Starting a shooting range business often seems like a logical next step for those with a background in law enforcement, the military, or competitive shooting. After a career spent mastering firearms and understanding the legal landscape, establishing a post-retirement business seems like a perfect fit. The challenge, however, begins when the passion for firearms must translate into a sustainable business model. The common approach—offering basic training, courses, and range time—often falls short of generating enough revenue to cover the high gun range startup costs.
Have you truly calculated the expenses? Consider the staggering energy bills for an indoor range, the constant maintenance of the bullet trap, and the recurring costs of ammo, firearms, and staffing. Without a robust shooting range business plan, this is the point where many new businesses fail.
You might believe that offering “tacticool” courses or high-priced training will be enough. But who is your market? Government agencies have their own state-of-the-art facilities, and serious professionals often have specific training requirements that a new range can’t meet. This approach is a common path to business failure. While it’s a rare situation, if you have a unique relationship and the expertise to create a valuable, gap-filling training program, it can become a strong foundation for your business. For most, however, a different approach is needed. To succeed with a niche model, you must possess an unparalleled skill set that is in high demand, understand the specific pain points of that professional audience, and have the connections to market directly to them. This is not a situation for a generalist.
Table of contents – Shooting range business
- Back to basics: The financial reality
- The problem of inventory and staffing
- Shooting range business Plan A: Catering to professionals and sport shooters
- Shooting range business Plan B: The first-timers, tourists, and local thrill-seekers
- Shovel money on Ads, or build a brand for the future?
- Final thought on your business
- Q&A about the Shooting Range Business
Back to basics: The financial reality
Before you even consider what services to offer, you need a clear picture of your financial reality. This is where you grab a blank sheet of paper and list every single cost—from the most obvious to the seemingly insignificant.
- Operating Costs: Electricity is often the single largest expense for an indoor range due to HVAC, lighting, and ventilation systems. Factor in water, internet, phone, rent or mortgage, and insurance. Don’t forget the small things that add up, like cleaning supplies, coffee for the waiting area, and office supplies.
- Inventory Costs: This is where you make a critical decision about your business model. When stocking firearms and ammo, our recommendation is to start with a limited, high-demand selection. Focus on foundational calibers like .22LR, 9×19, .223, .308, and 12-gauge.
Why this specific list? Because having a wide variety of calibers and firearms creates a logistical nightmare and ties up a significant amount of capital. Your money is literally sitting there, waiting to be sold. A more focused approach allows you to manage inventory, reduce costs, and avoid the complexity of catering to every possible niche from day one. It’s a fundamental step toward achieving gun range profitability.
The problem of inventory and staffing
Choosing your inventory is a direct reflection of your business model. If you intend to offer a shooting experience—targeting new shooters and tourists—you’ll need a variety of firearms. But simply having them isn’t enough. You must have a plan for reliability. If you have two shooting lanes and only two of a specific gun type, what happens when one fails? You can’t tell a paying customer, “Sorry, that gun isn’t available.” You need to account for maintenance and breakdowns, which means having backup guns for every type offered.
This brings us to a fundamental question:
What about your payroll and staffing?
The decision of who works, and when, directly depends on your target audience. Will you run a full-time operation, or will you open by reservation only? You have to choose because if you don’t know your audience, you’ll never reach them.
Consider the schedules of your potential customers. Professionals who need training may only be available during their working hours. Sport shooters often participate in events on weekends, making them more available for training during the week or after work. Tourists and experience seekers‘ visits depend on the season.
You must create a schedule that is sustainable for your company and your staff. You will need to determine who requires a firearms dealer (RFD) license and who will manage the guns and ammunition. Do you need a dedicated receptionist, or will your range officers handle guest check-ins? What happens if all your range officers are on the floor with guests? Do you close the doors to new visitors, or do you hire a separate receptionist to manage new arrivals? These aren’t minor details; they are core operational questions that define your customer experience. Your gun range marketing efforts will be wasted if your operational model can’t handle the flow of customers you attract.
