moolikeacow

Be honest: how much do you enjoy the crowd's reaction after you say: Make. Some. Noise?

My real question for the future is how I'm going to be able to afford to sell wholesale to gun stores

Dude, the difficulty you're having is that you're trying to force one item into two very different markets.

Think of it this way:

• People buying single items on your website should pay high prices for the hand-crafted "artisan" affairs that they are.

• Wholesalers buying hundreds at a time should pay low prices for mass-produced items made with as little human intervention as possible.

Hell, for the wholesale market, I'd consider dropping the real bullets stuff altogether, and see if you couldn't melt down some nice and safe metal via pretty molds. (this has the advantage of attracting wholesalers who otherwise dislike the health issues with lead.)

Also, test higher prices. Right now, if you want to use low prices to drive your marketing efforts, that's great. Later on, you might find out that you "lose" 50% of your customers if you double the price -> yay very healthy profit margins!

Finally, if you do go the mass-produced-not-bullets way, remember that's a second, cheaper option you can sell to individual customers, as it might make it easier to charge even higher prices for the "real thing."