“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
Margaret Mead said it, and while you aren’t here for an anthropology lesson, there’s a takeaway here that works for your shop as well.
Be honest with yourself for a moment. If you took the signage off your store and the others in the area, how much difference is there really?
Being unique isn’t easy. The shooting sports industry is smaller than most people think, and there isn’t the product diversity that some other industries enjoy. It can be easy to get caught in a race to the bottom chasing internet retailers. State and local regulations may make doing the things that set your shop apart unreasonably expensive or legally burdensome.
That can’t be an excuse. That reality has to be what drives you to work harder to make your shop stand out.
You need to become unique.
Where to Start
Before anything else, I think it’s important to do some self-scouting. A good sports team knows itself better than it knows any of its opponents. If you don’t know your own strengths, how can you know what weaknesses you can take advantage of in a competitive environment?
While it is sometimes handwaved away as an elementary exercise, a thorough SWOT analysis can be incredibly valuable. For those who don’t know, SWOT stands for strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analysis. As with any exercise of this type, it is only as useful as the effort you put into it. More than anything, it requires honesty.
When I was finishing my college career, we worked on a project with local businesses to help them conduct an analysis of their business with fresh eyes. While talking to the business my team and I had been partnered with, we asked who their biggest competitors were.
I’ll never forget the reply.
“We don’t really have competitors.”
I have to believe I made a face. And even as a wet-behind-the-ears college senior who thought he knew it all, I knew my reaction wasn’t one of ignorance or hubris. To believe for a second that you are in a business with no competition is all but pure lunacy. Especially as a construction company in Northern Indiana.
A similar statement could likely be made about gun shops in most of the country.
You absolutely have competition. If you aren’t willing to look at an analysis of who you are, what you do well, and how others may be offering something you aren’t, you have a bigger problem.
Take the time to talk with your team about how you already stand out, for better and for worse, and discuss the reality of those unique points that already exist.
This is the basis for how you move forward.
Look Outward
Now it’s time to SWOT the competition, because we know you have some.
The best way to do this in my opinion is to open a web search and just type in “gun stores near me.” Then start going through the results in a nearer-to-further progression. How far out to go depends greatly from one area to another. The distance someone will drive to a good shop in Florida or Ohio is very different than it is in Montana or Wyoming.
Use your best judgement, or dig deeper and use the data you have available to you. If you have a customer database, you can chart based on zip codes of mailing or billing addresses to see how far your current customers are coming to see you. Then, simply reverse-engineer that to establish a reasonable sphere of influence you should be concerned about.
Create the same matrix for each of those competitors as you did for yourself, to the best of your ability. If you have family or friends you can use to help fill in the gaps, do. Mystery shop those other locations. Walk around them. Get a feel for who they are and what they do.
This should not be an exercise you complete in an afternoon. This should be something that takes time if you are doing it seriously and putting fresh eyes on the entire competitive landscape.
There are two competitors that you are probably going to forget about: big-box stores and online retailers. I know you don’t think that Wal-Mart is a competitor. They are. I know you don’t think you can compete with Amazon. You can.
Do I expect you to do a complete analysis of every online retailer? No. Let’s not be silly. It is worth discussing online retailers in general, though. Talk through what they bring to the marketplace. Discuss why people might not love dealing with them. Going through the thought exercise with an open mind and genuine intellectual curiosity can be quite informative, especially if you bring trusted resources like friends and family into the discussion.
How to Be Unique
If you are hoping for a list of five things you can do that will make you unique, just like everyone else everyone else reading this article, I am sorry to disappoint you.
First, giving you the answers would rob you of the real value of the exercise, which is the process itself. More important, the process is going to be what determines what is unique for you.
I could give you a list of five things that would make your shop unique in my area, and if you were to use them without looking around, you may be doing things that are exactly the same as everyone else around you. What good does that do?
So no, I won’t give you a list of easy answers. I will give you a few ideas, though.
