I don't think that you do what Microsoft does with their operating
systems and turn the entire consumer base into the, or for that matter, the alpha tester.
Welcome to episode 12 of the Fugal Firearms Podcast, the even dozen edition, the podcast
designed to help you get the most for your money and enjoy shooting at the least possible cost
and with the best possible products. And to that vein, today we're talking to the CEO of the ETS
group, who is going to talk about magazines, something that all of us need and a lot of us
get frustrated with when they don't work correctly or they wear out and they fail and they're the
biggest failure point in a lot of the guns that are out there. And we're welcoming first to the
show from our Northern Command today, up in the Communist centroid of Sacramento, California,
Ken. Ken, say hello to our guests. Hello listeners. Yes, indeed. Yes, absolutely. I'm up here, you know,
for Thanksgiving with the DeNing family. So right here, just a few miles away from Liberal Central
there in Sacramento, California. Exactly. And hopefully not the origin point for the 40, I guess,
eighth president. We're hoping that doesn't happen. Exactly. Even though this is not a political show,
let's just keep that in mind. And okay, onto our guest. Our guest today, again, as I mentioned,
is the CEO and creator of ETS, which are some of the best aftermarket magazines on the market.
Welcome to the show, Mr. Eddie Loveday. Eddie, how are you today, sir? I'm good. Thanks for having me,
guys. I'm excited to be here. Okay. So the first thing on my mind, and hopefully that of the
listeners is what was the inspiration? You created the company, you told me. And why did you do that?
Because, you know, making parts can be expensive when you're buying molds and stuff like that. And
you're up against, you know, the mindset of, well, I have to have, you know, a metal magazine,
because if I don't, it's crap. So what was your, yeah, what was your inspiration, sir?
Well, yeah. So we faced a lot of that when we first got started. So back in, I guess,
probably around 2012 is probably the timeframe. I have a long history in this industry. I've been
on the retail side of things for a long time. I used to work for some distributors and sold some
retail stuff, had stores. You know, one of the things that became kind of apparent to me
over time was that the firearm space, particularly accessories, because that's where most of my money
was made, got more and more crowded. Online revolution sort of came along, right? People
sell on the internet. They sort of changed business in general. And that was no different
for the fire ministry as well. So one day I sat down and I said, you know, I was looking at Amazon
in particular, and what a huge sort of monster that thing has had become at that point even. And I
started thinking to myself, you know, instead of competing with these guys, it would be a whole
lot cooler if I was just a manufacturer and they were selling my stuff instead of me trying to
compete with them. And so to be honest with you, that was what drove me down the path of looking
at what can I do? And of course, I love the firearm industry. I believe in the firearm industry. I
think it's very important to not just kind of where we are in our country, but the history of
our country and hopefully where we're going in the future. So I wanted to stay in this industry.
And so I had this crazy idea to start a company manufacturing. And I looked around and magazines
were one of the things that I felt like there's not a lot of great options out there. And I felt
like maybe we could do better. And when I say do better, that could be to make something cheaper.
It could be to make it perform better. It could be to make it like in our case, they're clear,
more visibility, whatever the case may be. So, you know, we kind of took that approach and I
started looking at it. My father is a mechanical engineer.
As am I. Me too.
Yeah. Oh, okay. Great. So he's a mechanical engineer for Siemens in nuclear medicine. So I
went to my, you know, my dad, I said, Hey, I got this crazy idea. I'm thinking about starting
a manufacturing company, making, you know, magazines and various other things that I had
ideas for. And he was, you know, he was like, are you sure you want to do that? Manufacturing is not
easy. It's expensive and it's a long road. And I said, how hard can it be? Right. So that's kind
of always been, you know, kind of the way I've been in my life. If anybody can do it, then I can
do it is the way I feel about that. So we did. I started, we started Elite Tactical and dad helped
with some engineering and some of the designs and I learned how to use CAD and, and SolidWorks and
all this stuff. So it was kind of a self-taught thing over the course of a couple of years. And
I spent about a year and a half becoming an expert on plastics, worked with some people over at BASF
in sort of developing our polymer, which we have a patent on now for magazines. And so that's kind
of how it started. So, you know, it started with an idea that maybe we could make a magazine that
was better. You know, back then AR magazines were considered, first of all, inferior if they were
plastic. This is kind of back when Magpul was still young and, and polymer magazines in general
were sort of untested and untrue, you know. And so I looked at that and I said, well, you know,
maybe we can make a better magazine that's not disposable. That is actually durable enough to
sort of hold up over time and not just be tossed aside or crack or break or bend or whatever the
case is. And so when I sat out with my list of requirements that I wanted out of the plastic
that we were looking at, I had this long list of things that I wanted it to do. And like I said,
I would find several that did seven out of the 10 things, but never found any that did all 10. So
we found as close to the plastic as we could. Then we made some changes to it for like UV
stability, for example, to make sure that the sun's UV rays doesn't degrade the plastic and
all that kind of stuff. So we did that for about a year and a half. We got it where we wanted it.
And then we made our first AR magazines. And that's kind of how the company was born. So,
yeah, there was probably two or three years of work, so to speak, that went into that before we
ever made our first product. And so that's kind of how it came to be. So for the entrepreneurs out
there, and you can choose to answer this any way you want. I mean, again, I already keyed on it and
you backed it up that getting into any kind of manufacturing like this can be a very expensive
endeavor. I imagine your breakeven point was a few years down the road after you even started
selling magazines and you're fighting the uphill battle of the perception that a polymer mag
is, as you put it, a disposable item and maybe not worthy of buying in the first place. I mean,
at what point did you say that, you know what, I'm succeeding here?
Well, it's interesting because when we first started, again, I think one of the things we
tried to do was to try and make a magazine. In my case, one of the things I wanted to do is make it
more durable. And that means not breaking, not cracking, not all the things. It has to be creep
resistant because they sit fully loaded, right? So creep is a phenomenon where basically the plastic
molecules untangle themselves and rearrange themselves in a different form. So like the
feedlifts, for example, on a magazine will spread over time if that stress limit is exceeded. So
without trying to get too nerdy and all this, once we had the polymer there, I knew that it not only
would it do what we needed it to do, but I knew that it would be superior in a lot of ways to a
metal magazine, durability, longevity, corrosion, all these things. Now trying to convince the public
at large of that is a different animal altogether. And I'm not going to even pretend to sit here and
take credit for that because there's, you know, again, there's Magpul, there's other people out
there. So I think it was just kind of a timing thing where they started to come around and really
technology, when we talk about technology of materials, right? In this particular space,
you know, the material that we use for our magazines didn't even exist seven years before
we started using it. I think something like that for our first magazines. So, you know, again,
you couldn't, in the 1980s, you couldn't make these magazines the way we make them now because
the plastic simply just didn't exist and our technology wasn't there. So because I know a lot
of people, when they think of plastics, they think of some of the cheaper plastics that break and
crack or get yellowed over time and all those kinds of things. And there's, everybody's had
experience with that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, we're at a place now where a lot of
these plastics do very, very impressive. We've got plastics nowadays that are replacements for metal.