Shooting range business Plan A: Catering to professionals and sport shooters
If your chosen path is to focus on a serious clientele, your business model must align with their specific needs. These shooters are looking for more than a static firing lane; they demand dynamic training conditions. This means providing specialized target systems like metal or flop targets alongside classic paper ones, and more importantly, offering the space to practice shooting in movement.
These features are mandatory to attract competitive IPSC and IDPA shooters, as well as law enforcement and military personnel who need practical, tactical training. The main problem with this model is the space required. Building a massive indoor complex for this kind of movement would require an enormous initial investment, which is simply not feasible for most.
This is why we suggest that for this business plan, an outdoor range is the superior option. Don’t think of this as a disadvantage—these clients prioritize a training environment over fancy indoor leather sofas. An outdoor range can still be a professional, high-quality facility. By choosing this route, you can significantly drop the massive costs of HVAC and electricity, though you’ll need to budget for landscaping and maintenance. While finding a suitable area can be challenging due to zoning and noise regulations, the savings on sound insulation, concrete walls, and expensive bullet traps are substantial. Moreover, an outdoor range offers a beautiful, natural environment that can easily be adapted for a wide variety of shooting sports and training scenarios.
Shooting range business Plan B: The first-timers, tourists, and local thrill-seekers
Now, let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum. You might think this is the “easy money” or the “tourist trap” route, and we’d have to agree in some ways. Many ranges operate with this mindset, but our philosophy is different. A shooting range can provide a truly memorable experience, and with the right strategy, it can be a sustainable and profitable business that provides real value to your customers. We believe in a win-win situation.
Location
The first and most critical factor is location. You can build the best range in the world, but if people have a difficult time reaching you, they’ll never bring you to the promised land of success. Finding the perfect spot is your first step. Check for public transport options, available parking, and think like a traveler. Be objective. Why? Because many tourists don’t rent cars, so ease of access is a primary factor in their decision-making process. If it’s a quick hop, a fun stop on their trip, and an easy exit to their next destination, then you’ve found a good location. Yes, a centrally located space can be expensive, but with the right pricing, you can easily cover your mortgage or rent.
Capacity
Once your location is secured, you need to determine your daily capacity. How many guests can you welcome daily without feeling overwhelmed? This number is your maximum revenue potential. It’s crucial to calculate this against your daily operating costs to decide when you should be open. For example, you can host 100 guests a day at maximum capacity, your average will likely be around 60%—so you’ll see between 40 and 80 people on a typical day. This fluctuation between off-peak times and weekend rushes is normal. These numbers are the foundation for planning your cash flow.
How do you get these numbers? The best way is to use data. Start by creating a simple spreadsheet or a custom system to track daily visitors and revenue. For example, we use Google-based spreadsheet automations that can handle a lot of the data we get daily. For more advanced tracking, consider a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. A great option is a modern POS (Point of Sale) system, such as those provided by Revolut. These systems do more than just process payments; they provide invaluable data analysis on transaction trends, peak hours, and even your most popular packages. By utilizing these tools, you’ll gain deep insights into your customer flow and be able to make informed decisions.
Planning
With location and average revenue in mind, you can then plan the physical layout of the range itself. Where will the reception be? How will guests move from there to the range? Where will you store your guns and ammo? Do you need a dedicated office? Where will you handle weapon maintenance? Answering these questions will tell you the technical and industrial needs of your space, including the number of shooting lanes and the required staff. Now you can accurately calculate your monthly, weekly, and daily costs, from payroll to those small, hidden expenses like coffee and cleaning supplies.
Calculations
With your average revenue and full costs laid out, you are ready to create your product. Should you offer packages, or a per-bullet scheme, or even short training courses? We’ve worked on numerous projects creating and building successful weapon assortments and packages from scratch. Both approaches can be successful, and we’re here to help you figure it out.
Just a final thought: there is a huge difference between offering and selling. Never try to hard-sell your products. Instead, offer them, show their value, and demonstrate how they fulfill a need.
Now that you have a solid business foundation—from location and capacity to product offerings—there’s one crucial step left. All of this careful planning is meaningless without a way to get people in the door. Our next and final topic will be all about marketing your shooting range to attract the right customers.
