!7: Used Fire Sentry Safe: November 2011

!±8± Sentry Gun Safes and the Six-Minute Customer

Experts have estimated that burglars have a six-minute window of "intrusion comfort." After that six minutes, they begin to get uncomfortable with their decision to enter your home and burglarize your belongings. Consequently, if you can prevent an intruder from gaining access to your valuable property for that period of time (especially your guns), chances are that the intruder will leave your home and try an easier target. Thus the importance of finding a safe that is able to withstand at least the six minutes a burglar will spend trying to get it open. Whether a safe does more than that is up to the owner, but any good safe must at least provide that level of protection.

Sentry Gun Safes, more than any other manufacturer, has built a business around this one essential fact-that most gun owners just want to keep their guns enclosed long enough to make it through the "intrusion comfort" window of six minutes. These are called the industry's "six-minute" customers. To these individuals, how the safe looks and some of the convenience features seem to be secondary considerations. Of course, many gun owners see their gun safes as collectibles, and even heirlooms. For those individuals, Sentry is not the manufacturer of choice. Those people need to look for a safe from Cannon, American Security, or Browning. But for those who want an inexpensive way to keep guns safe during that six-minute period, Sentry should be the manufacturer of choice.

How has Sentry so successfully met the needs of these "six-minute" customers? First, they've kept their costs down. In almost any apples-to-apples comparison, Sentry beats its competition. We aren't privy to any internal financial numbers or manufacturing methods for Sentry, but we do know that Sentry offers low prices that allow it to capture a large portion of the gun safes market, and they appear to have been able to convert that high volume to even lower costs, which are again passed on to the customer.

Unlike some other manufacturers (most notably Cannon Safes), Sentry does not do any customization. This allows Sentry to deliver their safes quickly, usually shipping them between three and five business days. This is great for that "six-minute" customer, who wants his safe soon and is not interested in a custom-built safe. It also allows them to provide quick turn-around when goods are damaged. (We have experienced about a 5% damage rate with Sentry.)

On the other hand, Sentry offers a large number of designs, including wall safes, fire safes, and almost any other kind of safe imaginable, and these designs come in several attractive colors. This is made possible by the fact that Sentry does such a high volume of sales, but that does not diminish the credit due the company's innovation and skill meeting its largest customer demographic.

Sentry Gun Safes has also done a lot to capture this "six-minute" market by offering excellent customer service. Sentry was recently listed in our top three manufacturers in the customer service category, and if all the custom-built safe manufacturers had been taken out of the running, Sentry would have placed number one. They are very cooperative and responsive to every call, and they are willing to take returns without giving customers any hassle.

In short, Sentry has placed its finger squarely on the pulse of this "six-minute" market and has done all it can to offer those customers exactly what they need. We highly recommend Sentry Gun Safes.