They're all, I mean, I have plastics that are stronger than aircraft grade aluminum that are
carbon fiber reinforced and all kinds of other things. So it's pretty wild stuff out there.
And so, you know, getting into that, looking at that, trying to convince people that who aren't
material scientists and aren't engineers is a whole different animal. And I think that,
I think what happened to be completely honest here is you had sort of a perfect storm. You had
plastics being where they were. You had an event that took place in 2012, which was Sandy Hook.
When Sandy Hook shooting occurred, there was such a run on ARs and magazines at the time
that the first thing you saw happen was every single metal GI magazine, which was the de facto
magazine at the time, was gone. It was off the shelf. And so what happened was consumers had no
choice but to buy our mag or buy a P mag or buy a Lancer magazine or whatever it was, whatever was
left on the shelf at the time, which at the time was probably considered less desirable than the
aluminum alternative, right? Of a GI magazine. And so people went out and they bought them.
And I think what happened is they realized over time, hey, these things are pretty good.
And they work and they're durable. And they're all the things that a lot of people probably
thought they weren't. And so I think that that was the sort of the catalyst, if you will, with the
lightning strike event that sort of thrust them into the, into the, into people's hands and,
and let people kind of see what they were and sort of get comfortable with adopting them as a, as a
normal thing for their gun. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the materials have gone up tremendously.
I mean, Craig and I were early adopters. I mean, Craig, you had one of the first gen one
Glock 17s ever brought into the U S. I've been to gen, gen two. Yeah. But I mean,
the gen ones are very rare and there's not, okay. Yeah. Well, yeah. I just remember you got that
probably almost what? 38 years ago or something like that. A long time ago, about 87. I thought
it was 37 years. It was pretty much as soon as they, as soon as they hit the U S market, I was like,
oh my God, I have to own this. Right. Polymer. And you were like, wow, you know, plastic, you know,
and, and the perception, public perception, I remember at the time of just people didn't trust
them and they were invisible and, you know, it couldn't be found by metal detectors, all sorts of
erroneous information going out there. And now of course, polymers are in many ways,
uh, you know, the wave of the future, if nothing else. Um, I was, I also do classic cars and,
and one of the things we do is auto body repair. That's kind of a fun hobby, sort of a thing.
And a lot of cars today are glued together, glued together. Absolutely. You know, they're,
you should see the cost of those glues by the way. Exactly. And then they're insane. Yeah. Yeah. And
it's just basically, you know, no longer you tack welding things in place, you're gluing a car
together. So yeah, all of these materials that, that were Frank, frankly not available is quite
amazing. And, uh, the rigidity of the plastic, what I, what I really like the translucent aspect of it,
that that's, that's great. I love to be able to look into the mag and see that how many rounds you
got left. So, but you know, you know, what's funny about that is when I, you know, that, that phase
that I was kind of telling you guys about where we were doing all the materials and trying to find
a material that kind of met all the criteria that we needed, uh, being clear, wasn't, it wasn't on
the list. Really? It turned out, no, it wasn't. I know I, whenever I tell this story, people,
they find it to be a really a big surprise that we didn't set out to make a clear mag.
The fundamental objective was to make a magazine that was affordable and durable and didn't break
and didn't crack and didn't do all the things. And, uh, when we found this material and it turned out
to be clear, cause they make it in opaque as well as, as transparent. And, and, uh, when we found
the material, I was like, well, it's clear and that's cool. You know, I think people will like
it. Um, but I, you know, I don't know how big of a deal it is. Um, and of course, like on AR mags
and stuff like that, it's a little bit different because the mag, you know, half the mag hangs out
of the firearm in pistols. I tell you what was interesting. One of the craziest things that's
happened to me in my time with, with this ETS adventure is we, we sort of announced to the world
that I believe it was shot show going into shot show of 2015. I believe it was that we were going
to be making clear Glock magazines because we'd had some conversations about the whole thing.
And someone said, Hey, if you really want to sell a bunch of magazines, if you could make a Glock
magazine on a plastic that doesn't cost a fortune and works, then it would be very successful. And
I'm like, yeah, how hard can that be in magazines for pistols have a different challenge altogether
than rifle magazines or alternating feed magazines where the double stack tapers to a single stack.
It's a, it's an intentional bind on the round stack and it's a huge amount of stress and all
these things. And we can go into that if you guys want to, but at the end of the day, uh, making a
pistol magazine out of plastic is much more difficult than making a rifle magazine out of
plastic. And so when we announced that we were going to make those and they were clear, I didn't
think anybody was going to care because they're in the, they're in the firearm. You don't really
see them. They don't stick out. And it turns out that we posted a kind of a teaser going into
the shot show. I think it was on Instagram or something like that. And immediately it got like
seven or 800 comments and thousands and thousands of likes and all this stuff. And, um, and we were
just really, really shocked at how, how much people responded to the idea of a clear pistol
magazine. And I'll be honest with you guys again, after having used these magazines for years now,
and I'm the one that, um, has the job of going to test them and shoot them, which kind of led to our
speed loaders, by the way, and we could talk more about that, but yeah. And, uh, and so as I, as I'm
the guy who has to go and there's been days where I've had to shoot 5,000 rounds in a day by myself
and load them and do all the things and all that kind of stuff, which everybody says, that sounds
like the greatest job in the world. And I promise like everything else in the world, it becomes work.
It's a rough day with bloody fingers and all the stuff. That's right. But, but, but what I, what I,
what I learned is that when we test a new magazine, we'll take, we'll take our magazines out to the,
to the range. We'll test those. We'll also take OEM magazines, whatever that may be. So like,
you know, like a Sig mag or a Glock mag or whatever it is. Well, after time of using those,
I became very addicted to the convenience of having the visibility of seeing what's in the mag. So
like, if I'm at the range and I've got 10 or 12 mags that on the table, I can tell from 10 feet
away what, not only how many rounds are in the magazine, but what type of rounds are they ball,
or are they, you know, are they defense load? What have we got? And after getting used to that for
a while, like when I go take a factory magazine to the range, I, I just get frustrated because I'm
like, I can't see in this and I don't like it. So I've gotten used to that. I know a lot of people
think it's not a big deal and it's kind of like probably like some of the other conveniences that
we've gotten used to in the world, like rain sensing windshield wipers. The first time I ever
had that in a car, I thought, who needs this? Like how hard is it to reach up and turn on the
windshield wiper? Right. But now that, now that I've had it, I don't want to buy a car that doesn't
have, you know what I'm saying? So I kind of feel that way about the clear mags, but it was never
an objective. It was just one of those things that kind of turned out to be that way. And now it's
kind of the thing that we're known for, you know, so it's pretty, pretty crazy. When you went, you
said you worked with BASF on, on the polymer development and, but you said you have the
patent. So they didn't keep the patent on the thing they helped you with or you co-own the patent or,
I mean, no, we, we, we got to, just so, just so we know. And again, without going too nerdy on this,
cause now I'm an amateur patent attorney. I joke about that. But you are, but we, we, we have a
patent on the material as it relates to ammunition magazines. So people use it. Actually this
material is used in headlights on cars and some other medical stuff. So there are other industries
that use it. It's because of its durability and because it's, it, because of its longevity and
all the things. But because we pioneered how to use it and the design changes that were necessary
to using it in magazines and all those kinds of things, the patent office did grant us a patent
on this material again, as it relates to ammunition magazines. It's like a utility patent in that,
in that context or something like that, I think. Right. And what it is there, I mean, again, this
is a, this is something that unless you're a patent attorney, a lot of people don't know is that you
can get a patent on something you didn't necessarily invent if you helped contribute to the development
of said thing being used in a, an area or an art that it wasn't previously used in. So like, for
example, for us, the material that we use is not as stiff as metal, for example. Right. So there was
a lot of work that had to be done to make a magazine that was originally designed for metal
and make it out of plastic because plastic is simply not as stiff, right? The stiffness is just
not, the rigidity is not there. So it took a lot to get the magazines to work and do what we needed
to do and all the other kinds of stuff. And so because of those things, we got a patent on
materials as it relates to again, very specifically just ammunition magazines and that's it.
