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John,

Some states here in the US have laws on the books called "lemon laws" to address consumer goods that constantly go back for repair. It started out dealing with automobiles, but I believe some states cover other consumer goods. I think that 6 trips back is the magic number.

For a rifle that number of trips back for work is not going to do. For cars, there is almost always a local authorized shop that can get your goods back within a few days. Warranty work on rifles is limited to usually a couple of places, and those places have backlogs to deal with. Thus, you measure your return in weeks or months, not days.

My own personal belief is that the popularity in double rifles is causing many manufacturers to pump out product. Where they may have made and sold a few doubles a year, they now have an opportunity to sell many of them.

It takes time and money to retool or expand a manufacturing line, not to mention getting trained craftsmen to work those lines. Frankly, the craftsmen are rare, and it takes years versus weeks to master some of these crafts.

A quick way to boost production is to subcontract a lot of the work out to a third party. That can be good or bad. Obviously, the quality control process needs to be changed to deal with outside vendors as opposed to employees.

There is one European maker that is going to be interesting to watch. I will not name the maker, since I do not want to have flamethrowers aimed at me.

This maker has been selling a lot more doubles in the past couple of years than before. They are even supplying doubles at a claimed discount of 20% for group buys (looks like 20 or so). Just on one other hunting board, they have had two of these group buys just this year.

At the same time, they just "private labeled" a double rifle for a major US sporting store (they make the rifle for the retailer allowing the retailer to put its name on the rifle). In November, this retailer listed 4 doubles in 470 from this maker.

I also understand that the maker involved is also adding a 500 Nitro Caliber to its mix.

That is a lot of activity without some major capital and some major lead time. Where they get the trained craftsmen I have no clue, unless they sub out the work.

I am not saying this is going to take down quality. I am saying that it certainly can. In fact, without an outstanding planning, training and retooling effort, it is more likely to end up producing more lower quality product, especially if they view the current interest in doubles as a temporary spike in demand and not a permanent trend that will set a new continuing production target.

We are probably in a phase where real bargains are not to be had. And in a phase where the axiom, "you get what you pay for", is all too true.

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