Absolutely agree Bashaw Sports is a great place to shop. Friendly people, great selection and competitive prices. Biggest problem, it is a heck of a long ways to go, with little else in Bashaw to round out the trip. If I lived anywhere close to Bashaw, Pud's store would be one of my favourite hang outs.
Wholesale's issue is its phone ordering, on-line sales capacity and in store experience are all just mediocre at best. They have expanded very rapidly and have not kept an integrated channels strategy in place. When they used to have a couple of stores, the in store experience was great, and their catalogue ordering was also great. I lived in remote spots for many years, and a lot of those places had no supplies at all for shooters. I got care packages every couple of months from Wholesale for many years and the phone order staff were great. Even back ordered and special order stuff eventually showed up with me not having to do any follow up at all. Don't know if WS is capable of regaining that superior level of competency.
In my opinion, there is a great oppoortunity for an individually owned business to really grow and thrive if they take advantage of the opportunities to market from their much lower cost locations in rural Alberta or Saskatchewan. Cabela's, Bass Pro Shops, Brownell's, and Wholesale Sports when it started out, all started as one or two man operations that grew into very large businesses.
For many of the local mid sized Gun shops, some work upgrading their website to cover the full selection of their inventory, so we could browse on-line, good telephone ordering capacity and the ability to get orders shipped within a day or so at reasonable shipping prices would go a long ways to opening up a MUCH bigger market. A number of the great current gun shops may not be interested in this kind of business, preferring to stick to the face to face experience and that is fine. For the one that decides to go after a bigger chunk of the pie, it really is just sitting there waiting to be taken.
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