So I have a two, I have a two-part follow-up to that. And first, first it has to do with
the materials and the designs, and then it has to do with what, at least on your website is referred
to as the ETS way. But the first part of the question goes to the, to the materials and without
naming your competitors, you already named a couple already, but what distinguishes your products from
your competition, quite frankly, and what makes you the, you know, the being frugal firearms podcast,
we're interested in the value proposition of why would I spend my hard earned money on you
and not somebody else? Yeah, that's a great question. It's, it's one of my favorite questions to
answer because people will ask me these questions like, why should I buy your mag over insert random
competitor here? And you know, I think there's a couple of things to this. Number one, when we
first set out to do this, we tried to make them, we tried to, we tried to provide a strong value
proposition to the consumer. And what does that mean? Well, that means a magazine that runs,
right? So first of all, if a magazine doesn't work, it's worthless. So making a magazine run,
and by the way, that's not nearly as easy as a lot of people think it is. It's very difficult.
There's a lot of stuff to go wrong with magazines. They're very finicky. Like we make,
we'll make 10,000 magazines in a day and we have to keep plus or minus 3000. So for all you people
out there who know that's basically human hair in terms of the specs. And so it's not easy to make
magazines. And that's why the real challenge in my opinion, comes from making a magazine that is good
and affordable. It's one thing if we were making magazines like H&K does, and by the way, guys,
I love H&K. So this is not a knock on them at all. But the reason, you know, one of the reasons
their magazines cost $70 is because they're very meticulous and they scrap a whole bunch of stuff,
right? And so that drives the cost up and consumers eventually pay for that. And so it's difficult.
Yeah, it's difficult to try and make something that you want to sell for $15 or $20 or whatever
it is and have a high level of quality control, have a high level of tolerancing and all the things
that make a magazine a good magazine. It's those two things. I'm talking about quality and function
and affordability are at odds with each other, right? And everywhere you go, it's a tug of war
constantly in the factory between trying to make it as good as you can make it and also trying to
keep it affordable so that consumers can buy them. And so I think what sets us apart is we sort of
have pioneered clear magazines, especially when it comes to pistols. We have a new line of magazines
out now, which are hybrids, which sort of incorporate steel and polymer. We can talk more
about some of those things, which make those unique. And we've already won two awards this
year for those. And so I think what sets us apart is we have a very strong value proposition because
our Mac, we have carbon smoke line now. I don't know if you guys have seen that. And so basically
what we did, just so you guys know, is we took our magazines, we made them a little darker.
What did that do? Well, that hid visual blemishes. So it made our scrap go way down
and that made them more affordable. And that's why carbon smokes are cheaper than the clears.
A lot of people are like, why is carbon smoke cheaper than clear? Well, it's cheaper because
we don't have to scrap as much because the visual blemishes are not noticeable.
I thought it was because of a compound in there that helped either the durability or the stability
or whatever the case might be, that it just happened to add smoke to the matrix as opposed
to being clear. I thought it was purely an engineering decision, not a business driven
decision, if you will. So what happened was we sat there and looked at where the industry
was going. And when I say industry, I'm speaking specifically to our little corner of it, which
is magazines. And after 2020 and 2021, when sales were crazy and COVID happened and all the stuff,
we knew that the economy was probably heading in a bad direction. We knew that consumers were going
to have a hard time. People's wallets were going to get tighter, just like where we are right now.
I felt like there's a lot of people struggling out there to put food on the table and to pay
the rent, so to speak. And when that happens, what does it mean for us? Well, it means that
if you're struggling to pay your bills, you probably don't have 20 bucks or 40 bucks to
go spend on firearm accessories. So we felt that that was probably the way things were heading.
So what we did was we tried to look for ways to try and increase the value proposition for
the consumer. And so what we found was that by adding some more smoke colorant to the plastic
mix and darkening the plastic, that a lot of the visual blemishes that we experience when we're
molding these things kind of just disappear. And when that does that, the scrap rate goes way down.
And when the scrap rate goes way down, then things get cheaper. And when they get cheaper,
we can pass those savings on to the consumer. And again, just trying to make an even stronger
value proposition for people. That's great. I love that. Yeah. You're not really detracting
it all from the ability to be translucent to the extent that you want to know basically how many
rounds you got left. And no, that's great. No, I think that's fantastic. So now the second part of
my two-part question, explain to people who haven't read your website, because quite frankly,
most people probably haven't. What's the ETS way? What's that about? Well, I think I've sort of
touched on a little bit, but I think that if I had to really sum it up in a way that's not pre-written
and rehearsed, if you will, is basically as an owner of the company and one of the designers
and engineers and all the things that go into this and being in charge of manufacturing,
you know, we're a medium-sized company. And so that means I wear a lot of hats, just like I'm
sure a lot of people that listen do, and everybody sort of gets that. But I think our focus is,
if we can't bring something to the table that is a benefit for the consumer, for the customer,
we're not going to do it. We don't want to make a product that everybody else is making just to make
one and try and sell it. Because I think that's a losing recipe. I think consumers eventually see
through that. I think that they get tired of people throwing a bunch of stuff at them that is
either subpar or just another of the same thing that everybody else is making. So we try really
hard when we look at a project to take a step back, try and get outside the normal scope and
the box that everybody else is in, traditionally speaking, and try and look for new ways, whether
that be in materials or processes or ways to manufacture things. And we can, again, we can
talk about that with the hybrids that haven't been done before. And we try and look at ways to do that
to bring more value. And again, that can be in the form of less cost, higher performance, both,
whatever it is. But really, I think that what we really stick to is two things that are just
fundamentally important to us as a company. Number one is firearms are an intrinsic part of this
country and the history and the freedoms that we enjoy. And I'm one of those guys that think
nothing should be illegal, period. It doesn't matter. We should all have fully automatic
machine guns. They shouldn't be illegal for responsible, law-abiding people. And so that's
kind of my take. My take is kind of a no holds barred. I don't think any regulations are lawful.
