Sellng hunting & outdoor products: beyond the gun shop - expanding your offerings can double your profits

Shooting Industry, August, 1996 by Russ Thurman

How would you like to make 25 percent on your next sale? How about 30 percent? Does 40 percent sound attractive?

That may seem extravagant, given today's slow sales throughout the industry, but it can and is being done. How? By increasing the types of products offered in your gun or archery shop.

Introducing outdoor clothing, camping, range and other non-shooting products into your shop may seem outrageous, but there's an incredible amount of money to be made outside of the traditional shooting inventory. Sales in these product areas are growing, something that can't be said of firearms, unfortunately. So, do you wait out the slump, or do you shift gears and expand into the marketplace where customers are spending their money?

Yes, there's a lot of money to be made in the hunting and outdoor marketplace. The National Sporting Goods Association (NSGA) reports that sales in sports clothing were at the $9.7 billion mark for 1995 and are expected to top $10 billion in 1996. Of course, these figures reflect all types of sports clothing. For the gun and archery shops, the focus would naturally be on clothing for hunting and outdoor excursions.

"Rugged Outdoor/Hunting Apparel" ranks as "Very Hot" for 1996 by the Nation's Best Sports (NBS), one the country's largest sporting goods retail organizations. In fact, "Rugged Outdoor/Hunting Apparel" ranked the highest of all the categories examined by NBS. How did "Hunting" fair? On the "Cool/Warm/Hot/Very Hot" chart, it ranked a "Warm." Even "Rugged Outdoor/Hunting Footwear" ranked higher with a "Hot" score.

Why the blistering scores in the Rugged Outdoor/Hunting categories? Of the top 10 of 54 sports activities ranked for 1995 by the NSGA, three (*) are in the Rugged Outdoor/Hunting area. The NSGA "Sports Participation" report rankings are:

1. Exercise Walking 2. Swimming 3. Bicycle Riding 4. Exercising with Equipment 5. Fishing(*) 6. Camping(*) 7. Bowling 8. Billiards/Pool 9. Basketball 10. Hiking(*)

The report ranks "Hunting with Firearms" at number 19, "Target Shooing" at 26 and "Archery (Targel)" at 39.

The high rating for "Fishing" and "Camping" plays a significant role in impressive sales for companies like Coleman and American Camper (Nelson/WeatherRite). Coleman reported consolidated revenues for 1995 of $933.6 million. First quarter revenues for 1996 were $273.6 million, up 22 percent over the first quarter of 1995. Again, not all of that is in tents, lanterns, sleeping bags and coolers: however, a huge chunk was from Coleman's "camping and leisure time" categories.

Does all this mean you should change your gun or archery shop into a Sporting Goods Store? Not really, however, as one retailing sage once pronounced, "To be successful in retail, you must get in the way of money." In today's marketplace, that may mean doing things differently by expanding into other products.

Such expansion will have several immediate affects. First, it will keep your present customers in your shop longer. They will have new stuff to "graze" over. While there are exceptions, the more time a person spends in your shop, the more likely he is to spend money. Second, your present customer base will spread the word about your new offerings. Personal endorsements, the most desired of advertising, will bring in new customers who want to look at your "new stuff." Since they're there, you can show them your "old stuff." Cha-ching! Increased sales!

Rugged Outdoor Clothing plays a major part in building a profitable bottom line at Fort Thompson Sporting, a full-serve outdoor business in North Little Rock Ark.

"We make money on guns and bullets, but not as much as we do on clothes," said owner Tom Denniston. "Our clothes amount to about 30 percent, perhaps a bit higher, of our overall sales. We average anywhere from fullmark to keystone on clothes, compared to a gun where I'm lucky if 1 make 10 to 15 percent.

"Clothes are an important part of my business - socks, hats, jackets, pants - you name it. You make your money on accessories and I consider clothes and boots to be accessories. You have to have something thai will help make up for the small margin on guns - that's clothes."

Denniston emphasizes the importance of knowing your customer base and providing the right products in the right price range.

"Our big deal in Arkansas is duck hunting, so we sell a lot of hunting clothes and a ton of waders and boots," Denniston said. "You'd be crazy to get into the sporting goods business without knowing exactly who your customers are and the type of activities they're involved in. I'm looking for the family-type customer, a dad who has been hunting for years, who takes his wife and kids with him." Denniston said. "We have a place where a wife can come in to buy something for her self, her husband or her grandpa.

"That's probably why we sell so much clothing. We sell a lot of Woolrich, Browning, Mossy Oak. Filson, Walls and Columbia. We sell a ton of Woolrich and Browning. We also sell a bunch of Rocky Bools and boots from Browning.