Someone asked in another thread what was up with Trijicon, my answer turned into a total hijack so I started a new one :)
I got my FFL last July and its been a pretty interesting year so far.

Back in the begining I contacted Trijicon and asked to be a dealer. They said no store no way. I didn't worry about it too much because I still got a good price on them through the same distributors I use for my firearms.
Jump to November and I realised I could make some good sales with ACOGs on ebay. I basically stuck stuff on there for the same price or 1$ less as everyone else and did free shipping. my distributor will drop ship, UPS, for free. So I was making 25-30$ on every sale after taking into account eBay and PayPal fees. I was selling 20-25 of them a month.
I did get two eBay messages from another dealer complaining to me that I was violating Trijicons MAP. I did not respond but I do think he complained to Trijicon. My eBay name is not tied to my company but I did put up some links on a couple gun boards when folks ask about Trijicon prices. This dealer is a hvy koolaid drinker and even supports one of the boards.
Then in March/April I get a letter in the mail stating I am violating MAP. I respond that I never got any info on MAP and BTW you guys refused to deal with me. They then sent a letter to all of the distributors basically says they are no longer allowed to sell products to SRP.

There are a number of large eBay stores that sell Trijicon for comparable prices. Some with multi thousand feedback.
In order to get my distributors to again sell me Trijicon products I need to write to Trijicon and ask to be removed from the "list". I do intend to do this and to point out all of my competitors on eBay. Luckily you can search closed auctions so there is a large history of other people selling for the same.
I know I will have to promise Triji that I will obey their MAP.

To be honest I am not sorry this happened. I was actually too busy with ebay. between answering a half dozen questions a day and all the rest of the BS even though the drop shipping made it easy, it really was time consuming. And yeah it wasn't worth the 2-300$ a month in Profit. I also managed to 'loose' a couple ACOGs.
One was sent to an APO. Soldier never received it, USPS said "its delivered' and refused the lost item claim. I of course took care of the guy and sent him a new one.
The second one I sent the same person 2 scopes by mistake. of course they wont respond to my emails now. So thats 2k out of my pocket. I was only selling them on ebay for a total of 4-5 months so in the end lost money :(

I have learned a lot of lessons over the past 10 months. I am not going to close shop, but have definately made some changes. I need to remember that its a part time thing. I have a day job that with commut takes 10-11hrs of my time. 2 small children that want my attention when I am home, as does SWMBO.

Custom builds are the big profit makers, but also big time hogs. I have built 20 some odd FALs and over a dozen AKs, and parked/duracoated another dozen rifles. That is a lot of hours tied up. So I am going to stick to the complete weapon orders and AR stuff. if I have free time I will build up an AK or FAL and then offer it for sale.

Also freeing up some time will allow me to finish the EBR web wite. I am a software engineer for christs sake and get get my own web site done :D
My largest supplier provides an inventory download. I have started working on a script that will read that and display the items I want with my prices on EBR. So every night before bed I download the file. In the AM run the script.
Get the online shopping cart up, and the online CC payments and things will improve greatly I feel.

Having all my prices in one spot, a secure shopping cart and payment system (I have my certs) is going to go a long way towards customer satisfaction. I know a number of people from other places have been hesitant to dealing with "shoot me a pm to order, call my home and leave you CC info". I know this because I get a lot of "let me buy one magazine", couple weeks later, "Hey let me get a couple more",

I, for one can't wait for the online merchandise orderablity. And I can't wait to order a few uppers for those lowers I bought.

I know this because I get a lot of "let me buy one magazine", couple weeks later, "Hey let me get a couple more",

Hey, I bought 6 off the bat! :laughing::flipoff2:

Good write up and thanks for sharing. Fawk the cool-aid drinker with a barbed, red hot poker. Congrats on the online ordering deal. I like being able to order items by myself and only call if I have an issue like i did with AK builder. One quick call and it was all fixed. Everyone saved time.

As a new/recent customer, I really enjoyed placing my order and can not wait to receive it!! Really glad you still pursue it, even with the adversity. Thats admirable.

Thanks for the explanation, I was just wondering cause "cease and desist" sounded so stern.:)

I'm loving my AR I bought from you. It's pretty fun to throw on my back and tromp through the woods knowing I've got enough firepower to defeat any wild animals or zombies that might jump out. Been doing a little "long" range practice too. Still using only the iron sights, it shoots real well...if I can just keep from flinching as I'm pulling the trigger.:emb:

Customer Service is still #1 priority to me.
Ebay ended up being a distraction and that class of customer is not really what I am looking for. Not trying to knock eBay users in general but the "I will give you $500 for your $1200 ACOG" types. After all the back and forth dickering and bickering its not worth the $20 :)

I have made a couple errors over the past year. Probably 2 dozen people have had stuff missing from their orders. Soon as the error is brought to my attention I square it away, and I sure as hell don't want people to think "oh he leaves stuff out hoping folks wont notice". And I had two FALs that were a MFer to get running correctly. But I can not think of a single person who would give me a negative review and I have done over 600 sales since July.

