Anyone have any thoughts on them. I visited their only store in Florida. It was relatively loaded with guns and gear compared to Academy. Prices seemed higher than Academy.

Mike

betterN some worse than others.
I've spent a butt ton of money in their stores over the years.

they do seem to be bumping up their prices a bit excessive recently though.

They used to be mid-high end. Now they are kind of low-mid end.

Though my local Sportsman's had a Weatherby Carbonmark Pro.

Academy here in El Paso is really low rent on the hunting end.

We also have a Cabelas in El Paso. It isn't a full size store, it is more of an outfitter store and is a little bigger than the Sportsman's in Las Cruces.

If you compare the two of these stores they are similar but different. Cabelas has a much higher level of quality products over Sportsmans.

Prices are what the market will bear in both locations.

I wish we had another choice. In Southern California they have a store called Turners Outdoorsman. In my mind it is a little better than either one. Though most of those stores are smaller.

I guess it depends on what you are looking for.

I buy 99% of what I want off of the internet.

Been in one. Nice store, lots of stuff. Very similar in content to all the other Sporting Goods stores. I was disappointed that the retail outlets did not carry the Military Surplus in the catalogs they send me.

Retail is very homogenized, don't expect an experience much different from any other hunting/fishing store.

quote:

Originally posted by SlamFire:
I was disappointed that the retail outlets did not carry the Military Surplus in the catalogs they send me.

I believe that you are confusing Sportsman’s Warehouse with Sportsman’s Guide. For a long time I thought that they were the same company, but I believe they are not related.

I have been in one a couple of times.

Brought two items.

Prices were so so but it was handy.

Nothing special.

I worked at the Sportsman's Warehouse in Medford, OR, after retiring from the newsroom. The inventory of firearms and reloading supplies was wonderful until Obama was elected in the fall of 2008, setting off the first serious gun, ammo and component shortage. This made the chain's liquidity issues much worse and it filed for bankruptcy in 2009, closed 23 stores, sold 15 to a Canadian co-op, which renamed them Wholesale Sports. The Medford store was one of 26 kept open and SW emerged from bankruptcy in August of 2009. I don't think inventories or price points ever quite recovered from this damage, and when I visit the SW in Las Cruces, I get the hit that employee morale is not what it used to be, nor is the customer service.
SW still has some pretty good sale prices on firearms -- when it has any to sell.
At its height, when things were "normal," the SW reloading component and ammo inventories put Cabela's to shame. Many times, I and other veteran handloaders would walk customers through the process to get them started and even suggest loads or solutions to load and accuracy issues.

quote:

Originally posted by JBrown:

quote:

Originally posted by SlamFire:
I was disappointed that the retail outlets did not carry the Military Surplus in the catalogs they send me.

I believe that you are confusing Sportsman’s Warehouse with Sportsman’s Guide. For a long time I thought that they were the same company, but I believe they are not related.

I think you are right. I was hoping for them to be one and the same.

I stop at the one in Cedar City on the way to Wyoming from here, pretty good from my point on view.

From what I saw at the only store in florida

Better selection than academy
Much more guns and hunting than bass pro or academy

It is a big box gun store - first one I have seen.

Prices were much higher than I expected but the whole firearms industry is screwed.

I checked academy and sportsman sec financial - both have 35-36 percent gross margin.

So average product is market up 50
Percent.

I liked the store.

Surprised govt stopped bass pro from
Buying them.

Mike

I hit the one in St George and Cedar City Utah often.

I think they do a good job for most areas. I do buy more fishing stuff at SW then hunting. This is because we stock firearms and ammo.

Shop for sales I got my CZ 550 on sale than they had a 10% coupon I didn't know about, the salesman gave me the coupon. Don't let them mount a scope for you though.

