Customers check out Daniel Defense rifles at the Great American Outdoor Show. (Photo: Daniel Defense via Facebook.)
Daniel Defense said it will increase production to meet demand after customers expressed frustrations over the lack of product availability in stores and online.
The rifle company is attacking the low inventory problem head-on, phasing in new measures over the past nine months. Director of Marketing Communications Thomas Carlson told Guns.com in an email that Daniel Defense ramped up the new process in stages to ensure quality did not suffer.
“Our primary focus has always been quality over quantity, and we have stuck to this belief even through our ramp up,” Carlson said. “Because of this, we have done the ramp up in stages of buying new equipment, bringing on new material suppliers, and hiring more staff, this takes a little longer if we wish to maintain out high quality standards.”
In addition to adding more staff and material suppliers over the past nine months, the company also now ships firearms on a weekly basis to distributors and authorized dealers. This upswing in outgoing ARs offsets deficits dealers may be facing.
The gun maker has struggled to keep up with growing customer interest since 2015, causing some Daniel Defense fans to become frustrated at the lack of available products.
“I have been reading and searching for this gun since February 2016, but it is not available anywhere yet it seems,” one commenter lamented on the manufacturer’s Facebook page. “I would love to add it to my inventory…but patience is running out.”
Daniel Defense founder and president Marty Daniel said in a statement that he empathizes with customers’ frustrations, which is why the company is pushing to get more products on retailers’ shelves.
“We understand the frustration this may cause, and I want to assure our customers and potential customers that our efforts are hyper-focused on increasing the supply of our products,” said Daniel in a press release. “Our manufacturing facilities are currently operating 24/7 to maximize output of DDM4 and DD5 firearms, and we’re doing everything humanly possible to get our products to market and in the hands of buyers.”
Carlson told Guns.com that he feels the rifle drought is the result of the upcoming election as well as the company’s push to reach more consumers.
“There is a lot of uncertainty with the election approaching, so this is driving an overall demand in our industry as a whole,” Carlson told Guns.com. “We have also doubled the size of our marketing department and our military and law enforcement sales team and our consumer services division. These three departments have been very effective in their results over the past year which has certainly been driving demand.”
The company generates an annual revenue of $55.7 million, according to a 2014 estimation by Inc. Magazine when Daniel Defense was ranked in the publications as one of the top 5,000 companies in the U.S.
Other companies have reported steady demand for AR-style rifles this year, but have dismissed calling current sales trends as a surge in sales.
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