Lifestyle Branding

A few years ago, the then-current head of marketing* for SIG Sauer came up with the idea of a “store within a store,” with display cases just for SIG Sauer guns and accessories. Not a bad idea, but the problem is, that sort of thing is hard to pull off in most gun stores, which put no thought into store layout (and even less into product placement), and most gun store owners have absolutely no clue about how to do lifestyle marketing**.  Pretty much every gun store out there thinks they’re in the business of selling guns. They’re not. They’re in the business of selling fun, competency, peace of mind and good ol’ fashioned envy.

• Fun: Shooting guns is fun. Duh. The more fun you have shooting, the more you want to do it, so sell people guns they think would be fun to shoot. They don’t actually have to BE fun to shoot, the customer just needs to think that they are.
• Competency: Because while shooting guns is fun, shooting guns and hitting the target is even more fun. Gun stores need to learn a lesson from golf and fishing and do a better job at selling solutions to the problem of poor marksmanship. 
• Peace of mind: Owning a gun is calming. I know I can deal with the threat of lethal force to my family. That’s a tremendous dopamine hit. 
• Envy: I want a gun that is slightly better than the guns that my friends and neighbors have.  

There is one segment of the retail market which understands three of those four: High-end shotguns. (Peace of mind against lethal force just ain’t a thing in their world). Places like the Beretta store in Dallas or Purdey’s in London sell a lifestyle of gentrified sport shooting. The guns are an accessory to that fact. Could you do something like Holland & Holland’s store in London, or the Beretta store in NYC, but for concealed carry?

Maybe. 

You couldn’t have the whole store dedicated to it, but you could do a “store within a store” as an adjunct to one of the “guntry” clubs in, say, Dallas or someplace like that. You’d have a private fitting room with a selection of holsters and blue guns nearby and a consultant to help you choose what works best for you.

You’d need about, oh, 20 square feet of retail floor space to do this: A 3×3 changing booth and an adjacent showroom wall with belts, blue guns and holsters. In order to make the ROI work, the brands you’d have to show would need to be higher-end (no Uncle Mike’s, etc). The good news is, the markup on soft goods like holsters is still very nice compared to, say, guns (or even ammo, in a post-COVID world), so it might work. 

Mix in other high-dollar carry gear (lights, knives) and brand the consultant as an EDC Specialist and it would be even better. Have the EDC guy carry concealed, and have them know concealment mechanics like the back of their hand. Texas Gun Experience has a part of their showroom that is MUCH larger than 20 square feet (probably 400 square feet or more) that is dedicated to just knives, so even 1/10th of that area dedicated to “The concealed carry lifestyle” would work, especially if you add snob appeal and give it a Kingsman/James Bond look to it. Aside from, say, G19 and P365 holsters, the turnover of holsters on the shelves is ABYSMAL, so anything you can do to improve the velocity of goods in that area would be useful, especially if you add in training: Take a $100 class, ($75 if you worked with an EDC consultant) and you can draw from a holster on our range.

Ok gun industry, if you want more repeat customers, you need to make gun buying more than just a “one and done” retail experience. There’s my ideas, and if you don’t like ‘em, come up with something better. 

* For a while there, SIG turned over marketing directors so fast, I said that in the future, everyone would be in charge of marketing for SIG Sauer for 15 minutes. 

** The same is true for the gun companies themselves. The guy who came up with the “store within a store” concept had done apparel marketing for Harley-Davidson before working at SIG, so at least he had a clue how to do it.