Marketing

 

Yeah, Wow. A video by Sig showcasing why Sig is dominant in the market?

 

Cool video. I did not realize Sig was private - that does allow more flexibility in how they can operate vs public firms. If their ownership is private equity, it's a strategic one for sure.

The video reflected slick marketing, but offered a good overview of factual background as well. Thanks for posting it!

 

Sig is and always has been owned by L&O Holdings which is basically two people who boughtthe company in the dark days. Today they not only are the huge firearms operation but a large force in fabric manufacturing.

 

Marketing will only get you so far. Combine good marketing along with quality and you have the bifecta.
You can dress a pig in a silk suit, but it’s still a pig. …..Good Lord, I’m starting to sound like Willard! 🤔

 

Marketing will only get you so far.

Combine good marketing along with quality and you have the bifecta.

You can dress a pig in a silk suit, but it’s still a pig. …..

Good Lord, I’m starting to sound like Willard! 🤔

Silk suits and great marketing notwithstanding,

luckily no SIG is a pig...

 

Thanks for the post. Fascinating, not to mention I'd like to go to the "Sig Experience",
but I don't see NH in my itinerary anytime soon.

 

That's too bad. Coming starting in the spring is so much more that the SEC. The Seacoast area has so much to offer.

 

Sig is a fine weapon. I carried one as a service weapon for about 6 years and it never failed me. But, as a company, they do some things that are a little shaky, and some of their other products are third class. For example the Romero Zero red dot. It's a cheap sight, that's fine. But it is poorly designed (watch comparison videos) and very fragile. They've made some upgrades in later versions and made a metal shroud to help with the fragility. If you buy the Romero Zero sight it will come with the shroud. If you buy a NEW P365 XL it will come without the shroud. I'd expect a quality company to sell a NEW weapon with the newest upgrades. But that doesn't happen at Sig.

 

...I'd expect a quality company to sell a NEW weapon with the newest upgrades. But that doesn't happen at Sig.

Why would you expect that? You really think that every model they offer should come with every upgrade they offer as well? If I buy a base model P229, should I expect it comes with everything that the Legion P229 offers?

 

Cold hard reality for the haters: Sig has been a very innovative company over the last decade.
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Marketing and Beta Testers.

 

SIG seems pretty good at reading the landscape of the market. Today people want small compact, lightweight, easy to carry, easy to shoot, self-defense handguns in readily accessible calibers. So, what we're getting is the 320 and 365 in 9mm and .380. These guns help bring in the "newbies" to the brand and to the older, "old school" designs and maybe to competition guns later on.

I'm a good example, while very far from being a "newbie" to guns, I bought a 320 compact as a carry gun, I really liked it from the start but went to the smaller easier to conceal Sub-Compact. Later on, I decided to try the more target oriented 320 X5 and a full size 320 .45acp. Then having four guns and thousands of rounds through the brand I couldn't turn down a 1911 TACOPS when it fell into my lap. Like potato chips you can't have just one.

(I need to add a pic of TACOPS to my file)

 

SIG seems pretty good at reading the landscape of the market. Today people want small compact, lightweight, easy to carry, easy to shoot, self-defense handguns in readily accessible calibers.

Generally speaking I agree, but there's also plenty of folks that enjoy and covet the classic "P" series
and 1911's. While Sig still feeds that group, they don't seem to be going out of their way to come out
with something new. For example, I was surprised Sig doesn't offer a 1911 commander size in 9mm
when pretty much everyone else does. Or how about more 226/229 custom shops?

But don't misunderstand, far be it for me to question their business model. They're clearly successful.
But sometimes that success move you towards the "easy money", rather than what the company was
originally built on.

Ok, I'm done

 

Oh so droll.

Sig should be a business school Case Study.

 

Well, Sig may be dominant in modern small arms, but Tyrannosaurus Rex is dominant in prehistoric small arms!

 

I love the point he made about SIG being a private company who can take aim long range rather than try to beat a quarterly target. I’ve sat in boardrooms and listened to VPs laying out how to beat this or that metric for a quarter and known it was the wrong decision for long term and been proven right too many times.

