Marketing
The firearms industry to women: Shrink it and pink it.
14 Responses to “Marketing”
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June 1st, 2016 at 1:25 pm
Pink guns are not meant to be sold to ladies. They are meant to be sold to husbands.
June 1st, 2016 at 3:41 pm
I get the lady’s irritation, but she, you, and HL are all actually wrong. Sales demand drives that silly shit the same as it does all the tacti-crap stuff.
I can put a pink (or better yet, Tiffany blue) LCP in the case and most females skip right past the Sig, the Glock, and the Smith .380’s and squeal to hold it. That’s because most females ain’t real gunnies…yet. But if pretty-in-pink gets them going I’m all for it. And for the makers, they’re going to make what sells. There might be a bit of the tail wagging the dog here, but it’s mostly bitches getting what they want.
Conversely, I can put a stripped high quality AR on the rack but what gets 90% of the ooohs and aaaahs? That’d be whatever has the most rails on rails and doodads and gimcracks, all in black, camo, dirt, tan, whatev. That’s because most dudes ain’t real gunnies yet either, but they want to be and they gotta start somewhere, and they mostly don’t want to hear advice. And rest assured that the reason the aftermarket AR doodad and gimcrack market has burgeoned is because what’s getting made is what sells, not because the makers want to push that plastic black crack on newbies. Those bitches too, are buying what they want.
It really ain’t a chromosome thing, it’s more a function of the mega-expansion of the gun market to include a much larger share of folks that heretofore were agnostic. They’ll get better at it and more informed and more selective later on. And that right there is a very good thing.
June 1st, 2016 at 5:06 pm
Wait; aren’t we supposed to believe that all women can, and want to, do anything any man can do, and that any disparity is the result of willful discrimination against women? That’s what we’ve been told since the 1960s, if not before.
By that narrative then, the existence of little pink guns is conclusive proof of oppression against women. Those misogynist NRA types anyway… #WarOnWomen
Seriously though; JTC has a good point.
June 1st, 2016 at 5:51 pm
I can only speak to my experiences, but I had a lot more females specifically ask if the firearm came in something other than the ridiculous “girl colors” than I did females asking for the aforementioned “girl colors”.
June 1st, 2016 at 11:02 pm
It may have to do with retail context, but if they have to “ask” then you’re doing something wrong. Displayed in the case, side-by-side, and even (or especially!) with a higher pricepoint, the newbies are attracted to colors like moths to a flame.
Notice I didn’t say gals or guys, just newbies, but even that is not a disqualifier, for guys especially. Put a black G32 next to a brown or green one priced $50 higher, and see which one they want to hold. Newbies mostly won’t gravitate to an
esoteric .357 caliber right? And yet as someone who only bets on sure things, I’ll lay two to one the colorized version gets more love.
All of which puts the lie to the whole misogyny thing for sure; if there’s any manufacturer market baiting going on, it’s totally co-ed, if anything even weighted more towards dudes. And that’s in spite of what I’ve heard from Glock reps that colored polymer is a bit weaker…you know they’ve got a private-joke smirk on when they see the tactidudes going for all that mil-nomered colorized plastic in spite of, or in ignorance of, that little factoid.
June 2nd, 2016 at 6:01 pm
Not sure about your area, JTC, but firearms in stores here are secured in cases, so “asking” is kind of mandatory.
June 2nd, 2016 at 8:11 pm
Unless you’ve got opaque cases there, “secured in cases” is the same as “displayed in the case”, and a black’n and a pink’n “side by side” rather obviates asking about availability…unless, you know, your customer is being obtuse. Or unless you are. 🙂
June 2nd, 2016 at 8:36 pm
“…colored polymer is a bit weaker…”
Wait; black isn’t colored? I guess it’d depend on the specific polymer. Some are naturally clear for example, or milky whitish. You can’t made a blanket statement like that about polymers, can you?
On that note; I’ve known a fair number of company reps (meaning I’ve had something of an on-going relationship with them) who aren’t what we’d call technical experts by any stretch. In fact there may be an inverse relationship between technical prowess and the ability to “sell snow to the Eskimos”. For another thing; you generally don’t take your most knowledgable, experienced technicians off the line and send them into the field as salesmen because that would tend to be a waste of human assets.
June 2nd, 2016 at 9:08 pm
It’s the industry’s balls on the line. Let them make their own decisions as to the percentage of pink they choose. I’m sure that they have more precise information than the rest of us.
Still, there’s the fact that idiots abound, and I’ve made money in the market because underlings on Wall St have to overreact to impress the boss that they’re not asleep at the switch. However, we disinterested, more leisurely, country boys can make money like that. 🙂 Not a problem for me.
June 2nd, 2016 at 9:45 pm
“…unless, you know, your customer is being obtuse.”
Or, unless your customer is lazy and doesn’t want to look through the ~300 linear feet of cases your store has.
Or your customer wants to see what other stores in your chain have and is willing to wait for delivery.
But, yeah, you obviously know what you’re talking about. Run with that.
June 2nd, 2016 at 10:09 pm
“…unless your customer is lazy…” And blind.
But, yeah, you obviously think there’s a big industry plot to insult, belittle, and force unwanted feminine choices on their biggest growth market…that wouldn’t be too bright, and based on sales growth I’ll run with them responding to demand rather than dictating it.
Dude, you’re beclowning yourself now.
June 2nd, 2016 at 10:19 pm
“…black isn’t colored?”
Not since about 1963. 🙂
But you’re right about reps, but these guys were G-lock LEO salesmen, pretty high-volume and you would think high-information. Still, that’s why I said factoid and not fact.
I’m no chemist and I don’t even play one on the tubes, but polymer itself and colorants are various chemicals, some of which could have different tensile properties than others, and it doesn’t make sense that they would dis their own product and hurt sales of new versions of it. I was just passing along what I was told, not tryin’ to ‘splain it.
June 2nd, 2016 at 10:24 pm
Heh, apparently it’s an ongoing topic, and this must’ve been the same rep I talked to a few years ago:
http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/defensive-carry-guns/168981-polymer-colors-frame-weakness.html
There’s a ton more discussion of same gist at various sites; I did not know that.
June 3rd, 2016 at 12:46 am
I did not know that either. Thanks for sharing. I’ll only say that when I was deep into the musical instrument world as a technician, there was always some sort of buzz or rumor that made no technical sense whatever, but was none the less taken very seriously by the very serious musicians, music professors and their students. Everyone’s looking for an edge, whether it be performers, students or salesmen, and so you’ll see some bizarre things being marketed.
I don’t know about this particular claim, but I’ve come be skeptical is all. I have, for example, personally, used black dye in mixing epoxies to make a non black epoxy black, see, so in that case we’d be talking about the black dye’s effect on tensile strength and some other color of dye having a different effect on tensile strength. No, we’re not talking about epoxy, but I’ll bet good money that there are black plastics that are black only because of the black dye that’s in them. Other polymers may well be black naturally so it’d be a choice between dye and no dye, and in that case the salesman’s claim would be plausible.