Name Taken
Ultimate Member
Placed an order on Sunday night and got it today...that's impressive compared to the other wait times I've had.
Two thumbs up to Joebobs.
Two thumbs up to Joebobs.
No longer offering an MDShooters store-wide discount
- Thread starter JoeBobOutfitters.com
- Start date
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DubleTap
Active Member
- Nov 19, 2011
- 157
Suggestion On Posting Inventory & In-Stock Alerts
First off, I want to thank Joe Bobs for their excellent service during this crazy time. I am a customer and will remain one, the MD Shooter discount is nice but certainly not a deal breaker. Their fast shipping and customer service is what keeps me with them. They are TOP NOTCH.
I would like to suggest the following. When a lower end item (like MAGS or lower parts kits let us say) comes in to Stock and say Uppers, could you straggle the posting of the items. When someone wants a $500-$600 its and cannot get into the site because 5000 buyers are trying to get 3 PMAGS or a Lower Parts Kit, it is really REALLY frustrating.
Also, when say Magazines, BCG's or Lower Parts Kits come into stock, whether at the same time as Lowers, Uppers or not, the staggering of the inventory would sure be nice for the customer. These Sold Out" in 1.5 minutes events are really frustrating for the consumer, as I am sure you know. While I know I am asking you to work a bit harder, in the name of customer relations I think it sure would be appreciated. I guess I am just asking to try and level the playing field for all.
I think that staggering of items so that many can get a chance at an item as well as lighten up the shopping pressure on your servers would be a really welcome idea. If I can mention a competitor, I have been battling with AIMS since last week with their weak servers and I am at the point of just passing on them as a vendor. They announce 2 Batches of MAGS, 2 types of Lowers and a few Uppers all at the same time and Boom, the website is locked up. Not even at a crawl, but locked up. It is really frustrating and quite upsetting. I think that staggering of the availability of certain items over a few days, or even over a 24 hour period, would help lighten the load on the servers, make it more “fair” for all customers to have a crack at the items and certainly make it more difficult for the “flippers”.
While I know you guys are having a really tough time right now and as a customer I appreciate all you do. But because you maintain a real time presence on this Forum (and that Sir is GREATLY appreciated) I wanted to bounce my thoughts off of you.
Thanks again, and I wish you continued success through this especially tough period in Fire Arms history.
First off, I want to thank Joe Bobs for their excellent service during this crazy time. I am a customer and will remain one, the MD Shooter discount is nice but certainly not a deal breaker. Their fast shipping and customer service is what keeps me with them. They are TOP NOTCH.
I would like to suggest the following. When a lower end item (like MAGS or lower parts kits let us say) comes in to Stock and say Uppers, could you straggle the posting of the items. When someone wants a $500-$600 its and cannot get into the site because 5000 buyers are trying to get 3 PMAGS or a Lower Parts Kit, it is really REALLY frustrating.
Also, when say Magazines, BCG's or Lower Parts Kits come into stock, whether at the same time as Lowers, Uppers or not, the staggering of the inventory would sure be nice for the customer. These Sold Out" in 1.5 minutes events are really frustrating for the consumer, as I am sure you know. While I know I am asking you to work a bit harder, in the name of customer relations I think it sure would be appreciated. I guess I am just asking to try and level the playing field for all.
I think that staggering of items so that many can get a chance at an item as well as lighten up the shopping pressure on your servers would be a really welcome idea. If I can mention a competitor, I have been battling with AIMS since last week with their weak servers and I am at the point of just passing on them as a vendor. They announce 2 Batches of MAGS, 2 types of Lowers and a few Uppers all at the same time and Boom, the website is locked up. Not even at a crawl, but locked up. It is really frustrating and quite upsetting. I think that staggering of the availability of certain items over a few days, or even over a 24 hour period, would help lighten the load on the servers, make it more “fair” for all customers to have a crack at the items and certainly make it more difficult for the “flippers”.
