Judging by the latest posts on this and other forums, it seems that airgun interests are going in different directions. 4 or 5 years ago, all you read about was high end rifles and getting power out of them for long distance shooting. This was stimulated by the Extreme Benchrest competition. I think that we have all discovered that we have reached the wall on airgun power, and anything approaching Mach 1 is no good. Further, there has been a huge influx of newer, cheaper rifles from other parts of the world that seem to perform pretty well and are attracting new shooters and those not interested in competition. Also, it seems that stuff posted on the classifieds are not selling, even at bargain basement prices. What do y'all think about that?
It's not something that I've given a lot of thought to, but sitting here thinking about it now I cannot say where airgun interests are going. I do notice changes. I don't have answers to all these types of questions and/or ideas. I do not know many airgunners in my area other than the two that I have encountered, one I met on here. I hear firearm shooting just about everyday. When I see firearm adverts, the prices on some pretty nice rifles rival prices on high-end air rifles. Some of these air rifles are Johnny-come-lately companies using eager airgunners as beta-testers. I think from a R&D standpoint this can work short-term, but can be harmful long-term as a business model. It seems to work in sectors like the gaming sector where updates can be released and downloaded after testers flesh out the bugs. But how can you do that with an airgun? Once you buy it, it's yours. Anyone know of an airgun company that sends out and sells early production run guns and later allows customers to return them once they receive feedback detailing problematic areas and flaws from avid and popular shooters, smiths, and competitors? This sort of model allows them to improve said guns on subsequent runs because they receive feedback from experienced smiths and competitive shooter that shoot a lot more frequently than the average consumer. This feedback goes into improving a platform and decreases production costs since all of the testing isn't done in-house. They can sell guns and work to improve the platform simultaneously and enough airgunners support the model for it to remain viable. As for the cheaper guns, they are a good introduction to the airgun shooting sports and eventually some of these customers will upgrade and try out brands and models that cost more. I mean look at us. Many of us started off with Daisy, Beeman, Sheridan, Crosman, Benjamin, etc as children and look at what we shoot now.
I've made several observations after being seriously into this not-so popular hobby for a few years now. I gauge its popularity against the hobbies of my peers, so this is more of an assumption than a fact. I believe that this is a small niche hobby where a company producing airguns needs to be competitive on a global scale to continue to stay afloat and profit. I imagine that airgun companies in some other countries have the luxury of cheaper labor, possibly cheaper materials, but have a tougher task of working out the logistics of shipping costs, marketing, and distribution. I'm no economist, but current events and geopolitics must come into play some sort of way. For example, I imagine that Edgun might be faring much better had Russia and Ukraine not been warring. They made/make several models, but their U.S. branch seems solely focused on producing the Edgun Leshiy 2 and various configurations of this platform. This is simply an example, not something I brought up to enter into a political discussion. The point is that external factors like wars, sanctions, and fluctuating material costs, inflation, etc also impact an already small niche of minuscule, non-essential, hobby markets. I don't need airguns to survive, but I might do ok with one if that's all I had. As for the bargain prices, I'm all for it. That's the time to buy. But once an aigunner has a gun or two to serve his/her desired purposes then we can hit a wall because the focus can shift towards accessories and having them all setup a certain way. Do any of you think that the guys that keep buying new airguns "just because" can sustain all of these companies so that they remain profitable? However it works for the companies, the consumer is going to do what works to satisfy their needs within their budgets. Considering that the holiday season is upon us in the United States guys are buying gifts for wives, children, grandchildren, friends, etc. Some filed taxes late and that $1000 plus airgun probably isn't high on the list of priorities when he has 5-20 airguns already.
