THR members: your favorite gun shops, again...

[Zeke Menuar]

There is a shop in the"People's Republick of Eugene" Oregon called "The Baron's Den" Part gunstore, indoor range, and Museum. The owner rents Thompson's grandfathered-in before 1968. He has lots of rifle, pistols and other stuff all over the walls that aren't for sale. Display cases with Lugers, Walthers, BHP's. All kinds of neat stuff. Nice place, nice people. You can go there, sit in a comfy chair, drink pop and read gunrags if you choose to.

The shops in Salem do business on the auction sites but they don't care about having their own site.

I took my Enfield Sporter to "Rich's Gun Shop" in Donald OR. Nice guy. Very nice shop. His lathe, mill and gunsmithing operation are in full view of the retail part of the shop. Not much there for me to buy(I'm a C&R guy, he isn't), but a nice shop nonetheless. Lots of Kimberugerfields and the like. He did a cut and crown on the lathe for me and got the gun back in five days. This guy uses Auction Arms but doesn't have a site that I know of. I found the shop by accident while trying to get out of phone range of my wife.

Don't set foot in the liberal utopia of Portland unless I absolutely have to.


ZM

 

[Zeke Menuar]

OOPS. Double post. Have to quit guzzing coffee while surfing.

ZM

 

[Fly320s]

Monkeyleg,

You're charging only $10 per month and people won't pay it?

Do you have these stores in east TN?

Frontier Firearms

Benton Shooter's Supply - Benton, TN

Legacy Sports - Athens, TN

 

[ReadyontheRight]

Twin Cities Minnesota:

-You already have the Gun Stop. Best in town.
-Frontiersman in St. Louis Park. More urban and a little more spendy, but also more organized and they have just about anything you'd want and a great staff.
-Joe's Sporting Goods in St. Paul. Great staff that leans more toward hunting.
-Koscielski's Guns and Ammo - You already have. No better commercial defender of RKBA in Minnesota.

Northern Minnesota:
-Alamo Gun and Pawn in Cloquet. Pretty good prices but not a huge inventory.
-Superior Shooters Supply in Superior, Wisconsin. Rivals Gun Stop. http://www.superiorshooterssupply.com/

 

[GaryP]

R.A.L. Sporting Supply
601 E Northern Lights Blvd STE D
Anchorage, Alaska 99503
907-276-8105.

I am living in North Carolina these days but have yet to find another Gun Shop that even comes close to R.A.L. Sporting Supply.

 

[Monkeyleg]

"Monkeyleg, You're charging only $10 per month and people won't pay it?"

Welcome to the wonderful world of retail gun sales. Some shop owners "get it," as I've said before, and some just don't.

For example, the TX shop I mentioned before as probably being one of the larger stores in the state has had 55 visitors view his page since 12:01 am this morning. If this pattern holds, that means he'll get exposure to roughly 1500 visitors this month. His cost, if he only went with the $10 a month (versus $100 per year fee) per visitor would be six-tenths of one cent per visitor.

Contrast that with the cost of a Yellow Pages ad. Here in Wisconsin, a business-card size Yellow Pages ad costs anywhere from $300 to $600 a month. The Yellow Pages folks can't tell him how many people looked at his ad. I can. And the people viewing his page on my site aren't looking for flowers or apples or zebras: they're looking for guns and gun shops. Unlike the Yellow Pages, gun sites like mine are very focused on one particular type of customer.

I've had many more than one shop owner tell me that my offer is a "no-brainer." A million or more visitors this year, all looking for guns and gun shops, and the shops get that exposure for $10 a month--or less ($8.33 if they go for the full year payment).

And here's where it gets even better: I write their pages for them! I give them a username and password so they can go in and make whatever changes they like, whenever they like, but I spend about 1/2 hour writing their pages! Yeah, many of the pages sound like they're written by the same person. But, that's because the owners don't want to take the time--or hire a person who can write--to do their pages.

On top of that, I get emails every day from people looking for a gun they just can't find anywhere, or gunsmithing services they can't find in their area.

Tonight I got an email from a person looking for an Olympic Arms K3B-FAR. I queried my database of shops to find those who list Olympic Arms as one of the brands they carry. I then looked at the shops to see who brags about the number of guns they stock. I found one, got their price, emailed the visitor with that info as well as the URL for the shop's page on my site, and asked only that he mention that he saw them on Gunshopfinder.com.

Seems like a lot of service for $10 a month.

As for Baron's in OR, Gayle (probably the wife in the operation) told me, "we don't need your service." (I keep detailed notes about conversations).

Maybe, maybe not. As God is my witness, I'm going to keep pushing this site until those shop owners who "get it" realize that they have to be on my site, or lose out to the box stores. I find it hard to believe that gun store owners can dismiss offhand a million or possibly even close to two million potential new customers from an advertising outlet that costs them $10 a month.

Younger THR members like Control Group have already said that they disregard shops who don't take the internet seriously.

And I already have a list of shops who've received new customers from the site.

As my rich gunshop-owning friend Kevin keeps telling me, any shop owner who doesn't see the value of this service for $10 a month is a decaying, dying dinosaur.

And, believe me, he doesn't want any other stores in the area on my site. He wants them to go under. If enough shop owners don't "get it," he'll get his wish.

But it's the gun buyers who will lose out.

Anyway, sorry for the long harangue, but I need to vent after a long day on the phones.

Please keep your recommendations coming.

 

[Stevie-Ray]

Welp, I don't know if you've dealt with these folks, but, my 2 favorite places are:

http://www.topgunshootingsports.com/

http://www.firinglineguns.com/


Top notch, both.