So to repeat myself, stop worrying about eBay is going to be better all around. I am making better use of QuickBooks and taking more time double and triple checking boxes before they go out.
As well as tie into my distributors on hand values I will also be able to link to QB so orders will be more accurate as well as simplified.
I am not bitching about PMs, but they are impossible to sort, file, save, etc. Add to that the back and forth nature of the cummunication. Then someone has to save up the coins, calls me up a couple weeks later and leaves a message with my wife. "This is soandso from PBB/THR/CalGuns/ARF/eBay here is my CC". I get home from work and try and figure out what exactly it is they are paying for. No excuse but its difficult to get it 100%

I have definately learned a lot. Running a business is way harder then I ever thought. Hoping I have changed enough so that year 2 is better for me and the customers.
Still trying to figure out how I lost $20k in the past 10 months :eek:

Still trying to figure out how I lost $20k in the past 10 months :eek:

what??

Agreed, Ebay is a time-waster. Their policies are fawked up and its very hard to make money trying to resell anything. The problem is that you have people that do not mind wasting their time, making $2 per transaction. :laughing: When somebody searches for a particular product and a list pops up, they are naturally going to go to the cheapest one. I quit selling on ebay when they raised their fees a few months back. The only auctions I have now is a continuous one on Gunbroker for AK screw kits. I haven't even bothered putting up other things because it's the same deal. Somebody always has a lower price.

I prefer to keep deals in PM's and emails, then they will never know if I violate MAP :evil:

what??

Yeah I kinda have some missing $$:homer:

I have NOT been doing a very good job at book keeping. Someone asks how much is this, I look up the price and then reply oh its this much. I have been trying too hard to provide good deals:shaking:.

Luckily I have all my receipts. I am slowly going through everything. This is how I discovered one of my suppliers was charging me for stuff that had not been shipped, also found a double charge. Oh and how I found out I sent someone two scopes :mad:
I have been doing too much off the cuff so to speak. Not totally taking into account shipping costs, or eBay fees, or PayPal fees, or...

I do have a bunch of tooling that I did not have ten months ago, and I have rebuilt my own 1911, and I do have at least 8k worth of stuff that hasn't sold. So basically I just need to sit down and complete the paperwork trail. I have all of my purchases recorded finally and am now going through and entering in all the sales. Then enter in all the expenses. As much as possible try and get stuff to match up to actual invoices.

My biggest mistake has been buying a thousand dollars worth of stuff from a company just so the 80$ item one person wants I can get an extra 10$ off. I have a but load of parts now and many of them are just not that popular.

I have done a bunch of AR grips and triggers with my builds. So now I have about 15-20 FCGs and pistol grips left over from the lower parts kits. I am just now sitting down and pricing out individual components. Looks like I can reasonably get the individual pieces and put together 15-20 complete LPKs and still sell them for 60$ea and make a proffit. The FCG is the most expensive component of the LPK and so I have basically a bunch of money just sitting there.
Same thing with AR handguards. Done a ton of forearm swaps on uppers that people order and now I have handguards and sights in a box. I realised that its easier and quicker for me to just order barrels and assemble the uppers myself. So some of my recent upper sales have cost me less money because I am digging into the parts bin.

I know someone is reading this and thinking "Well duh"" but as I said I am learning a lot.

I figured this thread would be good, not so much as me trying to explain why some prices have gone up, but to share my experiance so far. Not bitter or angry just kicking myself in the ass a little. Hindsight being 20/20 and all. but also there are other business folks on here and maybe someone will see something here that will help them or give me some ideas on improving my own business.

I still strongly believe that doing good work will be better then trying to make an easy buck (aka eBay and some of my stupid low prices on some forums)

And I am definately my own worst enemy. I just gotta stop "OH thats neats, lets buy some" :D

I prefer to keep deals in PM's and emails, then they will never know if I violate MAP :evil:


Oh most definately. And to be technical if its in pm/email then you have not violated MAP. :D

I just gotta stop "OH thats neats, lets buy some" :D

Don't we all. :laughing::laughing:

hey, I did that for 20+ years...never lost $20K tho??? anyways, running a business CAN be really tough on you, sure, I saw many years of $100K NET, but I also saw many 100hr work weeks...I was a gun/ammo hog...would order enuff to get one FREE for myself and sell all the rest to pay for mine and keep the store running. I bought the building and had it paid off in 2 years, so that helped out. Fortunately, the building was large enuff that I could rent out other unused parts to keep generating income regardless of what I did. may be something for you to consider if you decide to open a storefront. I stayed away from Main ST and went to a small easily accessable raodway with good parked...no one complained that they could not fin me and I put up LARGE signage. SPEND money of advertising...radio-tv if you go storefront.

