Thank you all for your information. I got some serious thinking to do.
Boston,
The biggest issue around getting a FFL is zoning. If your town zoning people don't fight you then all that is left is showing the ATF that you actually intend to engage in commerce in firearms.
That is not difficult to do. So the only challenge is zoning.
Regarding distributor pricing. If you have $10,000 to invest in inventory, you can get decent pricing. The problem is really for the very small guys who don't stock anything. For example, a couple of years ago Ruger ran a promotion (I remember this one which is why I'm using it as an example).
If you bought a 6 LCPs, you got a 7th (with a laser) for free. That had the effect of reducing dealer cost from about $285 to about $240. A significant amount.
So if you figure you can sell it for $329, the act of stocking means that you can make $90 rather than $45. Twice as much.
$45 is not worth your time, even if you are retired. 6 ruger LCPs will cost you $1710 to buy. If you have the $1700 to put out, you can make money.
Be cautious of deals that companies run where in order to get the good guns, you need to buy the clunkers. Three years ago, FN was running a deal where if you bought a bunch of guns, you got some free guns.
The only problem was that in order to do the deal,and get the ultra hot SCAR17, you had to take 2 FS2000s. Which might take you 5 years to sell. What a lot of guys do is buy the good guns, and then sell the clunkers close to cost on Gunbroker.
Which leads to the next thing. Gunbroker can be a great way to dump clunkers.
One more thing. People have mentioned accessories as a good source of profits. But by far the most profitable thing I sold, back when I did retail stuff was used guns. Its amazing how people will argue with you all day over a few bucks when selling retail, but when they walk into a gun shop, they just bend over and take it. I tried to be fair. I wanted to make $150 on a used gun. I usually did, and I usually paid more than other dealers.
Another great way to make a LOT of money is to buy up entire estates. Of course you have to have money to make money this way. Search the local papers for estate sales. Then get go to some of the sales and ask to talk to the person running it. Make this person your friend. If they like you, they will call you whenever a widow decides to downsize and move to florida and sell all of her stuff, including her dead husbands guns.
I've been bitched at for paying too much by another dealer because I offered the lady 45% of the retail value of the guns. This guy was at no more than 20% and she'd have taken it if it wasn't for me. Of course there were clunkers, but I didn't value them very much.
In another case, I got to the lady's house and immediately saw that I was in over my head. There were 3 Accuracy International rifles. A .308, a .338 Lapua, and a .50 BMG, along with a McMillan sniper rifle. To make matters worse, she had a bunch of WWI and WWII 1911s. I didn't have a spare $30,000 in cash and there was no way I could put a number on the 1911s.
So I did the next best thing. I called a friend who ran a larger store and he bought up all the stuff. In exchange, I got a very nice rifle for nothing.
I hope this helps.
Don
Edit: The number was actually closer to $40k. Now that I think of it, the rifles were all topped with Schmidt and Bender or Swarovski glass.
![[wink]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/002.gif "Wink [wink]")
![[laugh]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/012.gif "Laugh [laugh]")
I suspect I wouldn't either because every dime (and then some) would probably be funneled back into my own toys!![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
. ![[laugh2]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/014.gif "Laugh at above [laugh2]")
(Just thought that was a very clever post). No offense to O P.
