Why don’t they ever learn?

Got the latest flyer from Gander Mountain yesterday advertising their weekend MegaSale.

In the ad they listed 5 different kinds of .22 rimfire ammo. All with strict limits.

So I stooped in at 3:00 today. All gone! Sold out by 10:00. They let the Stool Sitters camped out front get the WHOLE FREAKING LOT of it.

I couldn’t resist. I said to the manager, “Why don’t you smarten up and hold some of it back? You know, put a third of the shipment out each day of the sale so some people besides the Stool Sitters can get some for once?”

“Ummmmmmm… Well… we just put it out and you know… “

Why don’t they ever learn? They just let the Stool Sitters clean out the ammo because they’re too lazy to meter it out.

You would think Gander Mtn in Woodbury would be trying harder and trying smarter seeing as how Cabela’s is going to be hammering them into the ground in less than a month. Guess as long as the stool sitters are happy.

Grouse

As a shooter myself I’m on your side.

But if you had a store would you care if one or 8 people purchased the ammo as long as it sold at your asking price?

They know they don’t have enough for the demand, they shouldn’t even advertise it. But they are looking for that impulse buy for someone who comes in to purchase ammo and then looks around and ends up buying something they didnt even come for or need.

I dont understand the shortage on .22 you would think they could hammer out a couple million a day

If it were my company, I would be much more sensitive to my store’s reputation.

By featuring this ammo on the front page of a newspaper circular, the implication is that you have some quantity of this ammo. It is an absolute disgrace to allow that supply to be gone the weekday morning the sale starts.

As you say, the profit is the same. The difference is that making a bunch of POS Stool Sitters happy because they can resell the ammo you just let them walk out with does nothing to repair the store’s reputation with the hundreds of people who saw the add and came in to empty shelves.

The .22 LR shortage is 100% due to shelf-stripping stool sitters. The more ammo they grab to resell, the shorter the supply becuase people won’t pay price-gouger prices. So when there is a legit sale, demand is even higher, but then the clueless Gander Mountains of the world play into the Stool Sitters hands buy letting them walk out with all the ammo.

A downward spiral made worse by clueless retailers.

Grouse

Grouse, have you ever worked in cabelas, bass pro, or gander mnt during a “mega” sale? I understand your frustration, but I hear your complaint at EVERY door buster sale I have worked at. Personally, I would have held some back to place each day to keep customers coming in. But habits for to put everything out because of other products that haven’t sold out in the past.

I agree. This has been going on for a loooong time. They know what is going to happen and they should be more supportive of their customers by randomly putting the .22 ammo out. I hope the new Cabelas thinks of little things like this and runs gm right out of town.

I picked up a box of 500 .22LR Federal on Thursday at GM in Waite Park. Limit was 1 box and I whistled while I left the store during my lunch hour Blame it on the stoolers and not the retailer. Could you imagine if you went in there for your box, they didn’t give you one and a guy 10 minutes later walked out with what should have been your box, because they had it “held back” ? Oh the wrath they would get then !!!! (do you think Cabelas and the likes “hold back” when a customer asks if they have any in the back ? If they do, that is quite the exact opposite of any business model I ever heard of… now limiting quantities, yes, but not witholding merchandise… I learned at a young age, the early bird gets the worm and if you don’t get moving, your apt to get worms…. 3 days of stool sitters or one day, what’s the difference if you wander in at 3pm ? (FWIW, how do you tell a stool sitter from, say an avid shooter ?)

IMO, desperate times call for desperate measures. While it might be unconventional, I believe the act of major retailers spreading out their supply of .22 LR is appropriate given the extraordinary situation we’re in with regard to the rimfire shortage.

The side benefit of what I’m suggesting is that it would break the backs of the Stool Sitters because they couldn’t continue to strangle the market. If they didn’t know when the ammo would be there, buying and reselling it becomes a lot more work and a lot less profitable. If big retailers did what I’m suggesting for a couple of weeks, the whole shortage would be over because the POS stool sitters would have to chase the ammo like everyone else.

I feel sorry for all the real sportsmen out there who don’t have the luxury of being able to go out and sit on a stool in front of Gander Mountain at 6 AM to get a box of .22 rimfires. The early bird, often times, has a freaking job to go to, kids to take care of, and a family to feed. So they can’t be squatting on a stool in a parking lot all day.