I think that we're going to see a lot of these magazine capacity limits and some of these other
things overturned, but that's kind of our position. And it's an unapologetic position. And I think
that, so guns are fundamental to us. And I think that our approach to trying to make them better
for people is sort of what drives us to try and make, again, a better product, a different product
than what everybody else has. And that's where you saw the clear mags and the durable magazine.
And just to kind of give you guys a perspective, when we first came out with our first AR mag,
most people make their AR mags out of glass nylon, right? Glass reinforced
nylon. It's a very common material. If you take one of those magazines and you load it with 30
rounds and you drop it from say four or five feet on concrete on the feedlifts, almost every magazine
that's made out of glass nylon will break. It'll crack almost the first time. And if it does it
the first time, it will certainly do it the second time. And I know this because I've done
hundreds and hundreds of these tests. And so our magazine and our material, just to give you some
perspective that kind of maybe means something to people, we take them out 20 foot up on the
mezzanine in the factory and we'll drop them on concrete from 20 feet fully loaded and they won't
break. And that's a different level of durability. That's why we offer a lifetime warranty on every
magazine, on everything we make. And a lot of our, to my knowledge, I don't think any of our
competitors offer a lifetime warranty on a magazine because like I said, most people view magazines
as a disposable item. If it breaks, you just throw it away and get a new one. And one of the things
we were trying to do, just speaking to trying to add value, is trying to make something that people
could buy and not have to worry about it again. And if they do break it, I had a guy call in when
we first started up and said, I was trying to break your magazine. And finally we did. And I was like,
how'd you break it? He said, well, I had my son pitch it at the retaining wall, like a baseball.
And I was like, well, that's pretty cool. He said, so after two hours of him and his buddy trying to
break it, they gave it to their kid and he finally broke it. And I gave him a new one anyway, because
we offer a lifetime warranty. It doesn't matter, but he was so impressed with that. And those are
the categories. I mean, that's deliberate abuse. I mean, no, yeah. Okay. I mean, you know, the whole
wide ruptured out of a helicopter at 10,000 feet. I mean, come on. So, well, that being the case,
I suppose that if you have that kind of confidence in your product, I mean, was there a time when
maybe, you know, you got a lot of returns while you're trying to figure it out and then it got
better. And let me cite an example. And this isn't based on a defect, but it's an observation I made.
When I was back in a freer state, like back at the shot show and stuff like that, I was able to look
at some of like your 10 round magazines that are okay in California. And then like the Omega,
the Omega magazine. And I noticed the way they stack is different. And I didn't know if, for
example, the reason that, for example, you make a 10 round magazine and the way to get there is,
it appeared to me, and I could be wrong, that you thicken the walls on the side so that they didn't,
the stacking was, let's say, less efficient. And that way you also maybe gained some strength,
as opposed to the Omega that stacked more like you'd maybe you'd see in an AR magazine.
And maybe that's a way to mitigate, you know, people abusing it or something like that,
just through design elements.
Yeah, those are great questions. And these are some of the things, I love these questions,
because sometimes when you're on the inside looking out versus the other way around, you
sort of take for granted, right? Some of the things that we know and some of the design choices
and things that we do. To answer the question about the 10 rounders, the stack that's in the
10 rounders, we didn't make the whole wall thicker, we made the rib that runs up the side of the wall
thicker. And we did that basically to control the stack. And so basically what we did for,
to sort of simplify this, is we took a double stack magazine and we turned it into a single stack.
And we did that to take up space so that it would be a 10 round magazine and be compliant
with, for example, California or a restricted state.
It's kind of stack and a half really, in a way.
Yeah, that's what I was going to say. There are ones that are stack and a half. And let me give
you an example. So we have a 17 and a 19, 10 rounder. And by the way, those 10 round models
are still some of our best sellers. I mean, I think they're literally like seven or eight or
nine on our best selling list. So they're very, very popular magazines. But basically the Glock
19 magazine is a shorter magazine, right? Because it's made to go in the compact Glock. And so that
stack is a stack and a half, because we had to have a little bit more slack, so to speak, right?
To fit the 10 round in that space on this Glock 17, 10 rounder. It is truly a single stack.
They're vertical. They're basically 100% vertical because we had enough space to do that.
There's not a benefit performance wise to either one. A single stack magazine will always run more
reliably than a double stack magazine. It's just the nature of just like a 10 round magazine will
always be more reliable than a 30 round magazine because physics, less weight, less moving parts,
less pieces and all those things. So that being said, the stack that you see in the Omega magazine
is a true double stack. We call it, it's a single feed. So it tapers to a single feed,
a single presentation, right? Where the round is up against both feed lips and it centers in the
magazine and then the firearm strips that round off and that's how it's presented to the weapon.
So that is the standard de facto, if you will, for most pistol magazines. You're seeing a new
trend though. The new trend now, I was actually had a meeting about this last week. We were looking
at the trends for some of the sales out there. And amazingly, I believe that six of the top 10
selling pistols for the first two quarters of this year are micro carries, right? So we're talking
SIG 365s, we're talking Hellcats, we're talking all those things. And so that's the new trend.
And basically that's a double stack with a little bit of a single stack over top of it
to try and save some space where the mechanics like the trigger bar and all the things that
are up in the firearm are. And that's sort of the point. It just allows them to have a thinner form
factor on the frame of the firearm. And so that's the new trend, but they still function largely
the same as a double stack basically magazine. And that's the trend. That's how they fit more
rounds. They're really a double stack magazine with a thin frame and all that kind of stuff.
So there's a lot of different configurations. A GLOT 43X, for example, is a stack and a half.
I call it, it's a wide single stack magazine, which is why some companies out there have made
like 15 round flush fit magazines for those because they basically removed the plastic and
made thinner walls and took up that space. So there's a lot of different configurations
for magazines and the way that those stacks are set up is sometimes it has as much to do with
the gun they're going in as it does the actual firearm itself. But to answer your question,
have we learned along the way? Have there been any aha moments or any big lessons, so to speak?
I think the biggest one that we ever came across was the magazines were performing pretty
flawlessly for the first thousand or 2000 rounds. And we found that after a certain amount of time
and rounds that they would start to get sluggish. And when I say sluggish, the stack would not
advance sometimes as quickly as it needed to to keep up with the firearm or sometimes they
wouldn't advance at all. And what we found out was that what happens is during the gases,
in the way that most pistols work, of course, with the Browning action is you have a lot of
that gas going back into that area. And in that gas is a lot of carbon. And as you guys probably
know, carbon is one of the hardest things on earth. It's stuff diamonds are made out of.
And so carbon actually will embed itself with the pressure of the rounds, especially on the walls.
Over time, the carbon embeds in the plastic. And when it does that, the plastic starts to become
more like a sandpaper and not a nice, lubricous material like it is when it's brand new. And so
we really had to come up with a way to try and prevent this phenomenon from happening. Or what
we had was after a few thousand rounds, they could become real hit or miss in terms of reliability.
