While hunting numbers have ebbed and flowed over the last few decades, the shooting and self-defense markets have grown at tremendous rates. Is your store capitalizing on that growing market, or are you pigeonholed as a hunting-only store? Getting in on the expanding side of the industry may be what keeps your store viable for years to come, but how can you bridge that gap and reposition your store?

 

Don’t Overdo It

The easy answer to that last question is don’t go too far. The goal here is NOT to turn your hunting-first store into Ted’s Tactical Emporium. You’re trying to expand the customer base to be welcoming of all shooters and hunters, and at the very least make your shop a destination they don’t dismiss entirely.

Isolating your current customers in an attempt to bring in some new clients doesn’t net you much and requires a significant investment that gets difficult to realize if your base customers start migrating somewhere else.

Stay true to the roots of your store, but take a serious look at the balance of the market in the area and see how you might be able to attract some of those fringe customers that aren’t coming through your doors now.

 

First, Know Thyself

Before you start to expand into the shooting side of the market, it’s a good idea to complete a brand and market analysis for where you are today. Internally, have a conversation with the staff to build a sort of SWOT analysis. Get a concrete feel for the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that have already been identified within the organization. That exercise alone will help to set priorities based on what you’re already hearing or what the staff is already motivated to change, add or evolve.

Next, take the questions to your customers. Hopefully, you have a customer database that you can access to gather some feedback, especially if you don’t have a mechanism for ongoing feedback. An email database would allow you to create a survey, but even on social, you can ask some open-ended questions to get similar feedback.

Social is a little more dangerous because it’s impossible to make it even remotely scientific, but it can still provide valuable insights about what your existing customer base may be looking for and how they view your brand, and it can expose weaknesses that you weren’t aware were there.

While this exercise is meant to help expose some of those areas where you can expand, it should also confirm and reinforce your strengths. As you look to expand your base, take care to not let it weaken your biggest strengths.

 

Why the Shooting Market?

We know this part of the market is expanding, but that growth isn’t the only reason to pursue it.  The customers themselves offer a lot of value as well.

If you think about a significant number of your hunting customers, you will find that many of them are second- or even third-generation shoppers in your store. Hunting is traditionally passed down from generation to generation. That creates a nice customer base to work from, but it also comes with challenges. When you have a mentor, you hopefully acquire some of their knowledge and skills to help shortcut your own learning curve. That also comes with their biases. The hunting market has a fair share of “Daddy drove a Chevy and shot a Winchester topped with a Leupold, and by gum, so will I!”

The shooting market, especially newer shooters, have almost none of that brand loyalty baggage. They are looking for good information and options when purchasing. A reliable counter staff that these customers grow to trust becomes a valuable resource for ongoing support and future purchases.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been on either side of the counter in a hunting shop and seen a customer go to the mattresses repeating some old trope that was either never true, or was disproven years ago, but he continues to repeat it because his mentor said it.

Does that mindset exist on the shooting side too? Sure, there’s bound to be some of it. But largely, in my experience, and in the experience of the shops I have spoken with, far less than on the hunting side. You may have to disprove something that someone saw on Tik-Tok, but that’s true of baking, gardening, construction, and horseback riding as much as it is hunting and shooting.

 

Inventory Considerations

The biggest benefit is that you probably have the vast majority of the inventory you need already on hand. You aren’t investing in a whole new store — you’re just looking to make your marketing reach a new client.

If you’re selling firearms, are you stocking a full complement of offerings, or just traditional hunting rifles? Do you stock handguns? What about modern sporting rifles? Hopefully you answered yes to all of these. That makes the shooting market pivot that much easier.

If for some reason you aren’t stocking all these items, talk to your distributors about getting some more gear on hand. You can’t sell what you don’t have in the store.

This goes for accessories as well. Again, you likely already have what you need. You know the margins are better on optics, slings, and magazines than on the guns themselves. Take advantage and make sure your offering is complete, even if you’re doing a limited offering of the base firearms. The last thing you want to do is have to send these customers somewhere else.

 

Branching Out

So, you’ve thought about the market, looked at your inventory, and decided making a bigger play for the at-large shooting market makes sense for your shop.

Now what?

Here are four strategies you to start growing your market share.

Plan & Promote a Special Event – The benefit of having a hunting focus is that you can look at the coming year and predict your peaks and valleys based on when hunting seasons land in your area. That cuts the other way as well, as those valleys can sometimes be challenging. What better way to flatten your store’s revenue curve than to plan an event without a hunting focus in one of your traditional lulls?

Maybe it’s as simple as a sale that focuses on shooting rather than hunting items. Maybe your facility can host a shooting event, range day, or competition. Some of what you choose may be dictated by the specifics of what the local market is looking for you to move into.

Regardless, use an event to help reshape the common perception of your shop, but be sure to pair it with promotion to hit some of those potential new clients. 

Partner with an Instructor – Do you have local instructor with some following in your area? Consider hosting them to teach a class, or a series of classes at your location. Let someone else’s customer base become your own by affiliation, instead of trying to create your own from the ground up.

Depending on how you structure this relationship, and what your facility is able to accommodate, you may even be able to negotiate this being a revenue source even without new sales or clients. It is not uncommon for facilities to take a percentage of the revenue for paid classes for providing the location. Not to mention, some of your existing customers may be new clients for the instructor.

Done right, a partnership with someone who already has a following in the shooting or tactical space can be a classic win-win scenario.

Hold Classes – You probably already have the expertise in your shop to be able to hold some classes of your own. You can start with classes geared towards new or newer gun owners without enlisting the help of an outside instructor. These classes could focus on basic firearm functions and options, accessories, fit and selection of a firearm, basic firearm terminology, the options are almost endless.

With so many new shooters coming to gun ownership without a mentor to teach them some of even the most basic skills or facts, you can rapidly assert your shop and staff as a trusted and reliable resource for these clients.

Adjust Advertising – Perception is reality, and advertising is designed to manipulate perception. If the local perception of your shop is that it caters only to hunters, non-hunting shooters will assume that your shop isn’t the right fit for them.

Ideally this is part of a larger strategy to promote a special event, class or series of classes to appeal to that market, but if you’re already running advertising geared towards hunters, mix it up and add some shooter-centric messaging into the equation, especially during those lulls in the annual hunting calendar.

You don’t have to drastically change anything about your shop to appeal to shooters. A quick evaluation of your store’s place in the local market, what holes you can fill, and any inventory weak spots will quickly put you on the track to expand the appeal of your store to some customers in your area you may have been missing.

More likely than not, it’s nothing more than an exercise in adjusting the perception of your store that will allow you to grab even more market share and flatten your sales curve over the course of time.