While I know you guys are having a really tough time right now and as a customer I appreciate all you do. But because you maintain a real time presence on this Forum (and that Sir is GREATLY appreciated) I wanted to bounce my thoughts off of you.
Thanks again, and I wish you continued success through this especially tough period in Fire Arms history.
FrankOceanXray
Ultimate Member
- Oct 29, 2008
- 12,037
A lot of entrepreneurs here. JB is doing a fine job. Maybe once all thus panic buying/pricing is done we can get back to being a bit more friendly.
(Sigh) 
This post was on here at approx 8:15 Eastern time and was taken down by "MrAnaya" from Hanover, MD or by an Admin. Either way, we'll respond to it publicly.
We try to run our business is an ethical long-term oriented manner. If someone doesn't like that, then they are more than welcome to shop around. EVERY consumer has likes and dislikes about the way a business is operated, or policies in place, pricing, shipping costs, etc. There are many variables to a business, and not all can please every customer, every single day of the week, especially in today's market. For any of those customers who feel they can do it better, I welcome you to enter into this highly viral, incredibly backed up market. It's a nightmare to even attempt to manage supply chains currently.
We will release our inventory how we see fit. We are a business, in it to make money, without a very secure future at the current moment. There is quite a bit of political turmoil which could affect our business model in a really bad way if things go poorly in legislatures around the country, or nationally. Being a relatively high profile online business, means everyone watches our inventory like a hawk. We sold 100 YHM stripped lowers today at a much higher price than we NORMALLY would sell them for, in under 30 minutes. YHM doesn't have the following Spike's does, obviously, and Spike's lowers fetch higher prices at most gun shops, or on Gunbroker (which is Market price).
We don't hide product on our website because then customers wouldn't know which sku's we did, or didn't already have on order. Why should a customer waste his time, or our time, emailing us about a SKU we obviously don't already stock. This also gives customers the ability to sign up for email notifications, so they don't have to check back every single day on the availability.
Like I said, we're a relatively high profile online business in a crazy market right now. We have a customer base that's over 50,000 customers deep, not including all those that randomly browse our website a month. In the last 30 days, we had 1/3 of a MILLION people hit our website. Many bounced off our website, but many browsed around.
Manufacturers cannot keep up at all with the current market conditions. Heck, they couldn't keep up for the last 12-18 months, really, before all this crap hit the fan.
We have MANY customers who sign up for email notifications on hard to get products such as Spike's lowers. Many of these customers want them for genuine use, and others just want to flip them for a profit.
Hypothetically, lets say we have 1000 customers who have signed up for email notifications for Spike's Punisher lowers. They haven't been released in months, and supply lines are dry, and market price is hovering around $250-$400 from many gun shops, gun shows, and Gunbroker.
We only received 100 of these Punisher lowers in stock last week, that were ordered 9 MONTHS ago. Lets say we hypothetically release these lowers, with a limit of 2 per customer. Chances are, at least half of those lowers will be "investment" lowers. So, 50 lowers are sold at a GREAT current value of $115, and 50 lowers are sold at a great price for a "flipper" to go and make a much larger profit margin on them than we make. A total of 50 customers, ordering 2 lowers each, would have gotten taken care of.
We have overhead, fixed costs, insurance, and the ATF to deal with. Those costs are umpteen hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Customers, in a TRUE market value scenario, should never make more money flipping a product within the same week than the dealer who is "in the business" and has the licensing to do so.
Now, remember how we said we probably have close to 1000 customers signed up for email notifications on this single SKU, right? So, lets say we hypothetically send out an availability notice to 1000 customers, who then proceed to email it to their friends, and post it on forums. The lowers would then sell out in 10-15 minutes tops. After that email list gets sent out we now have 1000-1500 customers on the hunt for these lowers, within an hour. That's not even considering the residual effects that trickle down from the hyperlinks, and emails that get opened up or forwarded on over time.
