SPECIALISING IN A BRAND

Industry commentator Jonny Carter explores the potential of brand specialisation within the gun trade, drawing parallels with the car industry’s franchise model. Is this something we should all be considering?

If you have friends inside the gun trade (it’s a pretty solid guess that you do if your reading this), one of the topics you will have talked about is the future. Whether it’s a ban on lead, companies increasing prices or the internet taking ever more sales from bricks and mortar businesses, we do love to speculate as to what the future holds. During one such conversation I had with a friend of mine, it was hypothesised that the future may push us in the direction of the car industry, with more brand specific stores as you would have with car dealerships.

This concept fascinated me and sat in my mind about how it could work. Before I give you my conclusions on what we could practically take from this mad idea, let’s look at how specialised car retailers work.

First and foremost, many of these people have bought into a franchise agreement with a car manufacturer. These agreements give the dealer the exclusive right to sell a specific brand in a particular area. In return, the dealer will have to agree to meet certain sales targets and service standards. These agreements are usually quite restrictive about what else you can sell, but I guess it must work financially or no one would do it!

Regardless of the contract there are clear benefits to focussing on one brand. The level of expertise that can be grown by dealing with a simpler array of product is clear. This allows for better answers to customer’s questions, and ergo – a better service. The franchising agreement apparently also has strict guidelines for aftersales care, so everyone who buys a product from that brand can expect the same care if anything goes wrong.

It also allows you to simplify marketing efforts, making it easier to target customers and less confusing on the whole as people feel like they are buying direct from the brand, rather than from a third party. Finally, it’s easier to carry the stock a customer would expect when you inventory includes only one brand of goods.

All of this is very interesting but I’m not sure the UK market is big enough to have a logistically sensible array of brand specific gun franchises. Nor would there be enough money to be made if all you had was the ability to sell just one brand to one area.

If you drop the exclusivity of the car dealer and think about brands just restricting to a sensible amount of dealers, who will be able to hold enough stock to show off – then that model already exists with the high end manufacturers on the market. Kreighoff, Perazzi and Beretta Premium have strict criteria for being a dealer and its pretty much dead man’s boots for an account.

I do wonder what would happen to their sales if these companies only had three consumer direct/franchised and branded showrooms strategically placed around the country. No doubt the benefits would be similar to those experience by car manufacturers, but would people travel? Would they sell enough to justify the overheads? I guess until someone tries it, no one will know.

There are some good takeaways from this that are worthy of taking onboard.

With so much for customers to choose from, and the ease with which they can buy from any retailer online, you do have to give them a reason to come to you and no one else. Having some of this and some of that isn’t a reason to get in their car and come on down, however focusing your buying on something that you know goes well in your area so that you become the destination for that, is a good move.

This could be anything of course from any price point or type of gun, although if your minds like mine it will just think that this is a good reason to hoard and display a series of 1980 step up rib trap guns on the shop racks.

Indeed, on my investigation of how the car trade operates its franchises, I went down the rabbit hole of specialist used car dealers even further, specifically the ones who sell older more desirable cars like a dealer who handles only vintage Land Rovers or MGs.

These guys benefit from all the same positives as the new car franchise, but without any legal ties. The model works quite differently though. From what I read, these companies focus on buying well, doing a little work to the vehicle and then selling it at a premium for the fact that they are ‘the guy’.

On this line, who should one buy up all of the used DT10s on the market for as low as possible, and then with that control on the market, market oneself as ‘the DT10 guy’, charging a premium for the fact that you have the biggest selection, own most of the guns for sale on Gun Trader and have put the effort in to become ‘the guy’.

This model seemingly exists a little in the vintage side-by-side and rifle communities, but has yet to be adopted by the over-andunder retailers in the same way. Is it because we are just a bigger and more diverse market? Who knows, but I do know that I need to run the numbers of starting up ‘Jonny’s Trap Guns Ltd’!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the topics discussed in Jonny’s article. Please send your thoughts to editorial@fieldsportspress.com.

“THIS MODEL SEEMINGLY EXISTS A LITTLE IN THE VINTAGE SIDE-BY-SIDE AND RIFLE COMMUNITIES, BUT HAS YET TO BE ADOPTED BY THE OVER-AND-UNDER RETAILERS IN THE SAME WAY.”