Shovel money on Ads, or build a brand for the future?
We’ve seen it firsthand: marketing has become a profession that everyone claims to know. Honestly, there’s a lot of truth behind that. In our opinion, the recent global events turned many into overnight marketing and SEO “specialists” and “graphic designers” who, frankly, have no business being on the market. But let’s get back to what matters. Burning money on advertisements without a strategy is the most useless solution. We’ll guide you through the main steps of creating a real, valuable brand and a marketing plan that works.
1. Create your appearance: The foundational branding
First, let’s establish your visual identity. This means a solid logo, a consistent set of graphic elements, and designs that can be scaled for everything from your physical signage to your online platforms. Why is this so critical? Because this is the very first thing your audience will see. It needs to correctly target your desired customer base, whether that’s the serious professional or the curious tourist.
2. The selling point: Your website
Your website is your digital storefront. So many “experts” fail to understand the basics of a good site—the purpose of headings, proper structure, optimized pagespeed, and indexability. What is a website’s core function for your business? A good website will clearly show the visitor who you are, what you offer, and where you offer it. Everything else—from beautiful photos to engaging content—is simply a pillar that supports the answers to these three main questions.
We saw this first-hand with a partner. After we did a professional interior photo shoot, they began receiving phone calls from people asking if the range was real because the photos looked too good to be true. We were especially proud of this, as the entire interior design was also our work.
We could dive into the nitty-gritty of building a website, from heading hierarchy and keyword targeting to explaining what a “Hub-spoke model” and “content clusters” are. To put it simply, a content cluster is a group of related articles about a single topic. A hub-spoke model is a strategy that focuses on a central, authoritative article (the hub) supported by several related, more detailed articles (the spokes). But we’re not here to write an encyclopedia. Just remember this: you need a powerful lead-generating website that you can use for SEO and blogging.
3. Social media: The digital footprint
Social media is a love-hate relationship for many business owners, but it’s an absolute must-have. You need to be on the key platforms. Some provide valuable backlinks, others are crucial for a good local business profile, and all are necessary for direct communication with your audience.
Once you’ve navigated the social jungle and created your profiles, don’t forget one of the most important platforms of all: Google Business. Here you can publish news and updates, but the real value is that it’s where you’ll appear on Google Maps when someone is searching nearby—and it’s free! You should do the same for other engines like Bing and Apple Maps. Finally, make sure you register on platforms where travelers and thrill-seekers look for activities, like TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide, and Yelp, to get attention from future guests.
4. The advertising question: Organic vs. Paid
Your meticulous planning is an investment, but the return on that investment depends on getting people through the door. This is where advertising comes in. You can try to do the job organically by posting, sharing, and distributing flyers. But if you were to put a number on the time and effort you spend, that number would be the price you could spend on ads. By doing this, you’re buying back your time to work on your business instead of doing something you hate and can’t accurately measure.
The firearms niche is incredibly sensitive on the ad market. Due to strict policy restrictions and community guidelines, ad platforms often flag or reject campaigns related to firearms. That’s why we always prepare for every restriction they roll out. When one of our tools triggers a policy violation, we immediately pull out a new one and continue while we clean up the problematic one. We’ve had countless conversations with support teams, but since Google’s algorithms are usually at the root of the issue, and algorithms can make mistakes, we have to be ready for anything.
Basic Google Ads setup for shooting range business
So how do we set up ads? We typically start with a three-pronged approach:
- Local Ads: We focus on local business advertisements that appear when someone is searching on Google Maps.
- Search Ads: We create campaigns for search engines targeting specific keywords.
- Wider Audience Ads (PMAX campaigns): We target a broader, international audience who are planning trips to your location.
By covering these three areas, we can capture the majority of interested people and start measuring success. And this is where we have to be honest: if someone promises you 10x revenue without any measurement or data analysis, they are lying. Every successful PPC professional starts by targeting a broad audience for a few weeks, analyzes the results from local and online sales, and then modifies the campaigns based on that data.