So what we did, and it was a very simple solution, which surprised us, is we put oil
inside the magazine and putting oil. A lot of people see that in the magazine. They think,
oh, they put oil in the magazine to kind of lube the magazine. And yes, that's sort of true,
but not really. What happens is the oil catches a lot of those contaminants and it prevents them
from being embedded in the wall. It just moves around and slides around and doesn't do the thing
that we just talked about where it becomes kind of like a sandpaper. And so that was one of the big
moments where we took a magazine that after a few thousand rounds may not be as reliable as steel.
And by the way, a fun side note, I was at Shot Show, I don't remember what year it was, probably 2019
or 2018. I don't remember now. And a couple of engineers from Glock from Austria came up to the
booth and they wanted to talk to me. And they were very excited to talk to another, for lack of a
better term, magazine nerd. And we had some conversations about the stacks and they said,
do you know why the stack is a stack and a half? And I said, well, you've got to have slack in the
back of the rounds to keep the tips up. Otherwise the tips will fall down and it won't feed the
weapon. And he got so excited. He was like, oh my gosh, you're probably one of only a handful of
people in the world that understand this and know what's going on with this. And so we had a good
conversation, but they told me that the steel lining inside of Glock magazines was heat treated
and hardened. And I didn't know that previously. He said, you know why? And I said, no, why? And
he said, because if they didn't heat treat and harden the steel, the carbon would do the same
thing to the steel. It would embed in the steel and it would create so much friction that they
would stop running after they got dirty. And so that goes to show you some of the stresses,
the level of stresses and some of the things we're talking about is that even steel has to be hardened
in order to make this thing run right and make it run well and reliable and all these kinds of
things. So magazines are very, very complex little things. And honestly, most of the time
they're probably the number one cause of failures in a lot of modern firearms because, you know,
modern firearms have gotten very, very good. So, oh, in our experience, there's no doubt about it.
I mean, pretty much anybody who goes to the range has bet your life magazines. These magazines are
the ones that will carry with me and bet my life on if need the situation arises. Then I have these
kind of secondary magazines were almost flawlessly all the time, very occasionally a failure to feed.
And then you got the ones just like, well, I don't want to throw it away, but I don't really want to
throw it anywhere. Right. Well, that's the only proverbial we have. We have the carry bags, right?
And then we have range mags is what we talk about. Right. And I think a lot of consumers,
a lot of gun people feel the same way. They've got, like you just said, they've got the ones
kind of like your different ammos, right? You got your range ammo and you've got your defense ammo.
And those are two different things. Right. And that's sort of what led us down the path
of going to the hybrids, you know, is trying to take, we took everything we learned for 10 years
on magazines from materials to the stresses to what makes the magazine unreliable or very reliable.
And we tried to say, if money were no issue and we were going to make the best magazine in the
world, what would it be? And that's kind of a little bit of the approach we took there
with those. And we started looking at the high stress areas. It's preferable to have steel.
The rest of the areas, it's not preferable to have steel from a weight perspective and
from a visibility perspective. And so we went down that path and that's kind of where the hybrid is,
is literally, you know, at the, at the risk of sounding, you know, silly, it's the best of both
worlds. Yeah. For the consumers who don't know what the hybrid you're talking about, it is the
Omega line. And I, when I had the opportunity, you know, trying to load that, I mean, we're going to
talk speed loaders in a couple of minutes. I don't want to forget that, but just trying to,
just loading one by hand, I noticed how much easier it was to get the rounds into the Omega
magazine than the standard magazine because you know, the lubricity of, and probably to
read the hardness of the feed lips. And I also did have the opportunity to do my own little informal
and formal drop testing and stuff like that and found that, yeah, you're right. They wouldn't fail.
In fact, the only magazine I've ever had personally fail was a Glock factory magazine. And it's
because the polymer, I think just aged out and split on the back and it was done. So, but along
the lines of, well, kind of a two-part question, it's sort of how do you develop like the inspiration
for new products, how you develop them and then how do you vet them and test them before you get
them out there? I mean, is it, I don't think that you do what Microsoft does with their operating
systems and turn the entire consumer base into the, or for that matter, the alpha tester. But I think,
I mean, do you have professional teams that do this for you, either competition or in-house and
you know, how do you, when do you decide it's time to add new SKUs? You know, because the
opportunity space says that there's something that not being addressed in the market that you can do
better. Right, right. That's a great question. So first of all, when we try to identify products,
I think that that process, we, to a certain extent have sort of found our niche, if you will,
in the market space, which is magazines. And so we look around at magazines or firearms that come
out, firearms that have been out. And we look at, you know, for us, you know, mostly it's a numbers
game in terms of, I'll give you a great example. Scorpion CZ, we make magazines for the Scorpion
CZ. I think we have for that, for that particular gun, I think we have 30 and 40 rounders. Okay.
And the reason we did that is because so many people contacted us when those guns came out and
said, Hey, I've got these factory CZ magazine again. I'm not knocking them. I love the gun. It's
one of my favorite guns to shoot. But they said, you know, I stored it in my safe and then I came
back, it was loaded and one of the feet lifts broke off of it and the round shot out everywhere and
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's a story we kept hearing over and over and over again. And honestly,
it's not a shocking story because I think what a lot of people do is they want to make a clear
magazine. And a lot of people who don't know, and haven't done all the diligence like we did back in
the day, they just make it out of a polycarbonate or something like that. And so what happens is
that cold creep thing we talked about earlier. If you overstress it, eventually it'll lead to
rupturing and it just breaks off, it cracks off. And so that's what was happening with a lot of
those factory CZ magazines when they were first released is the feel of the break off. And so we
had a ton of people asking us for magazines. And so I said, yeah, this is a need that needs to be
addressed. And so, so we did. So we made the magazines for that. And that was, that was a
good example of I saw something that was deficient and it needed to be fixed. And so we did. There
were other cases where they come out with a magazine, for example, the SIG 320, and there's
nothing wrong with a factory SIG 320 magazine. They're just expensive. They're 50 bucks, right?
So we said, well, you know, let's, let's come out with a magazine that hopefully people can afford.
And so we have magazines. Actually, I think this week we're shipping the first Omega SIG 320, which
we're pretty excited about. So that's going to be shipping out, I think tomorrow or Wednesday.
So those will be going out. But the point is the whole point of that was to make a magazine again,
that is as reliable as an OEM magazine, but at a far less cost. In this case, it'll be $20 instead
of $50. And you also have the visibility of, of the ETS polymer, right? So I think it's kind of a
win-win there. I mean, we're excited about that for those guys. Now, the second part of your question
is testing, right? And development. So that is, you know, one of the things we utilize a lot
for prototyping and stuff is 3D printing, right? So we'll, we'll come up with a concept. We'll do
a design. We'll 3D print it. It takes about 12 hours. We have a part that is not good enough to
go through a lot of testing, but we have a part that's good enough to go through very, very initial
testing. So we'll make sure that it fits. We'll make sure that it works. And you can shoot a couple
hundred rounds through a 3D printed magazine, for example, or whatever it is. So it's kind of a
proof of concept, if you will. And then from there, once we feel good about that, then it's time to
spend the real money. And now you're talking injection molds and tools or stamping tools
or whatever it is. And that's where, you know, I tell people that to bring a new magazine to market
from the time you look at design work, the testing to tooling and all the things, it's a minimum of a
half a million dollars and more realistically, probably like $750,000. Okay. Is, is, is roughly
what you're looking at by the time you do all the testing and all the design work and the
engineering and then the tooling, because the tools themselves are very, very, you know,
an injection mold tool for magazine is probably close to a quarter million dollars. So that's
just for the tooling. So it's an expensive endeavor if you do it right. And it takes a lot of testing
and a big part of that cost is testing. And so what we do is we do a ton of testing in-house.
