Yep! Saw that happen to Nosler a few years back!
You know, it's not like all the bullet producers get together and decide to raise their prices. If one did that, the others will just pick up the slack. When they all do it, it's a pretty good indication that their raw material prices have increased. If the bullet industry doesn't paas the costs on to the comsumer, they won't be in business very long. Cost increases are a fact of life, deal with it.
Rick
Talk about bad timing for getting one's thumbs stuck under their armpits!!
It's been almost 10 years ago, give or take, that Nosler joined forces w/ Winchester to come up w/ their "Combined Technology Bullets"...Remember that? It was in the late winter/early spring - 1997?? - when lots of folks are loading up for PD safaris and GHs. Nosler had been riding on the new upsurge of varmint shooting which was catching fire back then, and their BT were flying off the shelf. (I guess they thought their product walked on water!) SO...One day I went into my favorite store and a box of 100 .224 50BTs had gone from $13 (high for the time as it was
) to $17.50 and later $18+!
As it happens, that was the time Hornandy was introducing their excellent V-Max for almost 1/2 the cost of Nosler's BTs. Suddenly the tide of buyers for the BTs got the word about the V-Maxes (favorable gun rag write-ups) and the tide ran out the door to the Hornandy store almost over night, leaving Nosler holding a paper tiger (and a LOT of PO'ed FORMER customers (like me) now only buy their BT stuff when there is no other choice).
It only took about 6 mos and the price of the BTs had fallen to below where they were before they got so proud of their bullets. But, thanks to their shenanigans they couldn't have given Hornandy a better leg up at the critical moment in the launch of a new product - the V-Max - and the Nosler BT has been running second place ever since...and the rest is history!
Nosler made a fine bullet, but got they got greedy. Others could make a fine bullet as well, and w/o material cost to back them up, they priced themselves right out of the market for a time - when the competition was just bringing their new product to the market. Talk about bad timing and shooting yourself in the foot!!!
Supply and demand. We wanted other nations of the world to become developed, and now the genie is out of the bottle, and I don't see much chance of it being put back in, anytime soon! Just when you introduce me to "drive buy" shooting in PD patches...I guess we're just gonna have to become better shots!
P.
