Surefire Marketing

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Dear Valued Customers.

After five years of promoting and selling Surefire products, I regret to inform you that we will not be selling Surefire products any longer. Surefire has decided not to renew my contract. I have not been given a clear reason but only have been told that I do not fit their 2004 marketing plans. I have also been told that they do not want distributors that promote web business or do trade shows. It appears that they want all the web business for themselves. You can now purchase Surefire products at The Surefire Website which is available to you at FULL RETAIL.

Please review the fantastic new Tactical Products from Streamlight below. We are also in the process of adding the Tactical lights from Pelican. I thank you for your past support of Surefire products and I hope you will continue support the great other lines of products that we feature.

Gary Lovetro
Arizona Gun Runners
Click to expand...


Also orginally posted by LDD for Sigforum

It's for real

A local FFL that carried a lot of Surefire stuff got the shaft.

He told me that Surefire is getting rid of their distributor sales and probably going direct (guess they got tired of internet dealers beating their own internet prices, sometimes by hundreds of dollars). He had just gotten half of his Surefire order in. The other half never came.

This FFL wrote a letter and sent it Fed Ex next day signature confirmation to get his point across. He got nothing back. Never saw the surefire displays he told me he had in the back. Probably too disgusted to put them up.
Click to expand...

For the Full Tread Please Click HERE


Can anyone confirm or deny this. I dont think that Surefire would be cras enough to pull contracts from distrubitors just to gain back the marketshare and charge full retail. Theoretically wouldnt that alienate them from new buyers who have never spent more than 50 bucks on a flashlight? Distrubitors are going to sell Surefires competition, Streamlight, Pelican........and so forth.
 
I am still able to get Surefire, at least until I get yanked which it sounds like it's coming if anybody wants one I will not charge the MSRP. I really never pushed them but will get all I can for anybody who needs one.
 
SureFire cut off all distributors a while ago. That's another story that has me steamed in it's own right. Now it looks like SureFire is starting to cut off dealers who don't play ball... whatever the ball game may be. I'm sure there's another side to this.
 
I tried to buy a Sure Fire light from its web site several weeks ago, but couldn't complete the transaction from my Macintosh. I sent the company an E-mail message, and received no reply. I called the toll-free telephone number to request a catalogue. I received the catalogue awhile later: all pretty pictures and some of the most poorly set type I've seen in a long time, along with lots of typographic errors.

I'll buy something else.
 
I was denied a dealer account from them as well. They would not even provide me w/ a list of distributors in which I could purchase from. I was fortunate enough to locate a source that allows me to keep my pricing low but who knows for how long at the rate they are going.:confused:
 
Like Green Mountain Gear I was also denied a dealer account because I was a web based business. I was told that they are only interested in brick and mortar stores. I asked for a distributor in my area and they gave me a number for a local retailer! I purchase the bulk of my surefire products from 2-3 distributors, but who knows how long that will last now?
 
This is pretty standard marketing practice for any company with a high-end product that wants to keep their reputation as a high end product. These high end companies will typically cut off distributors that bastardize their products through heavy discounting.

It's the mentality that they have when you go to buy an Audi, Microsoft software, Nightforce Scope, etc. They want you to stay above a certain pricing, otherwise they feel that the public will view MSRP as price gouging.

As far as I'm concerned they can do that. Bob, you are perfectly welcome to purchase something else, but then it wouldn't be a Surefire. As someone in business, it annoys me when someone thinks that you should give away something or make minimal profit on your product. It's up to Surefire to make sure that they don't price themselves out of the market, but as far as I'm concerned, most of their products are worth the MSRP. (disclaimer: that doesn't mean I would willingly pay full price when they can be purchased at a discount somewhere else.)

Here in the free market of the USA, you are perfectly welcome to start a flashlight business and undercut Surefire. You are also welcome to take your business elsewhere. I just laugh at people that get upset when companies want something to sell for a certain price. They can't MAKE you buy it. Go buy a Pelican light. They're pretty good.

I don't work for a Surefire dealer, or Surefire, just to clear that up.
 
Tech Brute, et als: I didn't really state that very well. Surefire not only has the right to a profit, they must make one to stay in business. Only the government can continue to operate in the red year after year, but we'll no go there. I have several Maglites and love 'em. They're not as good a tac light IMHO, but very durable. I'm not in LE or anything where I'm likely to really need a tac light so I'll just continue to use my maglites. Surefire just came out with a cheaper (less expensive) Nitrolon that I was interested in. Don't guess they'll miss the little profit they'd have made off that sale.

What I object to is cutting off the little guys. I try to buy local when I can. If I buy a new Rem 870, it'll have to come from Wally world if someone there canfigure out what I'm wanting. Big price diff! But I'm willing to pay a little more on smaller purchases to support the local merchant.