And when we feel good about what we're seeing, then we'll let people outside the company,
which will be some of our partners on shooting teams, professional shooters, some other military
people and things like that. A lot of law enforcement friends that we have at training
facilities like FLETC and stuff like that. So we'll give them to them and say, Hey,
go do what you do with them and let us know what you see. And that's a really good thing
because no matter how good you are, and no matter how much time you spend in a quote unquote lab or
a controlled environment, you will never be able to sort of replicate everything that it'll see in
the real world. So yeah, that's a big part of the testing is letting other people get their hands on
them and go out. Like for example, a lot of people shoot out in the desert as sand, as you guys can
imagine. Right. Sand is a killer for magazines for the reasons. And so again, getting them out in
those different environments, we send them all over the country. We have partners that help us
do all that stuff. And it's actually a pretty fun process because we've gotten to know a lot of those
guys through the years and gals and getting their feedback is really invaluable to sort of the
final part of that, if you will. There's a couple of partners that you haven't engaged yet out here
on the left coast who would love to see some of the 10 round magazines come our way for testing
because, hey, who in the other States wants to test a 10 rounder? Nobody wants to do that. They
want the full capacity is not the reduced capacity that we have. Yeah. We definitely would be into
providing that. Well, the good thing is I know a guy that can get you guys hooked up with this.
And we love that too. Again, as we, as we meet people, this, this is kind of the way that this
goes, right? We we'll get to know people and they'll offer to do this. And typically what I find is
the people who offer to do it, they really like it. You know, they like not only being a part of it,
but getting to help with, with finding problems potentially before they become real problems and
getting to give feedback. People feel they have skin in it. And it's a process that, that we enjoy.
It's one of my favorite parts as, as one of the guys who helps design these things is interacting
with, with our, our people. It's one of my favorite parts of this whole thing. You know,
I was just going to say one of the things is, I mean, you, you earlier talked about, you know,
putting 5,000 rounds, you know, in a single day. Sadly we are frugal for our arms. I don't think
I've ever put more than, you know, five or 600 out in a day. You know, I'm just like, yeah,
we're just going to claim to do it. You know, that's, that's the thing to, you know,
me, the personal me, I don't do that. I don't go shoot five rounds a day. And, and you know,
back in 2020, when all that stuff hit, there was times where we had to, I was having to call in
favors at, at Shadow Roll and other places just to get enough ammunition for our testing, right?
When, when ammunition was short, because we have very specific protocols that we follow for testing.
And if we don't put the rounds through it, we can't check that box, right? It doesn't matter
if you run 90% of the rounds through it. If we don't check the proverbial boxes, they say,
then, then that thing is not ready to move on to the next phase. And so, so yeah, that's a,
that's a thing. And, and, and I get where you're coming from. And now sadly, I don't,
other than testing guns, I don't do much recreational shooting anymore. I used to a lot and now I just
don't. Well, you run a company. I mean, you've got things to do. And, you know, and you're a father
and things like that. I mean, all that stuff uses up time. Do you have, I don't know whether you do
or not, you know, contracts or, or you supply either, you know, various militaries or law
enforcement, you know, professional organizations that are not just competitor type. Oh, yeah. Yeah,
absolutely. We, we, we, we do not have a contract, like an actual military wide contract. What we do
is we supply several smaller units because their purchasing is at their discretion, right? And
we've supplied stuff like, here's a great example. You talk about, you know, the clear and the see
through and stuff, the treasury department, like our magazines, because they have two loadouts,
uh, one for the ground when they're transporting on the ground, uh, which is full metal jacket.
And then when they are in the air, uh, they have frangible rounds, right? So they actually have
clear magazines so they can see which ones they're grabbing and going out of the locker, so to speak,
before they leave. Um, it's another, it's another thing with training facilities and stuff like
that. Having a clear magazine is just another added layer of safety. Uh, when you have certain
requirements like that, like round counts are another good example, like a correction facilities
or stuff like that. Um, uh, law enforcement agencies, a lot of those guys have to do a round
count at the end of a shift. And so normally for them, that meant they had to unload the magazine,
count the rounds and then load it back, which sort of sucks. As you guys know, from doing the whole
loading thing. Um, so having a clear magazine, they don't have to do that. They can look at the
magazine, count them in the magazine and don't have to go through the act of unloading and
reloading the rounds. So, um, so those kinds of things, but yes, we, we do supply various law
enforcement agencies and we do supply, uh, various, uh, units and some other stuff like that. Uh,
around, uh, we have not won any major contracts yet. That's a very difficult thing and it takes,
you know, tens and tens of years. And so, you know, it's, it's one of the things we hope for
one day, but I work for the, you know, I work for the Navy. I understand the government. I, I,
then you get it. Absolutely. Right. So you talked about loaders. So talk about the speed. Yeah.
I mean, that's, that's the product. I'm not sure whether I owned your speed loader first or some of
your mags. I don't recall, but it's such a different product. Obviously they're complimentary
products, but it's so damn good. And you know, I, to me, it's just the leader in that industry, but,
but, you know, I have a couple, you know, for different calibers, uh, talk about that a little
bit. Okay. Well, first of all, I love hearing the compliments. Um, that's one of the, one of my
favorite things in the world is to hear somebody say that they're using the product and they love
it. And it makes their life, you know, better, easier, whatever. Um, so basically the way this
came about, again, I'm the guy that has to, well, I used to be the only guy now we have a team of
guys, but I have to go shoot bags and test them. And that means some long days, um, and some sore
fingers and all the things that go with it. And so I, I'm not afraid to mention competitors. I used
to use a, a, a mag Lula up Lula, um, which I tell people now is a good product. Yeah. Um, and I, I
and I, I consider it to be more of a thumb saver, not really a speed loader, cause you still pick
up each round and load it individually, but still a good product nonetheless. Um, and I used it and
I just, you know, I got, I just, it just took so long. And so I'll give you an example, uh, a week
or two ago, I had to go test a magazine. And it was some of the final rounds of testing for some
of the first off for the SIG mags and all that stuff. And I had to go run 2000 rounds through one
mag in a day. Um, and I went and did that and it took me 40 minutes. And most people, you know,
again, if you shoot with any regularity and you load your mags on stuff, you would know that
shoot 2000 rounds by yourself in one magazine where you don't have 20 magazines that you went
preloaded with would take a lot longer than, you know, 30 or 40 minutes. And that's no, yeah,
exactly. And that's kind of the deal. So, you know, I can, I can blaze through this stuff and
get my work done in a much faster time. So that's kind of how it came to be. That's kind of what
drove me down that path. You know, when you start talking about the mechanics of it, um,
the rifle loader is fairly simple. The rifle loader, um, which I, our rifle loader is really cool
because it works with a lot of different calibers. Um, it goes down to a nine millimeter. It'll do
five, five, six. It does most in between. It goes up to an AK 47. So you can load seven, six, two
rounds. So it works with a ton of different calibers and a ton of different platforms. And
a lot of people don't know that. I think as far as I know, we're the only people that make a
speed loader that is sort of a universal speed loader for rifles that works with most stuff.