If we have 100 lowers, the vast majority will get 2 each. So, out of 1500 customers on the hunt, we'll have pleased 50. Hypothetically, 25 of of those customers will turn around and flip them for 2-3 times what we charged. 25 of those customers will be super pleased, however.
If you combine both sets of customer types buying those lowers, we'll have had 3.33% of customers be satisfied, that were looking at those lowers, within a very narrow window of time. That's a pretty crappy success rate, IMO.
We'll then get bombarded with emails and phone calls for days and days from upset customers. They'll talk about how they want to place backorders, even paying in advance (which we don't do) and how they are upset because we sent them an email that said they were in stock but then they sold out before they had a chance. IF we allowed backorders and instead of honoring those backorders, we sold product on Gunbroker, that might be a different story.
To hedge this, we sell some items that are in very high demand, on Gunbroker, or in-store only. We don't want to piss off customers, and we also don't want to charge through the roof. Gunbroker is a very fair venue. If you don't want to pay what the market states the product is worth, then you don't have to pay it. ALL of our Gunbroker customers, on the flip side, will be 100% satisfied. They will all receive a product at a price they were willing to pay in a very quick timline. No more, and no less. They also won't be flipping anything. If they're buying purely on speculation at today's market prices, then they will most likely be stuck with the bag. However, that's their risk. That's no different than buying Apple's stock, or Gold. It could go up, or down, with many variables in-between.
We don't have ANY upset customers when we do it this way. Customers can either pay whatever they bring, or look elsewhere. As the market price comes back down, then we'll be selling the crap out of the limited availability items on our website like always. Our prices have not come down at all in recent times ,but we have less inventory, and we have increasing fixed overhead due to the demand curve currently.
We have a business to run, and we also have a customer base to manage. When a manufacturer sends us tiny batches of inventory, its honestly not worth us releasing a product for 1/2-1/3 of MARKET price, and in doing so upset hundreds if not thousands of customers. While it may upset one or two customers by doing it this way, it does not have the snowball effect the alternative does. We honestly hate messing with gun broker, because it's more work, and we have to eat gunbroker fees, and deal with non paying bidders occasionally.
Just for the record, we've had about 30 auctions on Gunbroker in the last 30 days. In stark contrast, we've had over 6000 orders in the last 30 days placed through our website. You can do the math how much % of our business goes through Gunbroker. (If you can't, that's .5% of our total orders placed)
If anyone wants to complain about how we run our business, you are more than entitled to do so, but you're preaching to the choir. I can point to dozens if not hundreds of worse examples of "gouging" if one wants to call it that. It is a free market, and people pay what the want.
I would not demand anyone to sell me their house for 1/2 of the current MARKET value. Even though most people have their home value double every 10-20 years, and don't even put that much money into it! Even if I once saw it for sale for lower when market conditions were different!
If he can get more money for it elsewhere, then I'd expect him to do so. Same goes for someone's silver reserves, or 401k. Everything has a market value, which fluctuates. Everyone wants to be capitalistic when SELLING products, but never when BUYING. If you want to buy at a low price, with great availability, you'll have to let the market play its course for a while.
So if we've beat that dead horse enough...
We should be receiving a batch of Seekins FORGED lowers in stock within the next week or so. We'll be offering the first 1-200 to MD shooters members only. We're expecting price to be around $180, shipped.
We understand you guys have a major political battle that is brewing currently. We'd rather shoot these lowers out to a loyal customer base due to a potential ban looming, than to guys who want to just flip the lowers.
We are one of 4 or so major distributors that will be buying these direct from Seekins in bulk. We're "supposed" to see approx 10,000 of these lowers per year, but we'll see how many they actually come in at a time, or monthly. We do for sure have a fair amount incoming at this time though.
We'll post details up in a new thread within the next handful of days when we figure out how we're going to run things.
Please do NOT contact us for details on this special deal at this time
We'll post in this sub forum when we figure out how to best manage things.
