I have a good friend in management for one of the major firearms distribution companies. One of the main companies who supply all the LGS. I enjoy getting his perspective often about the overall market, product success and failure, what really moves, where supply, demand and the overall supply chain for firearms, ammunition, accessories really is at any given time.
When I spoke with him at lunch today he told me the current situation has stressed the supply chain beyond any of the other panics he has seen over the last 25 years that he has been in the business.
Demand has quadrupled, sales have doubled, all while production has likely been halved over the course of the last 120 days.
To compound the supply chain woes, Covid related shutdowns, reductions in capacity due to Covid, and quarantine efforts at manufacturers are the biggest culprits in making the supply situation much worse than previous demand spikes.
By early May demand had mostly leveled off, and he speculated that June would see some inventory rebuilding....no such luck. He said the last two weeks were the strongest in terms of orders in their history, just that they have very little to ship. He does not believe inventories will return to normal this summer. In fact his best guess at when we would see supply and demand back in some sort of balance like the pre-Covid months of 2020 was Q1'21, and that only if Trump wins.
It will be a seller's market for quite a while in his view.
I asked him if we could see a 9mm market shortage like the rimfire shortage of 2012-2013. He doubted that, as he believes those manufacturers are producing it at greater rates and have greater capacity that will prevent it long term. He thinks there will be nothing like the year long shortage we saw in rimfire ammo in that last panic.