How Leading Gun Manufacturers are Finding New Sources of Competitive Edge
It’s no secret that data is the new battlefield. The few who have managed to leverage it effectively have a powerful weapon at their fingertips. MarketPlace Insight, a leading source of data analytics and insights for the outdoors industry, is helping leaders turn data into a competitive asset.
Seeing the Whole Battlefield
Just as a military commander must see the whole battlefield, so it is with data. Data often resides in company silos and isn’t quickly usable even by the people who work in those silos. There might be data from your manufacturing operations, from the marketing group, or from finance. These might be hard numbers, or anecdotal stories from staff members, or somewhere in between. But making timely decisions on that data is often difficult. And mashing that data across silos so that everyone in the company is on the same page is almost impossible.
Reaping the Rewards
MarketPlace Insight is changing that and some leaders have started to take notice. Leveraging the exclusive data that MarketPlace Insight shares, ranging from transactional data from Gunbroker.com – the largest gun auction site on the internet – to data from millions of email subscribers, to activity on some of the most premium outdoor media properties on the web, MarketPlace Insight (MPI) helped Century Arms grow new lines of business and increase profitability across their entire company.
“The analytics from MPI have enabled us to create a new multi-million dollar line of business from scratch,” said Jim Drager, COO of Century Arms. “It’s also enabled us to create huge growth and profits across the rest of the company, creating double digit growth this year. We have a certain line of pistols that sold a few thousand units in 2014. This year that number will increase by 500%.
The data and analytics are a huge part of that growth. We’re looking at real data now, not just comparing opinions. It’s brought the whole team together, providing clarity and unifying our decision-making and the actions we are taking. And I think the results speak for themselves.”
How MarketPlace Insight is Helping
“We’re working very hard to bring together the most comprehensive data, spanning all manufacturers, models, and customer demographics, to provide unparalleled insight into outdoor enthusiasts,” said Ryan Nokes, Director of MarketPlace Insight. “We see this as a win for everyone. Manufacturers and advertisers gain a better understanding of their customers – what content they consume, what they are interested in, what media they watch, what they buy and why – and in turn, outdoorsmen and women get a more targeted, customized experience based on their needs and interests. Our data allows the industry to move from guesses and gut instinct to facts and data-driven intelligence. Information like this just doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Sun Tzu in The Art of War said, “Know thyself, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.” With the ability to effectively compete on analytics, those victories are consistently, and predictably, within reach.
To learn more about how your business can improve decision-making with access to MPI data, contact Ryan Nokes, Director of MarketPlace Insight, 614-620-0480.