BTW, I’m sure there are a few real sportsmen who do manage to camp out with the Stool Sitters. But let’s be honest, from conversations I’ve had with employees it’s well known that the Stool Sitters are, 95% the same people every week. They are profiteering ammo flippers.

Several guys on other forums have had to run “charity drives” to get enough rimfire ammo so that their kids could shoot the youth .22s they had received for their birthdays. To me, it’s completely sick that big retailers like Gander won’t lift a finger to try to break the run on ammo by Stool Sitters and guys out there who can’t afford to go out and sit on their @ss at Gander’s door have to beg because of it.

Some may question the “fairness” as Big G points out, but isn’t random luck of the draw more fair than letting the Stool Sitters clean everything out and leave everyone else with 100% of nothing? I think I speak for the vast majority out there when I say people would rather have some chance than no chance.

The situation is starting to improve slowly. I guess I’m lucky in that I have other stuff to shoot, but I feel bad for all the kids and people out there who just like to have some fun with rimfires and can’t find a round to fire because of one small group of profiteers.

Grouse

I agree entirely on what you just said above… but I don’t believe this is exclusive to GM, I don’t think anyone, including FF bring their .22LR out in waves… (I tried for 3 months to get .380 HP’s there, with no luck) …what needs to happen is people quit paying the high prices the re-sellers are getting. That would put a halt to it in a hurry

Being just a bird hunter and not a shooter, could someone please explain why we have an ammunition shortage?

Is it because of the current anti gun administration in DC?

Or is it a raw material shortage?

The current ammo shortage is caused by several factors. Many have tried to draw a link between the shortage and some Obama administration policy that is restricting the raw materials side. These have been completely debunked by the ammo industry itself which has constantly pointed out that the only cause is unprecedented demand.

If you look at the factual record, the Obama administration has done almost nothing when it comes to anti-gun legislation. Also, people forget that the VAST majority of anti-gun laws are STATE laws, not Federal. So the bottom line is there is no link between Obama and Federal laws and the ammo shortage.

Frist, there was massive panic buying after the Newtown shooting incident. The panic buying was irrational because there was never any mention or serious effort toward the restricting ammunition sales.

The panic buying led to the second cause–hoarding. Many, many people bought and hoarded MASSIVE supplies of ammo that were far in excess of what they would shoot even over a multi-year period. It was commonplace also to see people making speculative buys of ammo based on guns they might buy in the future.

These two factors led to a downward spiral whereby ammo became hard to get, which fueled the panic, which created even more demand, which fueled greater panic because it was even harder to get, which brought on yet more panic buying and hoarding…

Gradually, supplies of ammo have become available again, but there are still massive shortages of .22 rimfire cartridges. This shortage is caused entirely by “ammo flippers” who are buying up ammo at the retail level to resell at a profit.

Because the supply is so low, the misery is made worse by the fact that the few shipments retailers DO get, are immediately gobbled up by stool-squatting hordes of ammo flippers who huddle in front of the stores waiting to clean out the limited stocks as soon as they are put on the shelf.

Grouse

Bingo… I also hear and even asked myself, why they don’t ramp up .22LR production…? They have. Rimfire has a specific process to make, it is not like a centerfire round, where they can just “dump” the powder into the cartirdge.. it is “spun” after inserted into the casing, to get it into the rim… hence rimfire. I learned quite a bit from a ammo nut, one day at lunch.

Ramping up production sounds good in theory, but in reality the ammo makers like every other business are tuned to a certain level of demand. Having extra capacity costs money and that is 100% wasted if you don’t use the capacity.

So it isn’t possible to just turn the dial to the “faster” position and make an extra 100 million rounds per week.

Reps from several ammo makers all said essentially the same thing: Even if we could have doubled production overnight, it wouldn’t have been enough to make even a dent in the overall surge in demand.

What is hard to grasp about this whole situation is that there’s really no “shortage” in terms of production. The main ammo makers will make more .22 rimfire rounds this year than they have ever made in history.

And still the shelves are empty.

So where is it all going? It’s being horded and it’s being grabbed off the shelves at Walmart and Gander and being kept in the basement of some stool-squatting ammo flipper while he waits for some fool to respond to his ad for 50 rimfire rounds for 50 bucks on gunsite.com.

There is no shortage, there is a surplus of POS flippers and hoarders.

Grouse