Air Gun Home :: View topic - Are canadian airgun retailers greedy... god bless the U.S..

Kevin26 · New Member

Well folks, with the Canadian dollar being almost at par with the American dollar(99.65 cents), I decided that it was a great time to take a look at prices offered by Canadian airgun retailers to their clients.

D&L airguns (in Canada)
Diana 34 $412 (without a scope)
Beeman GS950 $305.99
AirgunDepot (U.S.)
Diana 34 $225.90 (with scope)
Beeman GS950 $193.90

So basically, If you want to pay close to double the price for airguns come to Canada to purchase your goods. Boy I can't wait for big boxers to come and wipe these guys out. :D

AirGunEric · Site Admin

Canadians are getting increasingly screwed on pricing (as compared to the U.S.) more and more it appears.

Look at any product- not just airguns. Canada has been traditionally more limited on selection of products than it's US neighbors, and somewhat on pricing over the last 30 years. That being said, the last 2-3 years have seen Canadians bending over and taking it without lube from most retailers.

The retailers of course always cop the same plea; "Canada is different than the U.S.- people are more spread out, transportation costs are higher and taxes are higher, yada yada yada." The problem with these arguments of course is that taxes, other than federal and provincial sales taxes, which have no bearing on the selling price itself, aren't applicable- Canada and the US have been governed by a "Free Trade" Agreement for 15 years now. Transportation may be more difficult and costly than in the U.S.- but this is not particularly significant- especially from a large retailers point of view. For example- a large Canadian Retailer distributes its parts/products from Toronto, Ontario to Kenora, Ontario (a trip of approximately 1050 miles or 1750km) strictly by truck- what's it cost to move a 53' trailer between from Toronto to Kenora and then back again (assuming the same trailer comes back totally empty)- let's be generous and say $15,000 Canadian (obviously this is way too high- but will also underline the point). How much, in dollar value, does a 53' trailer hold? Even if we pick rather large, but not too expensive items- like car tires with an average cost of $40 each, I bet 700 tires would fit on that truck, so 700 x $40= $28,000 plus $15,000 in transport is $43,000. Now divide this again by 700 tires and the 'cost' to get to Kenora becomes $61.43 or 50% higher. 50%- for large, cheap and inefficient to transport product- certainly not 100%. Now do the same thing with something easy to transport and expensive- for example, car starters and alternators averaging $75 in cost, 53' trailler will easily hold 5000 of these, so 5000 x $75= $375,000 plus $15k transport, or $390,000. Again, divide by the quantity of 5000, costs to Kenora are $78 or a 4% transportation cost.

Of course it is unlikely that a truck will only carry tires or car starters- it will have a mixed batch of stuff. But to suggest that transport costs might be 15% at a very high priced transport method would be more than generous. So- double the price for products in Canada is, quite simply, highway robbery.

The exodus of shoppers from Canada to the U.S. will be starting very soon with the near-equal dollars. Then the Canadian retailers can whine to the government for special treatment, lay off people and generally complain how bad they have it, despite the fact they were raping the Canadian consumer for years prior.

My argument here mainly applies to the larger retailers, but a similar logic is applicable to smaller retailers as well- it just isn't quite as obvious and they may in fact have higher additional costs than 15% (as per my example)- but certainly not 50% or 100% in additional costs than their US equivalents.

Alstone · Moderator & Site Supporter

If it make's you feel better Eric we get screwed twice as much as you, even airguns made over here UK/Europe, and when we buy somthing from the USA and get it back here, and something goes wrong with it, dealers tell us to send it back to the USA for repair under the guarantee.

Al

AirGunEric · Site Admin

Ridiculous, isn't it? I'm not sure why U.S. consumers seem to have the ability to demand low pricing and get it, while other countries do not. Sure, sure- "economy of scale" and all that. But when a product is made in the UK and is sold in the U.S. for less than in the UK- something's wrong. Same thing happens for Canadian products in the U.S. as well- a great example being oil/gasoline (petrol). Obviously, government taxation levels have something to do with it- but I have no doubt non-competitive retailing policies also play a part.

Kevin26 · New Member

No worries, I'm on the case. This thieving will be put to a grinding stop real soon. A couple of well placed e-mails, to the right people and voila!
All of can make a difference by also becoming "price nazis" . And when you see gougers, call them out, just as you would with somebody purse snatching on the street. Laughing

AirGunEric · Site Admin

Kevin- you have some "special connections" or what are you getting at? If you have places people can email to try and effectively raise issue with the out-dated and out-moded methods used by Canadian retailers to screw Canadian consumers out of their money- let us all know. The more the merrier when emailing people who might be able to help rectify the situation!

sniper · Silver Status Member

wow! i'd be curious to see a price breakdown of airguns country to country. in california where i live there is a shop in my neighborhood mac-1 air where i can get a beeman r-9 double gold with scope for $475. you non u.s. guys are paying firearm prices. i'm sure it's greed. another way to take guns away is price gouging

AirGunEric · Site Admin

It's been awhile since this was posted!

Since that time, I have a much greater knowledge of what is going on in Canada in respect to airgun prices.

"Greed" could be considered a factor- but only at the top levels of the supply chain- some manufacturers and the largest retailers (i.e. Canadian Tire and WalMart in Canada).

Canadian retailers are typically charged more than US-based retailers for the same product- often significantly more. In some case this might be justified because of "detuning" required to be done for the Canadian market, but in the case of airguns that do not need to be "detuned" this should be, but often isn't, irrelevant.

Larger retailers (the two mentioned) are also given significant price breaks by airgun manufacturers, but these are not passed on to consumers- they are absorbed by the superstore retailers as extra profit.

The US-Canadian dollar exchange, which is currently working against Canadian consumers causes price issues. If someone bought a load of inventory when the exchange rate was 30% a few weeks ago, but now it is closer to 25%, they have "expensive" inventory and cannot immediately pass on the lower exchange rate to consumers or they are falling 5% further behind themselves.

Then of course are the slightly higher transportation costs from a US manufacturer to a Canadian retailer. Not particularly relevant in a shipment of hundreds of pieces, but if a shipment is not so large, those transportation costs can become significant (higher shipping and cross-border "brokerage" charges).

Add in that a US-company that wants to have warranty representation in Canada so consumers don't have to ship product over the border when it goes bad, and costs go up again. Frankly, this could be avoided by having small repair shops cover warranty work, but most manufacturers have moved away from this and only use a single representative for warranty in Canada, and often their main purpose is to service the stuff that got sold through the big-box/superstore vendors. If a Canadian consumer could get a currently $200 rifle for $100 but will have to ship it to the US if it needs warranty service, that would likely be more acceptable. But for a "big box" store customer- the "big box" store wants to be able to return the items within Canada and this doesn't happen.

ndttech · New Member

Although this is a late reply....

Picking up a Winchester 500 from the local airgun supplier gives you a Hatsan (33 or 35) equivalent made in Turkey that runs around 550fps ( depending on pellet)...

Picking up a Winchester 500 from Walmart gives you a branded Xisico B12, made in China...that comes no where near the quality of the Turkey equipment.

I can state this, as I have had both and took the Walmart piece back...

regards...

Brian
Ontario, Canada