doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Did we make Cabela's mad?

While I have agree the GL is pretty much a joke unless you can go there in person and are able to find a error in the buyers favor it is a very small part of their total business.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.Fil...GU9MQ==&t=1

I suspect its a business they are in because others are and it brings in buyers for the rest of the retail items.
I have never been in one and would go if there was one here in sales tax free NH,but I don't even bother to look at the listings on line anymore unless I need a good laugh.

I've made several purchases form them that I considered 'good' buys.

Last year at Las Vegas they spent top $ to buy some guns from a CA side by side collector (member).... I have noticed that they seem to ptting a lot more guns on the sale rack, maybe trying to reduce the odd things out of their inventory.

A close friend has made several good deals from them, the best was the parker listed as a repro that was actually a late Remington Parker. I don't remember the grade, but it was one that was never even made as a repro. (sorry Iam not a Parker Guy, I am just a poor boy)

If you think there prices are high, you should see the prices I saw last year at the Las Vegas Bass Pro shop....

Jerry

I was in the Wheeling WV store last week. The GL was a joke and the entire store was lacking merchandise to buy. Plenty of people in the store just not much to buy. Saved me money which I am sure to spend soon on another must buy gun. I think they are cutting back but in this economy that make sense.

The Ft Worth and Buda GLs are half empty, or they were a few weeks ago. The Basspro Fine Gun Room in Grapevine closed. Overall I like Cabela's and have made a few really good buys.

My most recent "buy" from Cabelas was an Iver Johnson (arrived today) Skeet-er in .410. The gun was advertised as "rough" I bought the gun over the phone from Scarborough ME while at the Owatonna GL. (Also bought a philly fox 16 ga. from MN) I got the gun and rough it was but I asked 3 specific things-bore condition, lock-up (on face?) and if it worked. Answer to all 3 was excellent bores, locked up perfect and yes it works. Well 2 out of 3 ain't bad. The bores are pristine, the gun locks up beautifully, but it doesn't work... Some "gunsmith" tried to make a cocking rod for it but failed miserably, so now I'm in search of a replacement. PS they mailed me the cocking rods via overnight express after they discovered that they forgot to put them back in... they arrived today at my house also.

Anybody know where i can get a cocking rod for this extractor gun as Numerich is back ordered...

Otherwise I have had plenty of pleasent dealings with the Owatonna MN store and give them kudos

I'll say this - it seems like 75% of the guns they list are 'sold'. I wonder why they don't remove them. Some have been listed 'sold' for months.

Greg, what you say might be true if you pull up the inventory from a specific store that's a little slow in managing its own website. However, if you pull up the general categories in which this group has the greatest interest (American/English/European shotguns), it looks like you might have left out a decimal point. Fewer than 1 in 10 marked "sale pending"; probably more like 1 in 15. I've seen other dealers specializing in doubles with a much higher percentage of "sold" or "sale pending" on their lists.

I also like Cabela's. That being said, since I have to drive 2 hours to get to their closest store, I always call in advance to make sure someone I've dealt with previously will be working. The GL's where I've bought all have at least one guy who's reasonably sharp on doubles. They might not stand out as experts in this crowd, but then some of us aren't all that good on, say, Winchester levers or Colt SAA's--and they deal in those as well. If you're working for Tony Galazan, your doublegun knowledge ought to be deeper, but you don't need to know much about other guns.

Cabela's is basically a dry goods retailer listed on the New York Stock Exchange as CAB, currently priced @ $14.92, which is 12 times forward (2010) earnings of $1.26; the 2009 earnings were $1.24 per share. This company is making money even in a down retail market.

Since summer of 2007, wife Nancy and I have put 52,000 miles on our Road Trek from Illinois to Maine, Florida, New Orleans, Michigan's UP, Montana, California, twice to Alaska, and almost everywhere in between. We always stop at the Cabela's and Bass Pros and Gander Mountains along the way, and I ask questions...

About this time last year, after what the drive-by media was widely reporting (make that speculating) about the 2008 "disaster" of Xmas non-shopping, I discovered by interviewing check-out persons at Bass Pro and Cabela's that they had a good Xmas-2008 rush with extra registers open, etc...and talking to the guys in the Gun Library (flashing my Parker credentials) I was surprised that sales of sporting goods, not just camp clothing, was strong. So I checked out CAB--then about $6.00 per share--but didn't buy any shares as CAB pays no dividends...

Woulda, coulda, shoulda, because it is now up 150%--$6.00 to $14.92--and has been as high as $17.73 this year!

Point being that it is pretty hard for some gun crank to observe the Gun Library at one selected store on one day (or over a period of time)or surf the Internet postings to draw conclusions about the business prospects of a NYSE listed company. There is a bigger picture: Ask yourself what a full-size mount of an elephant charging costs, or the lions, or the aquariums or the upkeep on the fish, or the animal mountain in the bigger stores. The hole-in-the-wall Gun Library is a "loss leader" to entertain retail buyers of camo clothing, ammo, duck decoys, deer stands, fishing stuff, common guns, woman's clothing, shoes and socks and boots, and assorted bling. The real issue in re: Cabela's success or failure this year has to do with these factors:

Management fright that the 2009 Xmas sales rush was going to be less on a same store basis than 2008...which led to...

Anticipating that an increasing percentage of customers who had just started to feel the recession in fall of 2008, yet still went shopping on their reserves for Xmas 2008, had during 2009 seen their unemployment expire and then be extended. With 10% unemployment built into the economy and a static CPI (no SSI increase, no automatic bumps for other pensions coupled to the CPI, or union contracts so linked) it was foreseeable that Xmas 2009 shopping would be down. Thus management bought less inventory for the Xmas 2009 rush, which, in turn, gave shoppers less incentive to buy, and the shelves are now relatively empty for post-Xmas sales. You can't sell what you don't have.

I predict that same store gross sales for 2009 will be down from 2008, while the investment pundits predict forward earnings--the bottom line--to be up a paltry two cents, which results from savings generated by reduced staff (more unemployment)and reduced interest costs occasioned by less inventory financed. None of this has anything to do with the price or quality of guns in the Gun Library.

Did you know that Cabela's owns its own captive bank so it can get funds at almost zero-% interest from the Fed, and issue MMCDs insured by the FDIC for virtually nothing-% interest and turn around and issue their own credit card with a high rate of interest so customers can charge stuff they really don't need and can't pay for when the buying impulse arises. In other words, a large portion of sales rung up do not involve the customer paying anything at point of sale. If there is a problem lurking behind the scene at Cabela's it is in the quality of their charge card receivables, not the quality of the guns in the Gun Library. But consider this:

A year ago you could have decided not to buy a $6,000 gun from the Cabela's Gun Library, but bought Cabela's stock instead. You could sell your CAB stock for a long term capital gain (15% tax rate) at today's market price on the NYSE for about $15,000. As Paul Harvey would say, if he were still alive, "That's the rest of the story." EDM

So......why did they pull there sponsorship...not enough bang for the buck?