A new SW took over a closed down Dick's about 7 miles from my house. They always have ammo and the prices are about $1-2 higher than the other box stores. They are cheaper than the small shops and don't charge a $6-15 handling fee for doing the paperwork along with the $1 background check we have.
I once needed a box of all copper .22 LR to hunt with. By the time I walked out of the small shop, it was $17. Never went back.

quote:

The inventory of firearms and reloading supplies was wonderful until Obama was elected in the fall of 2008, setting off the first serious gun, ammo and component shortage. This made the chain's liquidity issues much worse and it filed for bankruptcy in 2009, closed 23 stores, sold 15 to a Canadian co-op

????
I'm in the business of selling widgets, and suddenly, everybody thinks that widgets are going to be banned, so they all rush to my store and buy all I have and all I can get. At the same time the widget manufacturers turn out a record number of widgets and new widget manufacturers come online and start producing more widgets than the world has ever seen, so I have more widgets to sell and sell more of them than I ever dreamed of. Yep, a perfect storm for bankrupting me.

if you went out and got 3 more widget stores and then everyone realized they already had 17 widgets,, then how'd that work out for ya?

Stonecreek, our store was devoid of powder, primers, .22 ammunition, most other calibers of ammunition, AR-style rifles, etc., for many, many months; we did not see "normal" again for a couple of years. While we are currently swamped with ARs, the loading components remain extremely scarce or simply unobtainable. I am not sure what you mean by more widgets; I see very little expansion of capacity, and in fact Hornady and Hodgdon have specifically said no, we ain't gonna expand and be stuck with overcapacity when the market eventully gets back to normal.
So no, no one has more widgets to sell. They are out. Their sales are down and their bottom lines are hurting.

I make the drive into town once a week for vittles, sundries and always include a visit to the local SW. The store is well stocked, plenty of help on the floor, and factory ammo is beginning to fill the shelves again.
Heck, .30-06 brass appeared this week, so I bought a bag.
No complaints.

Guys, check the gun and ammunition sales for the last decade. There have never been as many guns MADE and SOLD in any similar span of time in the history of our country. Everybody and his grandmother are manufacturing guns. There are guns in stock in store which, in over a half-century of following the gun business that I've never heard of. Many of them are foreign-made, while many more are assembled in the U.S. from imported parts so that they skirt certain import restrictions. The number of manufacturers for AR-type guns alone exceeds the keys on your keyboard.

At the same time, no manufacturer has slowed their production of ammunition and components -- and imports from foreign manufacturers are at an all time high. Several new manufacturers have recently come online. They've just had a hard time keeping up with crazy demand.

So, if you're a retailer you have sold more guns and ammunition than ever before in history and sold them at a higher margin. This hardly sounds like a recipe for bankruptcy, but maybe classic economic theory is dead wrong? Maybe selling a lower volume at a tighter margin makes you more money? Hmmm . . . I've tried that in the past and it didn't seem to work for me.

Guns sales are slowing. Ammo sales will normalize but commodity prices will move ammo prices higher.

Covid sales boom allowed sportsman to pay down debt.

No sure what will be the new new thing in guns going forward. Hunting keep become a privilege/high cost activity in many states.

Mike

No matter what brick and mortar store you like the world wide web can get you a better deal from your couch.....

No gas required

In twin falls, its great for clothes boots etc, fishing gear, no powder,bullet, gun stuff in general, just empty shelves..

When I lived in Birmingham MI they opened a SW in Allen Park MI in 11/07. Nine months later they closed it. I went there right after they opened and they had really good prices on .300 WSM brass. I bought 200 rounds and reloaded it with 165 grain Sierra GameKings. I took the loaded rounds to Namibia with me in 2012, and shot Gemsbok, Kudu, Springbok, Black Wildebeest, a Jackal and a couple of Baboons with it.

Grand Junction has a Cabela's and a Sportsmen's Warehouse less than a mile apart. Sportsmen's Warehouse seems to have more in the way of ammo.

If I were dependent on either of them for reloading components I'd be taking up fishing or maybe pickleball.

We are just one more government decree away.


From all the bad stuff happening again.

quote:

Originally posted by MeMe:
A new SW took over a closed down Dick's about 7 miles from my house. They always have ammo and the prices are about $1-2 higher than the other box stores. They are cheaper than the small shops and don't charge a $6-15 handling fee for doing the paperwork along with the $1 background check we have.
I once needed a box of all copper .22 LR to hunt with. By the time I walked out of the small shop, it was $17. Never went back.

Copper is still $17, this may be an ongoing nuisance.