RE: Bye Bye Indoor range
I gotta say Jeff, unless you can get leagues with dozens and dozens of people going all year round non stop, indoor 3D is a really tough way to make $$$. First you need to buy or lease the floor space for at least 30 yards indoors, and in a location with good enough traffic to get people in the door, this is super expensive. You typically need 3x as much floor space for the range itself than you do for the actual shop. Then the ongoing cost and upkeep of the targets themselves........it's going to cost a shop 5k-10k to buy 30 quality 3D targets, and then they are going to have to replace them nearly every year. That's a lot of money, when for $30k you can buy yourself a Technohunt system and only pay for 20 yards of floor space that is 12' wide,or simpler yethave some indoor lanes and just run spot leagues.
It's a tough situation, and I hope your shop owner does well in the new location.
We have a 20 yard range that is 4 lanes wide. In it we have a Technohunt system, and also have folding doors to close in front of the screen so that we canwheeltarget butts out that we can do indoor spots and just general shooting with. I know the shop owner would love to do indoor 3D, but it's just not feasible $$$ wise.