Stocks from USA

[Big Al]

I have watched this thread with great interest, as some will know I help Joe run Joe West Riflestocks. We have never been able to compete with Boyds as the cost of the raw laminate was always half the total cost of a Boyds stock. A few things come to mind firstly why have Boyds had a 30% price increase try that with any business and see what happens. Is there really enough money in Edgars selling a stock at £140 bearing in mind both they and your retailer has to make a profit ? We at Joe West have now developed a system to make the laminate at a viable cost which has better colour saturation and is denser than Rutlands was. We also have a dedicated cnc machine set for producing riflestocks. The problem we have is although boyds stock shapes are very simple and easy and quick to make, every action needs a slightly different stock shape, try fitting a ford engine in a Vauxhall. We could spend the time and get all the action inlets and various stock shapes on the cnc machine but how many would we really sell, would we ever recoup our investment, could we sell 20 a week to make it worth while.

Same old story the British market just is not big enough to be viable, abit sad really but we are better off sticking with kitchens as our main business and making a few F class stocks as a side line.

 

Edgar Bros must think the UK market is big enough, they will invest more in their initial order than I would expect it will cost you to set up.

 

If you set up for just the common actions like R700, M595 and T3 it wouldn't be so bad and they would most likely fill 90% of the demand. I would also expect the thumbhole version would make up a high percentage of that demand with maybe a shorter/varmint as an option. Personally I would always buy British if I had the option and wouldn't mind paying a bit extra the problem for me is your current stocks are just too much extra.

[Hatzi]

Boyd have very limited shape options and all seem to follow the US short LOP approach. They are cheap for a readon and you can guarantee the shapes are primarily limited by the size if the standard blanks or at least profiled and sized to optimise wastage. The Americans seem to prefer a very in-line style when prone, us brits seem to like a bit more offset.