Where Are You Going?

To understand where we gunsmiths are going, we should best try to understand who we are for the word "gunsmith" is bantered about quite easily. Almost anyone can get an FFL or take an online course classifying him as such. One can take a correspondence course and be a "Gun Expert" in six months—so it is claimed. Unfortunately, these courses cannot put brains or experience in the ends of your fingers.

You might be able to read the lessons but if you have no experience—and that gained hopefully as an apprentice—you are illequipped, even though you have a diploma to work as a gunsmith. Most of these correspondence schools also have law courses. Interestingly, none of them admit you to the Bar and I certainly wouldn’t hire a six months "Law Expert" to defend me, if need be, against the IRS or BATFE. No clear thinking person would.

The same is true of the "yesterday I couldn’t spell the word, today I are one" gunsmith. If any of us owe anything to ourselves and to the public we owe competence and experience, or in other words, credibility. A file, hammer, vice, and bench does not a gunsmith make. A background of tool and die experience plus knowledge of actions, stocks, ballistics, and the hand making of parts is a must for basic gunsmith education.

This knowledge and experience is what brings you from the $30 botched job to the $80 excellent job. You can’t give it unless you’ve got it. Today, with the huge number of how to books in the gun field (to say nothing of the "Whirled Wild Web") one can build a library of information. Diligent reading and study will gain a smattering of gun knowledge. While books, courses, and online resources are certainly helpful, they can never establish qualifications.

Beside my personal learning, I am also thankful these sources of information exist because they constantly bring me work. It’s the difference between adding additional knowledge to an already-established base and "instant expert". Someone becomes an instant expert, takes a gun apart, and maybe sticks in an aftermarket part. That’s easy enough, but repair and reassembly is a different story, never mind good custom work.

Lacking solid expertise and deep understanding, many end up taking that project into an actually qualified gunsmith. It is regrettable that each fulltime gunsmith cannot afford to hire an apprentice because it would mean a constant resupply of qualified people. This is probably the case if your local market is not large enough to support more than a one-man operation. To pay an apprentice a living wage today and start to train him is an impossible situation.

Any potential apprentice willing to put in the work at minimal salary will likely end up leaving and opening up his own shop. The qualified gunsmith has to compete with the gunsmith schools turning out gunsmiths, gun books and courses, and many of them ending up working cheaper than you do. Few would-be gunsmiths realize the out-of-pocket, up-front money required.

I estimate that to start a one-man shop in a home-based workshop would require a layout of at least $5,000, assuming he steals (or, preferably, already owns) a lathe, drill press and/or mill, and a few other items. Depending on the ability and sophistication of the shop, this start price could easily be higher. If one is thinking about opening a shop in a retail store area, the overhead costs rapidly increase.

A low rent area will easily cost $1,000-$2,500 per month when one adds up rent, lights, phone, water, insurance, advertising, and this doesn’t take tools, fixtures, and shop maintenance into account. Annual lease rates of $10-$25 per square foot is common in retail areas. A 2,000 square foot gunsmith shop on the low end of this range might lease at over $1,500 per month. Without getting into working days per month, consider what these amounts require just for overhead costs.

If one uses four weeks in a month you have a $375 per week nut to crack. Break that down into a five day week and you have to be assured of at least $75 per day just to keep the lights on and not pay yourself or eat. Gunsmith businesses should not be started unless the prospective operator knows his market. This is impossible to determine exactly for no one knows how many broken guns there are in any area and how many will actually come in.

Oh yes, the first few months will likely see pretty good activity and the phone will ring off the hook but what will really count is the actual number (and price) of the jobs that walk in the door. If you are not qualified and turn out poor work it will soon catch up with you. However, if you are good and can do the work right with efficiency, your next problem is turn around time. You don’t get paid until the job is done and 100 jobs ahead do you little good if you can’t turn out the goods on a daily basis.

Imperfect markets favor the person with the most knowledge and experience. Used guns are an imperfect market and good gunsmiths are in the best position for a good deal. In addition, gunsmiths can clean, refinish, and/or repair that low-cost used gun and turn it around for a profit. Besides shop work, this is where gunsmiths should focus business.

