Member Purchasing Information and Procedures
Wednesday, 1 July 2015
CRGC members, as a benefit of belonging to the club, have the opportunity to purchase sporting goods through the club at near wholesale prices. The club has dealer or purchasing agreements with a number of manufacturers and distributors through which the club can buy products. There are a large number of categories of products available from hundreds of manufacturers. The product categories include:
The most notable thing missing from that list is clothing, and we have few sources for clothing mostly because there are so many options: - type, color, size, manufacturer - and achieving a satisfactory fit makes a high probability of product returns, which we are not staffed or funded to do. There are also some other products we cannot get because of manufacturer sales policies. For instance, some manufacturers, particularly in archery equipment, do not sell through distributors - they only sell their products directly to the consumer or through retail dealers who stock their products. Other manufacturers may generally sell their products through distributors, but restrict some of their brands to be only sold through retail dealers. Benelli, Beretta, and Browning, among others, each have a few brands or particular models of firearms that are sold this way. In addition, some manufacturers are not carried by the distributors, mostly because the two parties cannot reach agreement on a mutually beneficial sales contract (and there are dozens of variations on distributor sales agreements).
CRGC members are expected to do their own research to narrow down the options they wish to consider. Ideally, a member interested in purchasing products will be able to specify the name of the manufacturer (e.g. Ruger), the manufacturer's name for the product (like "Mark III Target"), and the manufacturer's product number - SKU, Stock Keeping Unit - that uniquely identifies the product (10103, for the stainless steel version of the Ruger Mark III Target). That way both the member and the person who will find out about pricing and availability are certain to be talking about the same item. One of the 6 distributors used by CRGC carries 5,278 different firearms, which includes 1332 semi-automatic handguns, 126 of them are chambered in .22 LR, and 22 of those are made by Ruger. Of those 22, 15 are different configurations of Ruger Mark III pistols. Without a reasonable degree of specificity, the CRGC person getting the information can waste a lot of time researching the wrong products.
An actual example of a purchase request came from a member who wanted to get a blue or black 9mm pistol that could be carried in a pocket. The need is certainly reasonable, but there are (from one distributor), 439 semi-automatic pistols chambered in 9mm from 32 different manufacturers, and 140 of these pistols are black or blue and have barrels less than 4 inches long. Clearly some filtering needed to be done before CRGC got involved.
A reasonable question is "Where does one find the manufacturer SKU?". Quite a few manufacturers do not make it easy to find the SKU for a product. In most cases you can get the product SKU from either the manufacturer catalog (sometimes it is labelled as an order number or product number) or the manufacturer web site, after you drill down to look at detailed information about the product you are after. In some cases you actually have to have the product in the shopping cart before you can see the SKU (then clear the cart lest you accidentally order the product). Some manufacturer web sites will not show you the SKU in their web sales pages, but will allow you to download a .pdf version of their catalog, which might contain the information. Sometimes a helpful web site, like that of Midway USA, will display the manufacturer SKU (for the same reason that we want it) with the display of the product on their web page. Brownells also displays the manufacturer SKU, but not as clearly as Midway USA. In any case, if you get a SKU from a non-manufacturer web site, make sure you are getting the manufacturer's SKU, not the dealer's SKU for the same product. If you cannot find a SKU for a product, sometimes you can find the Universal Product Code - UPC - which is a 12 digit number which is unique to a particular manufacturer and product. The UPC for the Ruger Mark III Target above is 736676101030.
Although we are not looking for extra work, the CRGC members who work on product purchasing can provide advice, references to other members who were looking for or who bought the same firearm, and references to articles from the Gun Test magazine (one of the most reliable and unbiased sources of information available) and web sites that have relevant information. The members who work on purchasing also have lots of opinions on the various aspects of purchasing firearms and other products, but they usually try not to express them. Not too much, anyway.
Product pricing is fairly simple. The CRGC members who research the pricing and availability for a product will look for the best deal they can find. Sometimes, though, the distributor with the best deal does not have any product in stock, but the wholesale pricing of products generally only varies by a few percent, so there may not be any significant cost increase between distributors. The price of the product will be provided, along with a guesstimate of the shipping cost (if any), and any other charges, such as background checks, HAZMAT fees, or oversize freight fees. For member purchases, CRGC adds 2% to the cost of the product, and rounds the total amount of the invoice up to the next whole dollar amount. The 2% is applied only to the product price, not the other costs associated with the purchase.
Payment is also simple: cash, check, money order, or credit card. If you use a credit card, we will have to add that fee to the purchase amount. The fee currently is $1.15 for the first $10.00 plus 1.65% of the remaining amount of the purchase. No prepayment is required for purchases of less than $500, or for products that are on backorder (since we have no idea when, if ever, they will be received). Prepayment is required for in-stock orders in excess of $500. Payment can be made at the clubhouse any Tuesday or Thursday evening, or a check or money order can be mailed to CRGC.
