Photo Courtesy of Bass Pro Shops

Most gun salesmen spend their time in front of racks of guns. Not Chad Seaverns. He spends his days in a virtual mall. As the chief operating officer of the National Firearms Dealer Network (NFDN) he believes he has a good part of your gun-buying future in his hands.

Sure, Seaverns knows that a survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) found that only 13 percent of gun sales were started online in 2011. But he sees that as a fine beginning, saying the 87 percent represents raw potential. NFDN looks at the dynamic marketplace fueled by record gun sales and a growing number of gun owners (more than 100 million in the United States) with optimism and predicts tremendous growth online.

“A lot of people don’t know about all the deals out there and new buying options for firearms and related products,” says Seaverns. “Our company can help them find those deals through live-streaming technology.”

When you log onto nfdmall.com storefronts appear on your computer’s screen—digital street signs for Beretta, Mossberg, Smith & Wesson and many other gunmakers. You’ll be able to shop by company or firearm type. You can just go right in with a few clicks to check out whatever you’re after. As you do you’ll cleanly view competing products and see technical information that’ll make you an educated consumer.

Of course you can’t walk out of a virtual mall with a gun. Your order will be sent to a nearby gun dealer that has a Federal Firearms License (FFL). You can then go right into the gun shop of your choosing and complete your purchase—after going through a background check, of course.

The local gun store won’t mind, either, because it gets the sale. It simply pays NFDN a monthly fee for the service. NFDN provides the gun shop with a website template that it can modify and control. The store can even upload more products and name its own prices. Basically, NFDN is a central hub that sends your searches into the deep databases of the four largest distributors. When you choose a product—a gun, riflescope or whatever—you click “Buy Now” and then choose where you want to physically purchase your product. As you do that you are seamlessly transferred to a website maintained by a local gun shop or sporting goods retailer.

A great benefit of the system is that you can find almost anything real-time in the distributors’ warehouses. Your local gun shop might not have a magazine for your SIG Sauer P938, but NFDN’s real-time link to the distributors’ databases will likely turn up whatever you’re after. You can even compare prices by using NFDN’s site to check the websites of your local gun stores.

That’s just the beginning of why Seaverns thinks he has a bead on the future of gun sales at nfdmall.com. Maybe you’ve seen some of your local gun shops go bust. Maybe you’ve lamented that those independent little stores with the gun guru behind the counter are being beat-out by the big-box stores and destination retailers. Maybe you still go to a local gun shop when you can because the service is so good and because you know that the guys or gals behind the counter know their guns. Well, NFDN works exclusively with those types of stores.

“We encourage the stores we work with to have a kiosk in the store so they can help customers look up and order anything they don’t have in stock,” says Seaverns. “Most products will be delivered within a few days.”

NFDN has already signed up more than 560 local stores and is growing. As it expands, NFDN is helping to level the playing field for local sporting goods stores. This isn’t to say that one type of store is better than another, but rather that more competition—choices for you—is a good thing.

All this makes NFDN different from businesses such as gunbroker.com and other online gun-auction sites, but it doesn’t displace the important niche such sites have established. Gunbroker.com links buyers and sellers and uses local licensed firearm dealers as transfer agents (stores with FFLs typically charge between $20 and $50 to do a background check and, if approved, transfer a firearm). At auction sites you have the tools to locate hard-to-find used guns and to possibly get deals. Though it should be noted that even gunbroker.com is hard to categorize in this evolving marketplace, as it isn’t just a gun-auction site. It also offers hunting gear, collectibles and other goods.

At press time gunbroker.com had many more receiving FFLs listed than did NFDN, but the latter is a young and growing company so that’s to be expected.

There are, of course, other online players in the market. Gunsamerica.com, for example, calls itself the “Largest online gun classifieds since 1997.” It says it is dealing with so much change in the marketplace that it placed a disclaimer on the website that reads, “[P]lease don’t be alarmed or get too miffed at us if you see something you do not like or notice something is not working properly. All you need to do is contact customer service and let us know.” That’s a sign that a company is trying to keep up with the competition in an evolving marketplace—again, that’s good for you.

A downside to buying used firearms from private sellers, of course, is that some deals are too good to be true. Online businesses that link buyers and private sellers through an FFL mostly have good reputations and tools for consumers to use to avoid being taken, but you do have to be careful.

NFDN doesn’t have that problem, as consumers using nfdmall.com are actually buying new goods from local gun shops or sporting goods stores. That’s not to say one buying option is better than the other, but simply that there are more options than ever. Speaking of choices, the brick-and-mortar stores haven’t been idle. There is a lot more to this story on the changing marketplace of gun sales.

The Big-Store Expansion

At the end of 2013, Cabela’s had 50 stores and plans to open 13 more in 2014. Bass Pro Shops had 59 stores and plans to open about a half dozen more in 2014. At press time Bass Pro’s latest store opening was a 104,000-sq.-ft. store in Round Rock, Texas—the second fastest growing city in 2012, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This is Bass Pros’ seventh store in Texas. The company estimated that 116 million people would visit its 77 stores (including Tracker Marine Centers) across America and Canada in 2013—about 40 million more than attend Major League Baseball games during a typical year.

To attain such growth Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shops have turned their retail stores into attractions that bring the outdoors inside with top-quality taxidermy, aquariums stocked with monster bass, indoor mountains and archery ranges. Currently, the largest Cabela’s retail facility is in Hamburg, Pa. It has more than 250,000 sq.-ft. of floor space. Bass Pro says its average customer stays two and a half hours and drives an average distance of 50-plus miles. Cabela’s has similar statistics.

In fact, Ralph Castner, Cabela’s chief financial officer, says, “A lot of people drive 100 miles or more to go to our stores. We’re expanding to make their drives shorter and to reach new customers. They come a long way because we offer deals on gear, large firearm selections and because our stores host a lot of events and attractions.”

Cabela’s is a publicly traded corporation trading under “CAB.” Cabela’s founders, Dick and Mary Cabela and Dick’s brother, James Cabela, began Cabela’s in 1961 and took the company public in 2004. About half of Cabela’s sales come from hunting-related merchandise with about a third coming from the sale of firearms, ammunition and accessories in 2012. Also, in 2012 about 30 percent of Cabela’s revenue came from catalogs that have long been goody lists for sportsmen.

Bass Pro Shops is a privately owned corporation. In 1971, Johnny Morris rented a U-Haul trailer and took off across the country filling it with the newest premium fishing tackle he could find. When he returned to Springfield, Mo., he set up shop in his father’s liquor store, which was located on the way to Table Rock Lake. The site of the original Bass Pro store in Springfield now brings in more than 4 million visitors annually and is the state’s top tourist attraction.