We can prove that this model works. We have a track record of spending over 90,000 pounds on shooting range ads and generating more than 9 times that in real revenue. Based on our experience, a competitive market requires a budget of around 2,500 to 3,500 pounds per month. However, you should not start there. Google loves your money, so it’s best to start with a modest 1,500-2,000 pounds. After a month or two, once you’ve proven the ad campaigns are working, you can safely increase your budget by at least 10% each month. This ensures Google brings you customers, not just burns your money.
Remember, the paid ads are only effective because of the strong foundation you built with your professional website and social profiles. Without those, your ad spend is a waste.
Now that you have a solid business foundation—from location and capacity to product offerings—there’s one crucial step left. All of this careful planning is meaningless without a way to get people in the door. Our next and final topic will be all about marketing your shooting range to attract the right customers. We’ve covered the digital tools, but no marketing plan is complete without leveraging the most powerful asset you have: the shooting range itself and the people who run it. In our final section, we’ll discuss the role of your staff and your facility in a world-class marketing strategy.
The most powerful marketing tool: Your staff and your Shooting Range Business
We’ve covered how to gain leads and conversations through online marketing and building a trustworthy digital presence, but it’s a mistake to miss the most effective offline marketing tool: personal contact.
Think of your staff as more than just receptionists or range officers. They are the people who manage safety and create the guest experience. A warm smile and a friendly greeting at the door are the first things a guest will remember. Instead of just standing and waiting for questions, train your staff to be proactive.
Example
Here’s an example of how to start: “Hello, welcome to XY Shooting Range! How can I help you on this beautiful day? Do you have a reservation, or are you just thinking about trying this experience? Have you shot before? Awesome! Our specialty is providing an incredible shooting experience for first-timers. Let me help you with our package offers, which include different types of weapons and ammunition. Don’t worry, you can always add more shots to any of our weapons to customize your experience.”
After they’ve made their choice, the staff can continue the positive interaction. “Thank you for choosing us! Your session starts at [time], so you have time to relax in our lounge with a coffee or tea. The restrooms are just over there. If you have any questions, just let me know—I’m here to help.” At the start of their session, the range officers can say, “Our range officers will be here shortly to provide a brief safety overview and a rundown of the program. They will give you all the information you need, but remember, you can always ask them anything—they’ll be happy to answer!”
By training your staff in this way, you can easily guide guests toward the experience you want them to have. You can add a few sentences about why each package is popular or why people love them. The main rule here is simple: no secrets. Tell and show them everything they need to know so there are no misunderstandings.
Range officers as performers
Now, let’s talk about the range officers. They are the program’s most important guides. Their approach sets the tone for the entire experience. While a militant or overly “tactical” style might feel authentic to some, it’s not the right approach for a business that caters to first-timers. You are the professional; your guests don’t need to know everything. Your mission is to show the fun side of shooting and guide them from their very first steps to their first successful bullseye. No one expects to become an Olympic shooter after one session. They came for a fun experience, and you need to hit that tone. It’s an adult funfair with guns.
Instead of getting bogged down in technical details, use fun facts and interesting background stories about each firearm. A range officer’s primary responsibility is safety, but their secondary role is that of a performer. A short joke or a well-placed question can increase a cart’s value. For example: “Where are you from? Oh, nice! Are you able to try these types of guns back home? Oh, what a shame. We’re so glad you came to us! Don’t forget, if you want to try any other weapons, just let me know and I’ll start loading the ammo for you! More shots, more fun!”
As we said before, don’t push; just offer.
After a session, always thank them for choosing your service. At the reception desk, always ask, “How was it? What was your favorite part?” This simple question opens the door for a well-placed suggestion toward a merchandise shop. You can simply say, “Feel free to browse our merchandise and souvenir shop. If you need any help, just ask!”
With this kind of guest-handling, you can subtly guide the customer where you want them to go. You can offer services, options, and add-ons in a helpful and welcoming way, a far cry from a shouting street vendor.
Final thought on your Shooting Range Business
We know this article has been a lot to take in, and we’ve focused heavily on the tourist-driven business model (Plan B). But our goal wasn’t just to lay out a single path; it was to show you how complex, yet incredibly rewarding, starting a gun range can be.