I sold a lot of stuff over the web, but did 10X more at gunshows around the state...I even teamed up with dealers in other states, went to their shows and if a gun sold, transferred it to them and let them transfer it to the buyer, they got a $20 bonus. I did the same for them...the ATF does NOT like this. even though a lot of dealers still do this.

gunshows CAN be your best friend/worst enemy...one show will net you a months pay and the next doesn't cover table fees. Sold ONE magazine at a LARGE show in OKC with a $60 table fee(5 table and over $34K in stuff on display)...one week later I took the SAME stuff to a small show less tham 40 miles away and sold over $16K in two days. nature of the game.
I wish you the best of luck in your endeavors and hope you remember you are doing this fro FUN.

Well maybe lost is not the correct term. How about I am not sure what I spent it on. :(

:laughing:

Customer service is #1, especially for small business. That said, I prefer to do business with Pete, driving 2hrs, than most local shops.

When you get around to having a misc shtuff sale, let me know. :D

Well maybe lost is not the correct term. How about I am not sure what I spent it on.

a) You're on the right track, concentrate on what moves, llimit your product
line in the near term.

b) It would be a really good idea to get a handle on your bookkeeping.
You're running all the SRP activity through dedicated bank account and
credit cards, right?

c) We could probably arrange some accounting consulting classes, oh, in
September ;)

d) Inventory control is a good thing.

a) You're on the right track, concentrate on what moves, llimit your product
line in the near term. Working on that. Selling people stuff I bought because its neat is helping. Oh btw thanks again :D

b) It would be a really good idea to get a handle on your bookkeeping.
You're running all the SRP activity through dedicated bank account and
credit cards, right?


Dedicated bank account yes, 3 credit cards. Two have a 15k limit and one a 25k. And yes I have spent 30-40 a month.
Plus was using PayPal, MO, and CC for my sales.
I do have all of my monthly statements.
My accounting system has been a cardboard box :eek:

So when I say I am trying to get everything organized that means getting it all into QuickBooks. I have a pretty good handle on my revenues, but not my expenses. Big problem was the stuff that got dropped shipped. it never came here first so I never saw it or a purchase bill. But I do have the income recorded. So Jan-Mar when I was selling so much on eBay (>40k in Feb) I was not tracking the expenses for those sales. I have printed out all my receipts from my distributor as well as all of the fees from PP and EB and am working through those, entering them into QB.
I also have all of my FedEx and USPS receipts, as well as my bank statement that shows my fees for processing CCs.
So I am going through the stack first and trying to match up fees with individual sales. Then go back through the ones that I can't match up and get those entered.
Just going through the inventory purchase receipts I have spent more then I have taken in.
I then am going to do a print out from QB of all purchases made since start up and sit down and compare to CC statements. Again I found a couple discrepencies already.

I've found that the easiest way to keep track of C.C. transactions after the fact is throught the "Enter C.C. charges" function in QB.

Look across the top of the screen under "Banking". The third item down (or so) should be "Enter C.C. Charges".

You'll need a liability account in your chart of accounts for the C.C. payable, then you can just go through the old C.C. statements and record the charges just like you are recording checks written - after the fact.

Call me if you need it step-by-step.

KAA

I know what you are talking about I believe. Makes sense. I am glad I got the software, was one of Larry's recomendations. I seriously hope I have things striaghtened out before September :lmao:
Realizing there was a problem and taking steps to correct is the biggest point of all of this.

I just caught myself giving someone a quote off the top of my head. Instead of oh thats 123$ i pulled out the claculator figured out the correct amount. The OTTOMH figure was about 40$ too low :eek:

It has taken a while to get everything in balance, but on a positive note I do have 25k of parts/inventory so I have not 'lost' any money yet. I have also spent over 5k in tools.
What is killing me is of the 350 different items I have in stock, 300 of them are worth less then 100$.
I have a bunch of stuff that costs only a couple dollars....sure does add up quick :D

So if I don't count the money spent on the inventory I am carrying and the tools then I did make a profit in my first year in business. I do feel better about that.

Pete

well glad to here things are looking up, wasn't aware you were having issues but I am happy iwth the work you did on my rifle. I'd like to order more stuff my the Jeep is eating up the $$$ right now.

Good info Pete, thanks for sharing. Gives a guy some thing's to think about

...Then someone has to save up the coins, calls me up a couple weeks later and leaves a message with my wife. "This is soandso from PBB/THR/CalGuns/ARF/eBay here is my CC". I get home from work and try and figure out what exactly it is they are paying for....:emb:...guilty:flipoff2:

im going to be throwing some $$ at you soon, im going to order a full AR, a couple of lowers, a saiga 12, mags, and a pelican or two.

I hope the shipping to an APO thing didn't make you stop shipping to APOs at all. If you would rather, we can ship it all to my FFL in one pack instead.

pete you can download your PM's to XML, CSV, or TEXT and just keep them in a excell spread sheet. would make comm's easy that way you could just look up teh name in excell?

pete you can download your PM's to XML, CSV, or TEXT and just keep them in a excell spread sheet. would make comm's easy that way you could just look up teh name in excell?

Say what?

Uhm, how?

edit...

Well fawk me. I never knew that. Even with the 750 PM size limit I get with the yellow star I still need to empty out my PM box every couple weeks.

Man I feel doltish now. Thanks for showing me that. PM me your addy and I will send you a pmag.

Pete