And so that's, that's exciting. It's fast and it's easy. And then the pistol loader is a little bit
different animal because of the way that it has to load. So in looking at it, the way that a round
is stripped out of a feed lip and then hits a feed ramp and a gun goes up into the chamber.
That's sort of the motion, if you will. So the high behind the load, the idea behind the loader
was that idea in reverse. And that's what we did. And it took, again, I know it looks simple. If
you look at it and look down in it, it took me months and months of tweaking angles and changing
angles and multiple angles and all these things to try and get it right. Um, and then once I got it
right, I was working on a Glock magazine. Uh, then the, then the challenge was to try and make it
work with different magazines. And then I realized something that was even more difficult, which was
that the shapes of projectiles and all these animals are different. So you would have one
ammo that would work really, really well. And then one ammo that wouldn't load at all. We've gotten
it down to where it's pretty good. It works with most amos. There's a few weird ones out there,
but it works with most amos. It works with most magazines. There's a few that we have a list of
that it does. It's not compatible because the feed lips are too long. Um, but for the most part,
if you guys haven't seen it for the listeners that are listening, uh, you know, you scoop up
10 rounds at a time, uh, put your magazine in the thing. And then you, you basically push 10 rounds
in at a time and it doesn't, it doesn't hurt the magazine. And, uh, it's super, super fast. I,
I did a race one time, a video with some of my friends and my brother and they had, one of them
had a Lula. One of them was loading by hand and I had my speed loader and it took me just under nine
minutes to load a thousand rounds. And the next closest was the Lula and he had loaded 180. And
then the guy that loaded by hand and loaded 135. So that gives you some perspective as to how much
faster our speed loader is than really anything else on the market. So let's, let's talk future
products. Is there anything that no, our listeners have not signed NDAs, but is there, is, is there
anything that we're looking for in your futures that you'll either, you know, specific products
or categorically, maybe you're looking at, at some areas that, you know, your experience indicates
are underserved or you just see the opportunity space where, you know what, we have an idea that
nobody else has. Well, you know, I think that in the immediate future, you know, we spent two years
that the, uh, the Omega magazine that we developed, we spent, we spent largely, maybe two and a half
years now, I guess, um, developing that technology. We have several patents pending on that. And so
we kind of put our eggs in that basket, if you will, because we feel that those are the future
of not just our company, but also, um, I think there, I think that you'll, I think that if we
have this conversation, or at least my hope is that 10 years from now, people will see how good
these magazines are. And, um, we have talks with several large gun manufacturers for OEMing for
them that we're in talks with and things like that. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think that
those magazines are better than just your typical steel magazines because we've, so one really cool
aspect of them, one of the most time consuming and expensive parts of making a steel magazine is,
um, welding the seam up the back of them. And then you have to grind it flat, right? Um, and when you
do that, it heats up and then they warp and then you have to straighten them. And then you got to
send them out for heat. It's a, it's a time consuming process. The stamping machine can
stamp them out every few seconds, but the process of welding and grinding is a 30 second process.
So it's, it's quite a bottleneck. It's very expensive. The robotics to do a weld on them is
like, you know, half a million to a million dollars. So it's just a very expensive and time
consuming process. So when we made these, when we looked at making the hybrids, one of the big
challenges was if we made the metal part welded, like all the other metal magazines out there,
it would have been so cost prohibitive that it would have cost, it basically would have been the
cost of two magazines. You've been paying for a metal magazine and a plastic magazine at the same
time. And we knew that that's not what consumers are looking for. Right. So the answer was this
joint that we came up with. And if you have one of those in your hands or you guys look at it,
you could see sort of that we call it the Omega joint because it looks sort of like an Omega.
Well, we don't because we're in California, but I will, but I will tell you, but I know what you're,
I know what you're talking about. It's this essentially it's like a key for the listeners.
It's like a keyed fit basically. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's almost like a dovetail, right?
A dovetail joint on woodworking or something like that. So basically we use the strength of the
metal instead of plastic to sort of form the joint. And then we flow plastic in and around that.
And it's sort of, we call it a poly weld for lack of a better term. I don't even know if that's
trademarked or not, but we call it a poly weld joint instead of a weld. And, and we, we, we made
all the stresses on the plastic compressive stresses because plastic is about 30% stronger
under compression than it is under tinsel. So it excels at that and we used it for that and we
designed it around that. And so that's one of the things, you know, when I talk about some of the
things we kind of pioneer, it's not always a material in this particular case for the Omega
magazines. It was, how do we make this without the cost of welding and all the processes and all that
stuff? Because then what are we, again, what are we bringing to the table? And so this was the answer
and I, you know, I'm proud of it. It was a, it was clever. We've won two awards for innovative,
you know, accessory of the year and all this other kind of stuff. So it's something that we're
excited about. And I think in the future, this is going to be a new sort of a new bar for what
a pistol magazine could be. It can be more affordable. It can be a see-through. It can be
all the things you want. It's lighter. Our magazines weigh a third of what an all steel magazine weighs.
So there's a lot of, a lot of upside to it. And as far as, you know, like specific products
that we're coming out with, we are working on a 15 round flush fit for a Glott 43X, which a lot of
our cut, like that's our most requested product. And this, this technology is what allows us to do
that. You couldn't do that in plastic before that just, we would not, if you tried to make a
magazine out of plastic, that was 30,000 stick, it would be like a wet noodle. It would kind of be
bendy and flop around and all this stuff. So with this technology, it allows us to make magazines
that we previously could not make out of all plastic. And it allows us to target some of the
firearms that are new, like the micro carries, as well as some of the oldies, like the Berettas,
like a good example is a Beretta. You can't, the Beretta M9, you can't make a pistol magazine for
that out of all plastic. It simply will not be strong enough. Now that we have this technology
with the steel in it, we can. And so that right now is where our focus is. And over the next year
or two, our goal is to try and roll out as many of these as we can that makes sense and try and,
you know, make something for everybody, you know. Outstanding. So finishing out here a little bit,
you know, do you have any funny closer type stories, things like that, little anecdotes or
stuff like that. And the other thing I also wanted to do was, you know, give you the opportunity to
talk about your website or other events that you're, you know, whether they be conventions
or shoots or things like that, that you're going to be attending where people could come get hands
on the product. Well, you know, a funny story. I'm not the funniest guy in the world, but I'm
trying to think of anything that might be, you know, firearm industry related. That would be
appropriate for this conversation. It is a clean show, right? Yeah, no, I know. I know it is.