Add a Range: This isn’t easy, and I’m not saying it is. Regulations from location to location vary greatly, and the last thing I’m going to do is give legal or zoning advice. That said, it’s worth investigating. It doesn’t have to be the latest and greatest indoor range, either. If you have the space to do an outdoor range, even if it’s only viable at certain times of the year, giving your customers a place to shoot, try guns, and build community connected to your store is a worthwhile investment.
Not to mention the revenue streams it opens. By adding a range, you can charge for range time itself, of course, but there are other avenues now available to you as well. Live-fire training courses could be offered. You could rent guns. You can host try-it-before-you-buy-it events. You could start shooting leagues or competitions.
It’s not exactly low-hanging fruit, but finding a reliable place to shoot is a significant barrier to more trigger time for a lot of gun owners. Maybe it’s worth becoming that place.
Add a Classroom: Selling products is great; selling skills and knowledge is even better. Once you have a gun, maybe you don’t need another, but there’s a lot of learning that can go along with it.
It might be your staff, it might be partnering with a local trainer, maybe even brands or reps training your own staff on product. Whatever the case may be, having a classroom-style atmosphere where you can bring people in, sit them down, and dispense knowledge is a great way to appeal to new customers and deepen the relationship with existing ones.
It also has the benefit of being way less work than adding a range.
Develop a Rewards Program: I get rewards for antibiotics, coffee, brake pads, and chicken quesadillas. You better believe I would take rewards at a gun shop. Most of your best customers probably would as well. Even new or less-frequent customers are likely to take advantage if you have a good enough incentive for signing up initially.
Done right, it allows you the chance to capture more information about your customers to keep them in your ecosystem, alert them to events or sales, and drive them back into your store. Yes, it can be some legwork, and you need a POS or CRM system that can take advantage, but there are real benefits.
For less-frequent customers, the initial 5% savings you offer to get them signed up may be what pushes them over the finish line to make a purchase or add accessories to the cart to be able to maximize savings. Even if you never see them again, you have their email and contact information, and you banked that sale.
For your best customers, it’s highly unlikely you are the only place they make purchases. If, however, there is an additional incentive to making the purchase with you, maybe more of those purchases go through your register, especially if you are converting purchases that would be made online.
Become a Brand Ambassador Shop: Carrying something that other shops in your area don’t can be another way to draw customers. Leveraging the power of a brand’s dealer locator portion of their website isn’t nothing, and if you can do it for a few brands in different categories, all the better.
Maybe your gunsmith gets an armorer certification for a couple brands, or you become a tiered dealer with a holster or apparel brand. Anything you can do to help put you a step ahead of the competition is helpful.
Many brands have exactly this sort of program. It’s not just you trying to deepen relationships with your customers — brands are looking to incentivize and deepen relationships with dealers as well. Ask your brand contacts or reps what opportunities exist. Often these tiered relationships come with additional perks like discounts on volume purchases, improved terms, signage or advertising allowances, or even preferred shipping or product allotments.
The Price Trap (or Excuse)
Nothing turns me off to a vendor quicker than being asked, “what price do I need to hit to earn your business?”
I don’t shop prices between vendors. I make no secret of this. I expect the best price for the service I am getting, regardless of what someone else is offering.
Racing to the bottom is a losing strategy. Sure, you’ll get business by being the cheapest option, but it won’t always be the business you want. Not only that, but you’re going to walk a fine line of viability in the long term by cutting your own margins and stressing your cash flow.
Not to mention, if all you offer is price, you’re opening the door for your competition to be a better long-term partner for your customer.
There is a percentage of the population that will always buy based on price, but that isn’t a good base of customers. Why?
Because they are always one good deal away from being someone else’s customer.
Stand Out
The best thing you can do for the long-term health of your business is separate yourself from your competition. You don’t have to go negative or break the bank to do it. You just have to take the time to understand the landscape, and then commit to standing out from the crowd.
With a little bit of effort, you can truly be unique, and maybe just a little bit less like everyone else.
