High volume/low margin sales are one strategy, but not the only one.
Ideally, for us consumers, it would be a high quality/low cost product. Like JSB pellets.
Problem?.- scarcity. You do not always get them, AND the price now is not what it used to be. The first JSB pellets I bought I bought for less than $3.00 the tin of 500 Exacts. So, things move.
Even JSB is looking in hard terms at the market; and products of higher value added are being researched as we speak.
At the current rate of exchange and under the current economic conditions, the market in Europe is far more solid than the one in USA, and catering to a high volume/low margin market can and will break a company not ready nor suited to it. That is why Daimler sold Chrysler off; even at a huge loss. It would have sunk them if they had waited another year to sell off the bad asset.
The current world of luxury/de luxe products is mostly based on handcrafted stuff. Not Chinese/Turkish/Malaysian/Mexican . . . whatever level of craftsmanship. And it's those companies that cater to the "people with means" the ones that are surviving and thriving.
The world is at an economic, social and political crossroads. A LOT more is riding on the current evolution of the markets' trends than meets the eye. The world we will be living in the next 20 years depends on what happens in the next 18 months; and some scenarios are NOT nice.
But to come back to airguns:
Some people are traditionalists and some like change, I have no problem with that, but let me tell you that is costs more to cut the butts to NOT use a pad, than to add one. It would be a cost saving measure to put buttpads in all guns. It just so happens that the market for those guns that do not have buttpads wants exactly that.