What you should realize by now is that just because you area good workman, know and love guns, and enjoy working on them, that if you do not know your market, understand costs, profits, and other business issues, you are doomed. Michael Gerber, author of The E- Myth Revisited, would identify such a person deciding to open and run a business as "a technician suffering an entrepreneurial seizure". Running a good business requires being good at business, regardless of what that business does.

Gunsmithing is an art and a business. Your product is your craftsmanship which demands being an artist. For your shop to flourish, you must also be a businessman. And those of you who are doing it part time are not an exception. Many (too many) would-be gunsmiths and even those who are good gunsmiths think they can stack retail space in their shop with accessories and guns and make a killing. Baloney. Know of what you speak and let me lead you out of this temptation.

You can’t compete with the chain stores for prices on guns, scopes, and ammunition. That is the first rule. The second rule is to never forget that first rule. If you stock guns or other retail items and have, say, an inventory of $50,000.00 worth and if you sold each one at full retail, you might gross 24%. Lets call it 25% and look at your gross profit of $12,500. If it took you a year to sell all that you grossed $1,000 per month—big deal, especially after you factor in the cost of your retail space.

And this assumes you always stock items that always sell and always at full retail. The reality is you’ll have to mark slow-selling items down to move them to get some of your cash back for other retail items that do. Now, consider the buying power large shops and chain stores have and the fact they can move slow-selling inventory to a different outlet where it will sell. Never mind the online buying options.

At the end of the day, your new retail item is no better than the same thing in a different store, so competing on price is the primary distinguishing buying factor. Oh, you say, your customers prefer to buy from a gunsmith shop? Where is that one written in stone? What really happens is that a prospective gun buyer will look at a gun or other item in your shop. You will spend time away from the bench trying to sell it and he can ultimately decide to go buy it for less at Walmart.

It is not rare I’ll end up seeing him later when he needs some work done because it’s not as if their cashier that rung up the purchase can do it. If you insist on selling new guns, I’d recommend working in a package deal for a discount on any future repair work to offset your necessary higher retail price. But I’d rather you didn’t insist. If I were to make one rule for gunsmiths regarding new guns it would be to just say NO. Used guns are different. Many people will sell you a gun outright.

This is where the negotiator (or bandit) in you comes out. Unlike new guns and retail items, used guns are an imperfect market because pricing varies depending on a host of conditions, such as the gun’s current condition, state of the local market, among others. Take a few minutes to explain this can create good deals for you, allowing purchases that can lead to 50-100% profit. As with any imperfect market, the person with the most knowledge and experience is in the best position for a good deal.

In addition to your knowledge, you can fix a clunker and resell it for much more. This is where the money in gun sales is best found for a small, independent gunsmith. Advertise that you want old, broken guns and buy them based on that criteria (i.e., cheap!) and then clean, fix, and resell them. It’s possible a person will come in for an estimate for gunsmith work which may be more than the owner wants to pay and will instead offer the gun to you for a price. Negotiate and get the used gun.

One good way I use to compete with the chains and discount houses is to offer to my customers the ability for them to buy any new gun from a wholesaler or Internet retailer at my cost (listed purchase, and actual shipping and sales taxes) with only $30.00 added for my ordering and FFL transfer fee. All cash up front. This requires no up-front investment for me and minimal paper work. For my time invested, it’s more than my standard hourly rate, pure gravy and no stock waiting on my shelves.

I stay away from cleaning kits, gun cases, gun oil, and other small retail items. I sell gunsmithing, used guns, and FFL transfers—that’s it. When the day comes I can’t sell these then I will get a job as a stock clerk with Brownells. So where are we going? The competent, experienced, independent gunsmith is probably dying off. The exotic pistolsmiths will get larger. The discount stores will sell the majority of common retail items as well as guns and ammo. However, we still have a few things in our favor.

We can recount those scopes, sell some used guns, do repair work, refurnish, and reblue. We simply have to do it all well, quickly, and at a price comparable to the plumber, electrician, doctor, and lawyer. AG