To be innovative requires thinking 3 or 5 or 10 years down the road and spending money now that will do nothing for the short term except lower this month’s net income. Too many CEOs long term plan amounts to a “pump and dump” and move on to a bigger-better job before it all crumbles.

 

I love the point he made about SIG being a private company who can take aim long range rather than try to beat a quarterly target. I’ve sat in boardrooms and listened to VPs laying out how to beat this or that metric for a quarter and known it was the wrong decision for long term and been proven right too many times.

To be innovative requires thinking 3 or 5 or 10 years down the road and spending money now that will do nothing for the short term except lower this month’s net income. Too many CEOs long term plan amounts to a “pump and dump” and move on to a bigger-better job before it all crumbles.

Agreed. I thought that was a pretty valid and interesting point, and one that I hadn't thought much about previously.

 

When one hears/reads things like this, it is prudent to ask what wasn’t said. ?How many failures did they go through before they got to where they are. ?How much of where they are is due to good marketing rather than really good guns. I am reminded of Glock - still a dominant weapon in LEO circles. ?Why is that. The design is ancient, with no additional features to address any of the common complaints about Glocks (?grip angle anyone).

Sig has made more than its fair share of mistakes, but people don’t like to talk about them, or poo-poo them as fanboys. But honesty requires to note that lots of companies on their way towards excellence have done the same. ?Does anyone remember the old Honda Dreamcycle. What a POS! But you can’t say that about modern Hondas. Sig is probably no different.

 

I agree... Many many people forget 'Glock reliability' didn't come about until Glock finalized the design- and that was mid generation 3 pistols. Prior to mid gen 3 they were still tweaking important components for reliability and durability.
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Some how, I don't think that Sig dominates the firearms market. Worldwide or in the USA.
I like and have Sigs but I don't think they've beat Glock, or Markarov/Kalashnikov yet.

 

2021 industry sales data show Sig third overall in U.S. sales- only behind Ruger and S&W. They're the big three and they make a wide variety of handguns and long guns.
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Well.....Sig has me convinced- their guns are the best bang for the buck.

 

I agree with a lot of what he's saying. They have turned me into a super fan over the last few years.

From what I understand, a lot (most? all?) of their CNC machines are made by Makino and my son is a Makino service tech. I'm hoping that if/when he gets sent there for service work that I can fly out and meet him there. I'm sure I won't be able to get a tour of the plant but I'd like to see the other public facing facilities they have out there while spending some father/son time together

 

While I am a fan of sig, I have noticed a lot of guntubers doing similar sig videos lately, which tells me that sig is doing a guntuber marketing campaign.



Soli Deo Gloria

 

That's a smart idea by Sig. I watched many videos before I bought my 365XL.

 

Really enjoyed the video. Thanks for sharing.

 

I am an Sig fan. I am also a fan of about twenty other gun manufacturers.

 

Excellent video - I've watched several of David's other videos and he's a pretty straight shooter. I'm a Sig fanboy and it depicts exactly why I'm such a fan. 👍

 

I say it’s because of their versatility and making it easy to have several variations in one firearm!

 

The P365 wasn't the first "micro 9" but was it not the first micro 9 that wasn't a single-stack? And I'm trying to think of a company that beat Sig to market with the non-serialized grip module and separate fire control unit and nope, I've got nothing. I believe these started with Sig but if I'm full of it, I'm interested in being set straight.

 

Ron Cohen.

There are fans of his and non-fans of his. One thing the detractors say is that he is not a “gun enthusiast”. The fact he worked at Kimber is not a plus IMM.

OTOH, you have to give him credit where credit is due. The “old” Sig 250 was not a fine pistol. I have a contractor friend who took a chest full of them to the sandbox and they did so poorly he just left the chest there. Not worth shipping home. But Cohen took the idea of the 250, Sig’s first attempt at a modular pistol, and made a winner - first with the 320 and then capitalizing on the whole FCU idea of modularity, the 365. No one else that I know of makes a modular pistol, and certainly not one as successful as either of the two models. They are, as production guns go, innovative, reliable, well built, affordable. Those are not minor characteristics.