CRGC rarely special orders products for non-members, with a couple of exceptions. Qualifying non-members are of two types: people who are part of the member's family, and those people unrelated to the member (co-workers, for example). CRGC members can sponsor a non-member's purchase (meaning that they know the person well enough that the person can legitimately purchase the product, and that the member will assure CRGC of the prompt payment of the purchase amount by the non-member). The CRGC add-on for family members is 2%, as noted in the previous paragraph. At the moment the CRGC add-on for non-members who are not related to the CRGC member is 10%.
There are, currently, two members who handle the club's purchasing - the treasurer Doug Phaneuf), and member Greg Thomas. Both can be reached by e-mail to crgc@canby.com.
When CRGC orders products, the cost of shipping and HAZMAT fees can form a significant part of the charge. Whenever possible CRGC aggregates member orders and club orders so that the costs and fees can be split among all of the people who have orders from the same distributor. HAZMAT fees are only split among the people who have ordered MAZMAT products - powders and primers, but not ammunition. The cost of the shipping and other fees (like handling and insurance) is split among all of the people on that order in proportion to the cost of the products each person has ordered. That is not the ideal method, but it is the only one available to CRGC, as we do not have information about the cost of shipping each individual item. Moreover, each distributor charges for shipping in a different way - some just pass along whatever the shipper's charges are, while others offer discounted or variable priced shipping based upon the total price of the order, and others charge no shipping at all, or, like Brownells or Amazon.com, have annual shipping fee programs that is a fixed fee per year regarding of the number or cost of the orders.
Products may be shipped to CRGC different ways - by U.S. Postal Service, by common carrier (e.g. DHL, FedEx, or UPS), or commercial freight. Handguns shipped from distributors are always sent by second day air via either FedEx or UPS, and this is much more expensive than shipment by ground transportation. This second day air shipment is required by FedEx and UPS, not by the distributor. FedEx and UPS are making you pay a premium so that they reduce their risk of loss through mishandling or theft. Ordinarily distributors ship by FedEx or UPS, and use commercial freight for either large or heavy orders. If you want to receive your order more quickly than the normal shipping procedures, we may be able to use a premium delivery method, but that will add from $20 to $100 (or more) to the cost of shipping.
Once an order has been placed, it is usually picked from the warehouse for shipping by the end of the next business day, and often sooner than that - sometimes on the same day as the order is place. After the products for the shipment have all been picked and packed, they are placed on a truck for shipping. The time required to ship product to CRGC varies. The distributors used by CRGC have warehouses around the United States, and not every warehouse for the same distributor has all the same products. Shipping time, for about 90% of the shipments received by CRGC from warehouses in California, Minnesota, and Texas, is 2 to 4 business days. Shipments coming from Missouri, Louisiana, and North Carolina generally take from 4 to 5 business days. CRGC generally receives a tracking number for each shipment, but we are generally not told what is on that particular shipment, and it takes some searching on the distributor web site to figure it out.
One disadvantage of ordering through distributors, and one of the primary reasons we are careful about ordering the correct product, is that it is difficult to return a product to a distributor. The distributors will generally not accept returns for an incorrect order, or there is a substantial fee for the returns, in addition to the cost of shipping. Generally it costs CRGC, and the member, less to keep the product rather than return it.
When a member is given information about the availability of a product, that information is valid only at that instant in time. The distributors we use ship orders in quantity to their dealers, and it is not unusual at all to have a warehouse show more than 100 products available, and have them all gone a few hours later after the distributor gets an order from a large dealer. Some distributors will accept backorders, and some will not. Some will send us an e-mail when a requested product is received in stock (which really does us little good, unless they also hold that product for us, which few of them will do). Some of the distributors can tell us, if the product is not available, whether or not they have any on order, and when they are expecting to receive that order. (That does not necessarily mean we will receive any part of the order the distributor receives.) The distributors rely on manufacturers to give them estimated dates by which the product will be shipped to them. Our experience is that manufacturer shipping estimates are nearly completely unreliable, and generally extremely optimistic. The problem is worse for products manufactured outside the United States, as those in many cases end up being political footballs, and can be delayed for arbitrary reasons which have nothing to do with the manufacturer or the U.S. company placing the orders.
Despite what may appear to be a complicated process, it usually works pretty smoothly, and is fairly easy from the member's point of view - just know what you want, and how soon you want to get it. Given our discount levels at the various manufacturers and distributors, it is easily possible for a member to save several times their annual dues in just one order. A recent example was a Navy Arms 1873 rifle that a member had seen a local sporting goods dealer for $2,999.00. A check of our distributors showed that it was available at a wholesale price of $2,099.00 (+ 2%).
We expect the CRGC procedures to evolve over the next 12 months or so, as we get more help and automate more of the process. But much of the foregoing will not change, and should remain useful. If you have questions about the process, please send an e-mail to Doug Phaneuf, and he will try to get an answer to you as soon as he can.