Honestly I don’t think the idea is as far out in left field as some may think. Its not going to be the ruger American that goes in this direction, but I don’t doubt that this sort of mass customization is in the near future as well as more direct sales to customers rather than distributor and dealer networks. Lots of industries are pushing toward this type of on demand manufacturing, it makes more businesses sense in many ways to make what the customer ordered rather than make what you assume they will buy. In many industries this is already the norm.
A “norm” or aftermarket customization is already established for the firearms market. Ruger has been licensing its trademarks to external parties which make parts compatible with Ruger firearms for decades. Ruger has many models with reputations for being “Kit guns,” whether it’s the 10/22, Vaqueros, Mark Series pistols, the AR-556 (the only base receiver Ruger sells), RPR, and now the American.
As a company, sticking to a base platform and allowing external parties to carry the liability and logistics costs, and increased production costs in the case of many of these parts, makes a lot of sense - and in the case of Ruger and their symbiotic external parties, it makes a lot of money too.
Glock has capitalized on the same market philosophy, again, for decades. Glock lives by the old Henry Ford mantra - they’ll sell any pistol you want, as long as it’s black. They have an exceptionally small product offering, with an exceptionally large aftermarket mechanism.
So Ruger and Glock can sit on reduced operating costs and working capital, minimizing their product costs in a volatile and fickle market, sell an “everyman’s firearm” to the Everyman, and let the custom gunsmiths and aftermarket parts manufacturers live a happy life at lower volumes, lower margins, higher costs, and higher risks. They’re simply different business models.
Contrarily - Sig operates relatively on the opposite platform. They offer TONS of model options with high degrees of customization in house. They deal much more closely to a “built to order” mechanism (not sure if it still is, but it used to be their ACTUAL method, where they wouldn’t produce until a dealer/wholesaler placed an order, literal BTO). Naturally, there’s a much higher cost associated with their products, with lower volume sales, and lower margins inherent. Companies like Cooper, Dakota, NULA, and a handful of others also live in this paradigm, and none enjoy the market volume or success which has Ruger.
Some firearms companies - recently to include Ruger - do offer a “custom shop,” while most of these - recently to include Ruger - are simply a mechanism to market up-featured, up-charged Standard models with standard upgrades, rather than a true custom order shop. S&W’s Performance Center used to be a real custom shop, but today, it’s largely just a set of upfeatured, higher cost models, with some additional labor costs involved. So they already have gone away from a true custom shop towards a more “pick from the menu” product line up, pretending it’s a custom shop.
Ruger HAS been recognizing the successes of their “modification ready” products, and moving more and more towards offering a model line-up which is more readily aftermarket customizable, which also reduced their production costs and product costs to the consumer - win/win/win for the consumer, Ruger, and aftermarket manufacturers. The aftermarket options for the American line supersede those of the M77 line after only a few short years compared to the lifecycle of the M77 line, especially in terms of “no gunsmith,” “drop in,” and “owner installed” options.
Especially in the face of the current market trends where the average buyer is a first time buyer, I don’t expect any market influence will change to convert the highly successful - market leading - firearms manufacturer to adopt a boutique customizer operating model any time soon.
