The FBMG convoy got back from SHOT show last night, and we promptly set about working on the new store. Our grand opening is in a few days, and there is a lot of work to be done.
Once I get everything squared away on this front, I’ll take some time to compose a big post about SHOT. Overall it was fun, and we got a lot of work done. Plus we got to be 20 feet from the first negligent discharge in 30 years of SHOT shows. So it was like historic and stuff.
Our new store is three times bigger than the old place, and that is just the retail space alone. You walk in, turn to the side, and it is just this big, open room. Bright, airy, tall ceilings, light colored slat wall, it looks gorgeous, you have no idea how excited I am.
For those of you that are locals and have been shopping with us for the last two years, you know that our old parking situation sucked. We shared a parking lot with the Ramada Inn, and you got to walk through the bushes to get to our front door. Sure, there was parking closer, but those were all claimed by our landlord. The new place has 30+ parking spaces, right in front.
The old building was cramped. My paperwork area was right behind the cash register. Which meant that I could never get any of the daily BS, that makes running a small business so fun, actually done. Now I have an office.
Our official grand opening date is on Monday the 11th. (and we’re open Mondays from now on, we will only be closed on Sunday). Between now and then, we’ve got tons of work to do. Who would have thought that moving a business would be slightly complicated. Go figure.
To kick off our grand opening, we will be having some very special sales. The biggest sale will be what we are calling the FBMG Economic Stimulus Package. If you thought our Christmas sale was awesome, just wait for this. Our goal is to get a good Evil Black Rifle in the hands of everyone before one of the various douche bags running for president gets in and starts randomly banning everything fun.
The Economic Stimulus Package AR will have an added bonus too. I forgot to mention earlier, but FBMG is now a Stag authorized service center, so for warranty work, (not that we’ve ever really had any warranty issues with Stag) your official lifetime warranty work can be done right here at our shop.
We will also be running two simultaneous group buys this month, CZ and Kahr. I’ll post more details in the next couple of days. Basically I won’t be advertising prices, you’ll need to e-mail me for a quote (at a really super good price), and then order. You will be able to pick any of their products (that includes Dan Wesson, and long guns, even the Vz rifles). I’ll be ordering a large quantity of each to help stock the new store, and this will be a good chance to jump in on that order to help my initial numbers up.
All three of these sales will be for both locals, and we will ship to out of state dealers. I’m thinking about getting a PM9 for my wife, and a vz58 for myself, but that is totally dependant upon how many guns you guys buy this month. Ahh… the joys of being a small business man.
Because we got to work directly with the High-Mack-Daddy of Laser-Simulator based training at SHOT, I’ve personally learned a lot of new things to maximize the value of our Prism simulator. I thought I had a clue how to get the full value out of a Prism, but seeing this guy in action, teaching hard core professionals, really opened my eyes. We built a special room right off the custom gun counter, and we’ll be renting it out constantly.
If you’ve been calling the shop, you’ve been getting a full voice-mail box. Sorry about that. The phone company has not got our number transferred over yet, so our primary phone line is in limbo right now. As has been my fbmginc.com e-mail address for the last week. I’ll try to respond to everyone as communication access is restored. Right now my options are A. take a flame thrower down to the phone company and dispense indiscriminate justice. Or B Take up alcoholism. Or C. Just wait until the phone line is ported over on Monday. So, looks like C is the winner… for now. (flame thrower hums menacingly in background)
The retail will be open the 11th. We’ll break ground on the addition for the range in the next few months, and we’ll be shooting here in 2008. 24 lanes, 25 meters, all rifle rated. I’m so pumped.
So come and see us on Monday.