This post was on here at approx 8:15 Eastern time and was taken down by "MrAnaya" from Hanover, MD or by an Admin. Either way, we'll respond to it publicly.
mranaya said:
We try to run our business is an ethical long-term oriented manner. If someone doesn't like that, then they are more than welcome to shop around. EVERY consumer has likes and dislikes about the way a business is operated, or policies in place, pricing, shipping costs, etc. There are many variables to a business, and not all can please every customer, every single day of the week, especially in today's market. For any of those customers who feel they can do it better, I welcome you to enter into this highly viral, incredibly backed up market. It's a nightmare to even attempt to manage supply chains currently.
We will release our inventory how we see fit. We are a business, in it to make money, without a very secure future at the current moment. There is quite a bit of political turmoil which could affect our business model in a really bad way if things go poorly in legislatures around the country, or nationally. Being a relatively high profile online business, means everyone watches our inventory like a hawk. We sold 100 YHM stripped lowers today at a much higher price than we NORMALLY would sell them for, in under 30 minutes. YHM doesn't have the following Spike's does, obviously, and Spike's lowers fetch higher prices at most gun shops, or on Gunbroker (which is Market price).
We don't hide product on our website because then customers wouldn't know which sku's we did, or didn't already have on order. Why should a customer waste his time, or our time, emailing us about a SKU we obviously don't already stock. This also gives customers the ability to sign up for email notifications, so they don't have to check back every single day on the availability.
Like I said, we're a relatively high profile online business in a crazy market right now. We have a customer base that's over 50,000 customers deep, not including all those that randomly browse our website a month. In the last 30 days, we had 1/3 of a MILLION people hit our website. Many bounced off our website, but many browsed around.
Manufacturers cannot keep up at all with the current market conditions. Heck, they couldn't keep up for the last 12-18 months, really, before all this crap hit the fan.
We have MANY customers who sign up for email notifications on hard to get products such as Spike's lowers. Many of these customers want them for genuine use, and others just want to flip them for a profit.
Hypothetically, lets say we have 1000 customers who have signed up for email notifications for Spike's Punisher lowers. They haven't been released in months, and supply lines are dry, and market price is hovering around $250-$400 from many gun shops, gun shows, and Gunbroker.
We only received 100 of these Punisher lowers in stock last week, that were ordered 9 MONTHS ago. Lets say we hypothetically release these lowers, with a limit of 2 per customer. Chances are, at least half of those lowers will be "investment" lowers. So, 50 lowers are sold at a GREAT current value of $115, and 50 lowers are sold at a great price for a "flipper" to go and make a much larger profit margin on them than we make. A total of 50 customers, ordering 2 lowers each, would have gotten taken care of.
We have overhead, fixed costs, insurance, and the ATF to deal with. Those costs are umpteen hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Customers, in a TRUE market value scenario, should never make more money flipping a product within the same week than the dealer who is "in the business" and has the licensing to do so.
Now, remember how we said we probably have close to 1000 customers signed up for email notifications on this single SKU, right? So, lets say we hypothetically send out an availability notice to 1000 customers, who then proceed to email it to their friends, and post it on forums. The lowers would then sell out in 10-15 minutes tops. After that email list gets sent out we now have 1000-1500 customers on the hunt for these lowers, within an hour. That's not even considering the residual effects that trickle down from the hyperlinks, and emails that get opened up or forwarded on over time.
If we have 100 lowers, the vast majority will get 2 each. So, out of 1500 customers on the hunt, we'll have pleased 50. Hypothetically, 25 of of those customers will turn around and flip them for 2-3 times what we charged. 25 of those customers will be super pleased, however.
If you combine both sets of customer types buying those lowers, we'll have had 3.33% of customers be satisfied, that were looking at those lowers, within a very narrow window of time. That's a pretty crappy success rate, IMO.