What I don’t know much about is their rifle line. To me they seem to make a rifle, then abandon it promptly, only to come out with another rifle - which they abandon also. There has not been a steady, quality AR that has hit the market consciousness like, say, an HK AR. The last area I DON’T see them playing in is the long-range arena. Barrett seems to have the lock on both .338 Lapua and .50 BMG. Nothing wrong with Barrett rifles but expense. Just like S&W came out with a much lower priced Staccato, so I would expect Sig to do the same to Barrett. After all, Barrett never set out to make a sniper rifle - their purpose was a 1500 m target rifle.

 

I’d say that they met the right people that make the decision instead of appealing to the crowd. Usually one person makes the decision if you go high enough

 

These companies reflect a balance between marketing, engineering, manufacturing and customer service. When a company gets this balance right they serve the marketplace with high quality products that meet the needs of their customers.

The pace with which each of these aspects of the business advances keeps them in the position they achieve within their industry. In the firearm industry, there are many pressures (political and otherwise) that other industries don't have to deal with. A company like SIG has organized to have the flexibility to deal with external pressures as well as their own internal balance.

Today's firearms industry is remarkably competitive. In most nations, this involves military and police agency sales with a very small civilian component. In the United States, the focus is primarily on civilian sales today, with military and police agency contracts providing a core business as well as export opportunitites.

The United States marketplace is saturated today with inexpensive as well as high quality imported arms, and a large number of manufacturers that have located production into the Southern US states.

ATF NICS checks reflect sales, and they keep breaking records.

https://thereload.com/gun-sales-jumped-in-october/

 

2021 industry sales data show Sig third overall in U.S. sales- only behind Ruger and S&W. They're the big three and they make a wide variety of handguns and long guns.
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This might be the article you are referring to: Top 25 Largest Firearm Manufacturers of 2021

It doesn't have a breakdown of rifle vs. pistol but Sig produced significantly more units than some of the other big names like Glock.

Sig passed Glock year's ago in sales.

The U.S. and Canadian military contracts helped. And IIRC, Sig is #2 as far as use in U.S. LE.

What has significantly helped Sig is that they are pretty dialed into what their customer base wants/needs. The P365 series of pistol is a prime example.

1. I wish someone would make a small 9mm with large capacity options...Sig introduces the P365.
2. I wish the P365 had even higher capacity...Sig introduces the 12 and 15 round mags.
3. I wish Sig would offer a MS option...Sig introduces the P35 with a MS option.
4. I wish I could convert my non-MS P365 to a MS P365...Sig makes the parts available.
5. I wish the P365 had a longer slide and grip...Sig introduces the P365XL.
6. I wish the P365 had the same slide but a longer grip...Sig introduces the P365X.
7. I wish the P365 came in a service pistol sized pistol with an even larger capacity mag that was compatible with my other P365's...Sig introduces the P365 Macro Comp.
8. I wish the P365 Macro wasn't comped...Sig introduces a non-comped model.
9. I wish the P365 came in a Legion...Sig introduces a P365 Legion.

A similar story can be listed on the P320 as well. Not to mention the various iterations of the Classic P-series pistol.

Although I do like Glock, the same thing simply isn't true.

• I wish Glock made a slimmer 9mm pistol...25 years later Glock introduces the G43.
• I wish the Glock 43 had higher OEM capacity options....chirp.
• Okay, well I wish Glock had a slimmer 9mm pistol with better capacity options...Glock introduces the 43X and G48.
• I wish the 43X/G48 had higher OEM capacity options...chirp.
• I wish Glock had a MS option...chirp.

There is a distinct difference between a company that does their level best to provide options to the consumer based on customer feedback and a company that gives you what they give you and you can like it or go pound sand.

So Sig continues to gain market share while companies like Glock continue to lose market share.