Now is the time to grab a coffee or tea and truly think about the topics we’ve covered. Consider the questions we’ve asked about your audience, your costs, and your strategy. Don’t worry, you don’t have to figure it all out alone.
Whether you’re still in the brainstorming phase or you’ve already started to build your dream shooting range in the UK or the US, we’re here to help. If you’re interested, let us know your thoughts. Just drop an email to hello@solutionprime.co.uk and let’s start our brainstorm. We promise to bring all of our expertise from the last 20 years to the table. Together, we can establish your dream.
Magic formula
We know you, the reader, are probably waiting for the magic formula for this business. You’re looking for a simple ‘how-to’ checklist that will guarantee you long-term income and allow you to travel the world.
The truth is, there is no secret formula. If you approach this in the most ethical (‘white hat’) way, you must plan meticulously, think several steps ahead, and calculate based on the worst-case numbers to prepare for the inevitable downturns. This entire ecosystem you need to build is always a custom-built one. You have to consider the exact capital required for the business, the location, your pricing strategy, and the customer base—all of which profoundly influence the whole business model. We want to show you that a shooting range can be just a hobby, or it can be a solid, well-planned business.
Of course, be sure to make a note of your ultimate ambition—that goal will serve as your essential motivational point. Yes, success is entirely achievable, but you must be realistic and understand this is a long journey. It will be an exciting and rewarding ride, and we can guide you through it. While there will be valleys—difficult periods—you need to prepare for them so you can swing through with confidence.
Laszlo
CEO of Solution Prime marketing
Shooting range specialist
Q&A about the Shooting Range Business Model
What is the most common mistake for new shooting range owners?
The most common mistake is failing to transition from a hobbyist mindset to a business mindset. Many owners underestimate the significant operational costs and do not have a robust business plan to ensure long-term profitability.
Why is an outdoor range suggested for professional and sport shooters?
Outdoor ranges are a superior option for professionals because they offer the space needed for dynamic, movement-based training. This model allows owners to save on the high costs of HVAC, electricity, sound insulation, and complex bullet traps associated with indoor facilities.
Why is location so important for a first-timer and tourist-focused range?
For this business model, location is critical because your target audience often does not have a car. A central location with easy access via public transport, walking, or ride-sharing services makes it a convenient and attractive option for travelers and locals alike.
How can I calculate my shooting range’s daily capacity and cash flow?
You should first determine your maximum daily capacity. Then, use that number to project a realistic average (typically around 60% of your max capacity) to account for peak and off-peak times. You can track this data using simple tools like Google Sheets or more advanced systems like a Revolut POS system.
What is the “hub-spoke model” in website content?
A hub-spoke model is a website strategy that organizes content around a central, authoritative article (the hub) on a broad topic. This hub is then supported by several related, more detailed articles (the spokes) that link back to the main hub. This structure improves SEO and establishes your authority on a subject.
Why is Google Business a “must-have” for a shooting range?
Google Business is essential because it is a free tool that places your business on Google Maps. It ensures that when people in your area search for shooting ranges, they can easily find your location, hours, and contact information.
How much should a new shooting range budget for advertising?
A competitive market might require a budget of £2,500-£3,500 per month. However, it’s best to start with a more modest budget of £1,500-£2,000 for the first couple of months. This allows you to test your campaigns and ensure they are driving customers before increasing your spend.
What is the most effective offline marketing tool?
The most powerful offline marketing tool is your staff. Their ability to provide excellent personal service, from the initial greeting to the final farewell, creates a positive and memorable experience that can generate repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.
What is the key difference between “offering” and “selling”?
Offering means presenting your products and services in a helpful, informative way, allowing the customer to make a choice. Selling implies a more pushy or aggressive approach. In the service industry, offering is always more effective and creates a better customer experience.
Why is a “militant” style not suitable for a tourist-focused range?
A highly militant or overly tactical approach can be intimidating for first-time shooters who are seeking a fun and welcoming experience. Instead, a range officer should be a “performer” who focuses on safety first, while also using humor and interesting facts to make the experience enjoyable and engaging.