We'll then get bombarded with emails and phone calls for days and days from upset customers. They'll talk about how they want to place backorders, even paying in advance (which we don't do) and how they are upset because we sent them an email that said they were in stock but then they sold out before they had a chance. IF we allowed backorders and instead of honoring those backorders, we sold product on Gunbroker, that might be a different story.
To hedge this, we sell some items that are in very high demand, on Gunbroker, or in-store only. We don't want to piss off customers, and we also don't want to charge through the roof. Gunbroker is a very fair venue. If you don't want to pay what the market states the product is worth, then you don't have to pay it. ALL of our Gunbroker customers, on the flip side, will be 100% satisfied. They will all receive a product at a price they were willing to pay in a very quick timline. No more, and no less. They also won't be flipping anything. If they're buying purely on speculation at today's market prices, then they will most likely be stuck with the bag. However, that's their risk. That's no different than buying Apple's stock, or Gold. It could go up, or down, with many variables in-between.
We don't have ANY upset customers when we do it this way. Customers can either pay whatever they bring, or look elsewhere. As the market price comes back down, then we'll be selling the crap out of the limited availability items on our website like always. Our prices have not come down at all in recent times ,but we have less inventory, and we have increasing fixed overhead due to the demand curve currently.
We have a business to run, and we also have a customer base to manage. When a manufacturer sends us tiny batches of inventory, its honestly not worth us releasing a product for 1/2-1/3 of MARKET price, and in doing so upset hundreds if not thousands of customers. While it may upset one or two customers by doing it this way, it does not have the snowball effect the alternative does. We honestly hate messing with gun broker, because it's more work, and we have to eat gunbroker fees, and deal with non paying bidders occasionally.
Just for the record, we've had about 30 auctions on Gunbroker in the last 30 days. In stark contrast, we've had over 6000 orders in the last 30 days placed through our website. You can do the math how much % of our business goes through Gunbroker. (If you can't, that's .5% of our total orders placed)
If anyone wants to complain about how we run our business, you are more than entitled to do so, but you're preaching to the choir. I can point to dozens if not hundreds of worse examples of "gouging" if one wants to call it that. It is a free market, and people pay what the want.
I would not demand anyone to sell me their house for 1/2 of the current MARKET value. Even though most people have their home value double every 10-20 years, and don't even put that much money into it! Even if I once saw it for sale for lower when market conditions were different!
If he can get more money for it elsewhere, then I'd expect him to do so. Same goes for someone's silver reserves, or 401k. Everything has a market value, which fluctuates. Everyone wants to be capitalistic when SELLING products, but never when BUYING. If you want to buy at a low price, with great availability, you'll have to let the market play its course for a while.
So if we've beat that dead horse enough...
We should be receiving a batch of Seekins FORGED lowers in stock within the next week or so. We'll be offering the first 1-200 to MD shooters members only. We're expecting price to be around $180, shipped.
We understand you guys have a major political battle that is brewing currently. We'd rather shoot these lowers out to a loyal customer base due to a potential ban looming, than to guys who want to just flip the lowers.
We are one of 4 or so major distributors that will be buying these direct from Seekins in bulk. We're "supposed" to see approx 10,000 of these lowers per year, but we'll see how many they actually come in at a time, or monthly. We do for sure have a fair amount incoming at this time though.
We'll post details up in a new thread within the next handful of days when we figure out how we're going to run things.
Please do NOT contact us for details on this special deal at this time
We'll post in this sub forum when we figure out how to best manage things.
clandestine
AR-15 Savant
itsslow98
Ultimate Member
Very well put Joebob but not necessary IMO to explain yourself sicne youve done nothing wrong. Like its been said you cant please everyone especially in this frustrating market. I will be looking for those Seekins lowers when you sell them as Id like to have the ability years from now to build a different configuration of AR.
zombiehunter
Ultimate Member
- Jul 8, 2008
- 6,505
Well put. I hope I can get in on those lowers when they come in 
Maverick0313
Retired and loving it
mh53gunner
Active Member
- Dec 17, 2009
- 506
We area facing some real hard times in Maryland. Hopefully we will prevail, but this is Maryland, and one of the top crime states in the republic.
