sit back and watch as you know it alls come up with these "Heard from a gunshop dealer", "knew a guy whos cousin worked for Ruger" and all the other crazy **** you come up with. Keep them going, were almost at 4 pages, i bet we can go to 6 pages of nonsense.

The really funny ones are the posts that go, 'I hate WM. They are pure evil, They will destroy America. I only go there because they're close by, open 'til late hours, and they sell what I need at a low price. Otherwise, I don't go there.'

 

[unisonic12]

I love Wal-Mart! It's pretty much the only place we shop at besides grocery stores or needing something exclusive. Just too frickin' expensive to shop at most other stores, the mall, etc.

 

[JohnBT]

"I wonder if their TV's are equal in quality to things sold by places like Best Buy and so forth?"

Sort of, near as I can tell.

I can only relate my personal experience from the summer of 2007. I was shopping for a 32" Samsung lcd for my father to use in assisted living and had visited a number of Circuit City, Best Buy & WM stores between Richmond and Harrisonburg looking for deals.

The actual model numbers elude me at the moment, but I believe the one I got him was a 3253 - the higher end of that series. CC and BB also carried the Samsung 3242 IIRC, a very similar looking tv, but with lower contrast numbers, etc.

Then there was Wal-Mart. They had 2 Samsung 32" tvs and I initially thought their prices were great and would have bought one and been out the door if I could have gotten waited on. Good thing too, I had time to read the really fine print on the back of the tvs (had to unplug them to turn 'em around.)

The catch was they carried 2 Samsungs, but not the usual 2. They had the lower-end "regular" Samsung 32" that CC and BB had, PLUS they had what turned out to be a WM-ONLY Samsung with a model number like 3232 and even worse contrast, etc. than the lower end regular Samsung.

Anyway, they do have oddball stuff for sale if you're not careful. Now, where's that Vlassic pickle article about them nearly going under because of the deal they cut with Wal-Mart.

John

 

[JohnBT]

Oh, and once upon a time my father bought a 10/22 Wal-Mart exclusive and it seemed to be every bit as good as any other 10/22 I've ever seen.

He shot it twice, offered it to me (HA!, funny one dad) and then gave it to his brother to use as trade bait.

I don't know what he was thinking, we already had plenty of perfectly good .22's that would outshoot a 10/22.

I bought a gun at WM once, a 12 ga. Model 1100 synthetic for $328. It was, and is, fine.

John

 

[KBintheSLC]

I also will not shop there because they come into a community and drive all the local business' to close.

That is the issue for me... their guns and ammo might be identical, but I would rather give my money to the local gun shops. Wal-Mart employees don't know the meaning of the words "customer service". Rarely am I treated like a lower form of life as much as I am at the Waql-Mart gun counter... its full of anti's that treat customers like criminals. Anyway, their prices are not really significantly lower anymore for ammo... 9mm is up to $20/100 rounds for WWB. I can get the exact same price... $9.95/50 rounds for PMC at the gun shop.

Honestly, I would rather pay 5-10% more and give my money to a local company that doesn't suck.

 

[preachnhunt]

That does it! No more Wal Mart Condoms!

 

[unisonic12]

Wal-Mart employees don't know the meaning of the words "customer service".

Yeah, because gun shops are widely known for giving excellent customer service, right? How many threads have we read here and otherwise with people constantly b!tching about the horrible service they received at a gun shop?

 

[DAVIDSDIVAD]

So by this logic, because Smith and Wesson sells some of the worst knives on the market, they're guns are bad, too?

 

[ljnowell]

For a group of people that harp about sheep following blindly, a lot of you display the same trait. Take off the tin foil hats.

 

[Justin]

Oh geeze, not this again.