Surefire makes a good product, no argument, but there's some close seconds for a lot less$$$. And, of course, they can run their business any way they see fit. Speaking of which, look at Remington & Wally World!
 
Bob, I can see your point. However, they are not "cutting off the little guy", they want their dealers to be larger businesses, not someone running a web site out of their garage. I personally shop at the garage web sites, but that's how they want to do business.
 
I have no problem selling a product at a certain price level, I even welcome it. What I have a problem with is their ancient thinking about no web based business. Internet commerce is here to stay. What they need to do is stop selling through distributors, set up direct accounts with legit merchants, require a minimum order and set minimum pricing. If a dealer sells below that, they are gone. Works well for many other industries.
 
My understanding is that they aren't cutting out web business, you just have to have the brick to go with the click. But basically, I feel you've hit the nail on the head.
 
Very true! Time to start mixing up the mortar:D

As much as I hate the price slashing on their products, they do make some of the best stuff in the industry and would hate to loose access to it.

There is some goos stuff out there...Pelican, Streamlight, and LDI to name a few but I have not seen anything that can compare to Surefire in absolute performance!
 
If this is all correct, then my little Streamlight Scorpions (now selling for around $25 with batteries and spare bulb at Botach Tactical) is going to be a great bargain over the comparable 2 cell Surefire selling at MSRP. The Surefires do seem to be a little better quality product, but for the price difference, you would hope they would be an outstandingly better product. They aren't. I have 3.
 
Benchmade Knives did the samething to me seven years ago. It's funny how much they worked with the small dealer when they had a small share of the market. It was the small dealer that made Benchmade into the player they are now. I sold between $15-20k of their knives a year. Then all of a sudden they didnt want to deal with you unless you ordered $50k worth of knives in one shot. They referred you to their distributor who wanted to do an onsite inspection of your retail store front (I didnt have one, I sold as I traveled the country doing firearms training). The distributor was a total DICK to boot, so I stopped selling their knives (I guess I didnt have a choice). Benchmade would also undercut their own dealers, selling their Autos retailing for $200 for $100 at Trexpo and other L/E shows. I never sold at retail, I usually sold at 20% above cost. Now I use Microtech, which is a vastly superior product (they were very hard to find when I was selling Benchmades). No, I am not a dealer in Microtech, I no longer do sales of any kind as it was too much of a pain dealing with the manufacturers.
 
SF cut Wholesalers out of the loop very recently. They only want certain dealers to sell from the WEB and even fewer that are allowed to do gun shows. I find it interesting that they are picking and choosing their dealers. Aimpoint did a similar move not to long ago. To be able to control what dealers sell your product for you must first stop selling to wholesalers. Once that is done you can then ask dealers to come to you directly. Then you make them sign a contract stating that they can't advertise their product below Minimum Advertised Price (MAP). If they do sell below that price then you are out. I can't fault them for wanting to get a handle on their product pricing by cutting out wholesalers. I do fault them for turning away honest dealers....


Grant
 
Grant,

Is this going to to affect your product line?

For those that don't know, Grant is a great person to buy from.

T
 
Hey TB, I am not sure just yet. I have not received any word from SF. I have had a direct dealer account with SF for awhile now, but not as long as AZ gun runners have. So it makes me wonder how long before I am on the chopping block. :cuss: I guess if you want something at a fair price you might want to order it soon while I can still place large orders! I know that SF was sending out dealer contracts, but I have yet to receive a single thing from them. Time will tell....



Grant
 
Since I'm a big Surefire fan, just wanted to give some people the heads up on Leach Enterprises. I was at the Crossroads of the West Gun Show at the Orange County Fairgrounds last Saturday (Nov 27) just to get some 12gauge slugs and buckshot and see if there were any decent accessory deals.

The Leach table caught my eye because they posted signs mentioning the Surefire marketing situation and how they had to drop prices to get rid of stock. Apparently, they are a supplier to dealers, but Surefire is now requiring dealers to go directly to Surefire for the product and is pretty much doing away with distributors/middlemen. So they got stuck with a lot of stock that should have went to dealers/retailers and need to get rid of it.

After talking with the proprieters I bought a 8NX, a C2-HA, and an M69 picatinny fore-end for my 870 (whenever I decide to switch from my 618FA to the Millenium vertical grip light) for $290 out the door. A pretty good deal considering the general consumer won't be able to score good deals on the Internet anymore (Surefire.com sells at full retail).

They gave me a card with a toll free number: 888-357-6400 (Larry & Sherry Leach). If you're in an area near a Crossroads gun show and are looking for Surefire products for a good price, you might want to give them a call to see if they'll be there. Very friendly couple. I even paid with plastic and they didn't even try to surcharge me on the sale.
 
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