Best wishes for your business.!
Best wishes for your business.!
clandestine
AR-15 Savant
(Sigh)
"This post was on here at approx 8:15 Eastern time and was taken down by "MrAnaya" from Hanover, MD or by an Admin. Either way, we'll respond to it publicly."
Joseph,
I have an entire AR's worth of parts that are lacking a lower--a seller [on this site] who had one backordered [from Spikes] under a 6-month agreement to sell it to me promised, then reneged the day it arrived. I then offered to double our agreement (120 - 240), but he would not answer my message. With profit opportunities, many have abandoned all courtesies to not even honor 6-month promises, so I was frustrated after checking your site regularly, only to find five listed on Gunbrokers.
The mdshooters note I left was up for about 2 minutes before I [not admin] took it down, opting instead to just cool down and move on--as you yourself noted. Taking it down didn't tell you anything?
Mike
I'll sell you one of my stripped lowers for $600 and give the funds to Joebob. LULZ
You sent a nasty email, and left a post on a public forum to intentionally try to hurt our business, and cause us lost sales. Questioning our business practices and ethics publicly is not something I personally take lightly. Just like I wouldn't slander your family, I would expect the same respect back regarding MY livelihood. All of our business moves are methodical and well thought out, and they are far from trying to screw our loyal customer base over.
We'd rather throw it on Gunbroker away from the flippers,than jack up the price to our LOYAL customer base, that buys through our cart system daily. This craziness will pass sooner or later, and business will resume to a semi-normal level and pricing structure. However, availability on products will still be tight for the rest of the year.
If you have any QUESTIONS regarding our business choices, you can feel free to ASK us about it, rather than send shitty emails and put posts on forums. That would probably lead to a more favorable outcome without burning bridges.
If you have another beef with a DIFFERENT dealer, then take that up with them. That's not my issue, or concern. How WE run our inventory is our concern.
FrankOceanXray
Ultimate Member
- Oct 29, 2008
- 12,037
Oh boy. Some people's kids.
zombiehunter
Ultimate Member
- Jul 8, 2008
- 6,505
meh, in poor taste.
Last edited:
Elliotte
Ultimate Member
(Sigh)
"This post was on here at approx 8:15 Eastern time and was taken down by "MrAnaya" from Hanover, MD or by an Admin. Either way, we'll respond to it publicly."
Joseph,
I have an entire AR's worth of parts that are lacking a lower--a seller [on this site] who had one backordered [from Spikes] under a 6-month agreement to sell it to me promised, then reneged the day it arrived. I then offered to double our agreement (120 - 240), but he would not answer my message. With profit opportunities, many have abandoned all courtesies to not even honor 6-month promises, so I was frustrated after checking your site regularly, only to find five listed on Gunbrokers.
The mdshooters note I left was up for about 2 minutes before I [not admin] took it down, opting instead to just cool down and move on--as you yourself noted. Taking it down didn't tell you anything?
Mike
Did you see this thread in the WC? http://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?p=2118459#post2118459
Seems like this might be the seller of that lower, with a good reason to what happened.
MightyWarMonger
0351 Semper Fi
it was great to get the discount but I will still use your site
dan8480
Gun Addict
JoeBob is the best!! Nothing bad to say about him. At least hes honest. I always appreciate his posts, as they give a good look into the industry. Im sure he is not the only retailer that suffers the same problems. It is a 2 edged sword for him to join a site like this, I'm sure it is good for sales, etc, but it also a bad thing, it gives people the option to complain publicly. I'm sure an email or a phone call, would have been the best way to communicate something like this. If I was bitter with something, I'd much rather be a real man about it, and confront the situation personally behind closed doors(PM, EMAIL,Phone Call...). Give them a chance to explain themselves, and address your concerns before jumping to conclusions.
phx223
Member at Large
Fair enough. He was being a whiner.
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