Well my business has been up for almost 30 days so far and it has been rough. My "real job" takes priority but it seems all the efforts I've put into my side business is a waste of time. It seems all I ever get is bullshit emails from Nigerians and the occasional phone call of
Callers : "Hey, um...do you sell guns?"
Me : "Yes I do Sir, how may I help you?"
Callers : "Yea, um...I want like a glock or a sig. Are sigs pretty good?"
Me : "Yes they are an excellent choice and I have a wide variety to choose from. What are you looking to use this firearm for specifically?"
Callers : "Yea, um...I don't know. Just for fun, home defense, concealed carry. Do you do background checks?"
Me : "I think we find something that meets your needs nicely. Yes, I do perform background checks as required by the law. It is a quick and easy process."
Callers : "Damn, you do background checks? Yea, okay...I'm good. I was hoping you wouldn't do them, bye."


This is literally EVERY damn phone call.

Thus far I've advertised on Armslist, Backpage and a website I setup for the business. I get emails from France asking if I can "ship a gun". Nigerian scammers and locals who want " a gun" but don't want to do "all that paperwork". The other 10% of potential customers are Class A bullshitters who will waste HOURS talking on the phone about guns and then want to undercut you BELOW WHOLESALE cost because "Hey man, its just a plastic HK USP!" or the "Come on man, what's your bottom price!"

All the hassle of setting up a business just to deal with morons and get cold calls NIGHT AND DAY from credit card processing companies who want me to setup an account is infuriating!

I hear you. I've been open for around a year and I'm small time. The calls from random yahoo's is annoying as are the credit card processors. Hell I signed up on the yellow pages cause sports south required it and I get 5-10 calls a week asking for more information. I'm like I already gave someone my info and I'm not spending another second doing it again. 

Then a a guy from Davidsons calls me twice a day and that shit is getting annoying. He's like you haven't bought anything from us and I'm like cause your shit is a good bit more expensive than everyone else and he goes into their lifetime warranty and all that.   That is fine but 99.9% of people want the lowest price possible and your wholesale price is 20-50 bucks more than everyone else.  I've gotten to where if it's a 800 number popping up I don't even answer it.  If they want me bad enough they'll leave a voicemail. 

I still don't know why guns and cars are something you haggle over. You don't go in any other kind of store it seems and haggle the price. It really is annoying. Everyone asks if that is the best price and I'm like yep, if i wanted to sell it for lower I'd put a lower price on it. 

You wonder why you get the sleazy phone calls?
Armslist is the single worst site for scammers.
Backpage is for teenage hookers, used mattresses and stolen property..... not legitimate gun sales.

I'm not using those websites exclusively. I am trying to hit every point but it seems the only thing 99.9% of buyers want is HiPoints, Kel-Tecs or some off-brand no-name import for $200 bucks. Don't get me started when someone wants to sell a gun. Everyone thinks there "custom" block with garage stippling and a "trigger job" is worth $900 bucks!

It seems everyone is only happy if they are buying something from you at a significant loss.

Start up is the worst time I think. You will get people who want to take advantage of a new guy trying to make a name and build his business plus the circle of folks who have been bounced out of every other gun shop in their area. You will have great days where you can't do anything wrong and have great customers and when that wind changes you will get depressed. Treat folks fair and with respect and the good ones will find you by word of mouth. The credit card vendors can be a pain in the ass. Shop around and educate yourself on the hidden cost. There is one who comes highly reccomended in this industry that tried to bait and switch a compliant machine for a non-compliant one. They specifically named the wrong card machine in the contract and told me to just sign the contract and they would white it out and fill in the correct one. You will need to take credit cards, no way around it. Look into gift cards as well as your business grows. Like I said before, be good to folks and the good ones will be back.

I got a few of that bullshit on bp. But I always put in the ad

"This is a dealer sale FFL "
" must pass nics or have ccw"

Stuff like that seemed to weed out the bs.

But I do feel for ya. I just do it part time also and do mainly a lot of transfers.
Selling retail sucks ballz. There's some money in it but everyone wants everything for free almost.

What I seen that works is try to partake in the deals the Dist offers all the time.
Buy this many get this free
Buy 5 of these mix and match get one free etc

I usually use the free one to make up the profit or use it to average out the whole lot to bring the price down to which it sells.

A while back a Dist did a deal. Buy 10 lowers and get 10 mags free (just an idea)
I gave the mags away free to anyone that bought those lowers.

You gotta be creative AND the best advice I can offer is get into a niche. Cuz everyone sells sigs n glocks.

Welcome to retail. You will discover most Americans are stupid fuck ups.    

I was going to post the same thing but didn't want people going crazy over my comment.
But yes entirely true.

I had one guy he's a Leo. My price was bottom dollar with tax included. Then he asks me if there was a discount for military/Leo. I was like I would normally but since the price was Rock bottom already I couldn't (including tax!) so what does he do? Instead of paying me cash (had it in his hand) he paid me with a cc

You've barely had time to begin to build a customer base. Give it time. How much competition from other FFLs do you have in your immediate area ( 15 miles or so ).
You're always going to have the price check people who call up looking for a price on something, say they'll buy something but rarely/ never do.

your complaining after 30 days?  you might as well get out now.  no one is going to give you any business unless you earn it.  get the fuck off of Armslist and Backpage (embarrassing).  quit whining and sniveling, pull your big boy pants up and get out there and network yourself.  if regular job is getting in the way then get out of the business.  did you not have a business plan?

You'll like the business even more when you realize that your transfer customers are buying guns online for LESS than your wholesale cost.

S&W Shields for $299 shipped. You can match that price, right?

Lol I was so pissed the first day I got access to a few distributors and did some comparisons.

Lipseys sells it at waat?
Buds/ xxxx online dealer has it below the distributor ?

Wat in the hell.

Welcome to the game.  Used guns will be where the profit is made.

I asked one of the sales guys how much I had to spend a year to get the next tier pricing, his answer was $100k.

How much research on the gun business did you do before applying for your FFL?

I don't think this is specific to guns.

I'm a wholesaler of seafood, and there's a lot of people coming from China to setup shop here. They sell their shrimp at 4% margins, and use illegal Chinese labor to drive their trucks for 80 hours a week for $1,500 a month. It's simply a money laundering game for them.

But anyhow, it is funny, that you get people asking to negotiate on guns and cars, but not something like a candle, that has 400% markup.

It's not all that glamorous sometimes. Been doing it since 1993 and can tell a few stories about the ups and downs lol!!

Working at a gun store convinced me to never start one of my own.  My hats off to all of you out there who put up with the tire kickers, the "Oh my wife will kill me if I bought this", the hood rats looking for a "Glock fotay" and the worst ones, "Aw come on man, you can give me a better price than that" guy.

Hang in there guys, it will get better one day.

so you won't ship a gun to france?

Nope, usually we get at least one of those calls every week - and we're not even retail.