And so, you know, there's nothing that really comes. And I thought about this before we kind
of got into this and I just couldn't really come up with something. So I'll leave the comedian stuff
for the comedians. But, you know, when it kind of where we're at, I mean, I'm talking about in terms
of people coming out and meeting us or seeing us and all that kind of stuff, you know, I'm a very,
I'm a very private person. So I'll be, so this is the first podcast I've ever done.
A lot of people, it is, it absolutely is. Do you know what I was going to tell you? You know,
I was going to tell you off air. I was going to tell you, you know, off air that you, I mean,
having now listened to you, you're extremely efficient at this. I mean, you're really good
at this and you should probably, I mean, ours is the best podcast in the firearms industry, bar none,
in my opinion. And we're honored that you, I guess, having not done this before, you know,
granted us the opportunity because it was, you know, the listeners don't know this. I've been
talking to your subordinates about doing this for almost two years now. So, yeah, it's been a while
and I'm, yeah, I'm glad that we got, we finally got to do it for those of you that don't know,
we were going to do this last week and we had some really bad wind storms and it blew a tree over on
my house. Literally the day that we were supposed to do this. So I had to reschedule for this week,
which is Thanksgiving week, but, well, I can see that I can see in the video feed, I can see your
ceiling. So it looks like it didn't hit that part of the house. There's not a tree branch coming
through that. Luckily it wasn't too bad. And we got everything cleaned up from that. We, I'm in
Tennessee for people that don't know, again, I probably should have mentioned this. We're a
Tennessee based company. We do have some customer service girls that are owned by the company.
We have some customer service girls that are up in South Bend, Indiana. And a lot of people say,
why do you all have two locations? The answer to that question is my business partner, Jim,
is he's in South Bend, Indiana. So he sort of took that responsibility while I'm doing
the manufacturing and the design and stuff like that. He sort of heads up the sales aspect,
customer service and all that kind of stuff. I had a background a long time ago in customer
service as well. That was one of our, you know, I probably should have mentioned that one of our,
you know, core of tenants of our company is we always take care of customers because I'm a firm
believer that no matter what kind of mistakes we make, and we're not perfect guys, as you know,
like everybody, you know, we try our best to not let a bad magazine out the door. But if you happen
to get one, give us a call and we'll replace it or do whatever you want us to do. We always take care
of the customers because, you know, we're here for them basically. And I think a lot of times in
today's world, it's sort of lost, right? You know, picking up the phone, if you call us for customer
service, you're going to talk to a girl in South Bend, Indiana, and she's going to take care of
you. She's going to get you whatever you need. That's what we do. We don't ask questions and we
don't try and give people our time. We just want to make sure they have what they need and that
they're taken care of. But all that being said, we're in Tennessee. The manufacturing is done
here in Tennessee. Every part is made in Tennessee. Everything we make is made in the USA. And we're
proud of that. And again, I'm a very private person. So this is my first podcast. I don't speak
publicly a lot to people, not because I don't do it. Again, I think you guys can tell I would talk
about our business and the things that I'm excited about. I could do this all day long, but I don't
really do it because I don't like people. I'm not on Facebook. I don't do those kinds of things.
I don't like people knowing my business and all that stuff. So I'm a very private person.
And I feel like in some ways, through the years, we've been in business now for 10 years. And I
feel like in some ways it may have sort of done us a little bit of a disservice because I think a
lot of people in the industry don't know who we are. And when I say that, meaning who are the
people right behind the company, so to speak. Because I think more than in a lot of other
spaces, I think consumers and people want to know who are they doing business with, who is the
company, who are the people behind the company, and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's important.
So that's one of the things why I wanted to get out and let people get to know me and let them
get to know us a little bit as a company. And that's kind of what led to where we are right now.
Absolutely right. We're honored that you took the time to talk to us because I really have enjoyed
and learned quite a bit just from what you've been talking about, particularly about the carbon,
literally fouling or embedding itself both in steel, which I would never have considered,
but into the plastic makes a lot of sense. So I've learned quite a bit just by listening to it.
I'll add that Ken and I were talking before the show. It's kind of like, how are we going to turn
an episode about magazines into an interesting show? I mean, because I was, well, I'm not kidding.
I was just kind of like, listen, I try to think about that every day. How do we make it more
interesting for people? This has been honestly one of our easiest episodes to date. And I mean,
if you're familiar, I follow Formula One. Okay. And do you know what broke Formula One in the
United States? I mean, it's been around forever. I used to watch it literally in the eighties.
What broke it was Netflix with Drive to Survive. And do you know why? It's because they made it
personal. They put instead of just a helmet and a color of a car, you know, the red car with the
guy with the red helmet or something like that. Now it's people. And you've done that today.
You've put a, well, not a face because we're not on YouTube. So this isn't video. You've put a voice
to the company and the people are going to be able to relate to. Well, I love that. And on a side note,
just so you know, I used to race cars as an amateur hobby. And I love Formula One too. I
follow all of it, have for 20 years. And I used, like I said, I used to race Vipers and Corvettes
back before I had children. And my wife told me it was too dangerous to do that anymore.
So I love cars. I love fast stuff. Like besides guns, cars are probably my other love,
if you want to call it that, as far as hobbies and stuff go. So it's something that I have a
real passion. I love that stuff. I love, I truly, truly love cars and firearms. So that's me.
Greg and I both have good classic cars ourselves. But the one I drive every day is my Audi S6,
but that's another story. So, Hey, thank you Eddie for joining us again. Actually really legitimately
honored to have, to convince you, because I imagine you've had other requests for podcasts,
but for some reason ours resonated with you. And I think it, I think it was the right move. So
thank you for joining us today. And Ken, any closing comments for Eddie?
No, Eddie, just a real pleasure, real joy. Very much enjoy your products and we'll try to take
a look at some of the more California friendly ones as time goes on. So I very much appreciate
your time. Thank you. Yeah, guys. I appreciate you guys. Thank you.
I thought we were headed down the path to a, man, this is going to be a hard podcast to make
interesting. And boy, was I wrong. That was a lot of fun. And I learned a lot and being an engineer
myself, I'm going to catch up to this guy at Shot Show and learn some more and talk nuts and bolts
and chemistry and stuff like that. So, another topic that I wanted to bring forward. Oh, by the
way, oh, first off, first off, a new website, change the website. It is now very easy for people
to remember frugalfirearmspodcast.com. That's it. No more going to other faces and things like that.
All the contact information is still there. frugalfirearmspodcast.gmail.com. If you want to
put in any comments, we do obviously survive on things like ratings. So particularly if you are
using Apple podcasts as the distribution network for you, that's where about three quarters of our
stuff comes through Apple podcasts. Definitely. Please leave us a rating because that helps us
throughout. And then also suggestions. If you guys have suggestions on things you'd like us to talk
about, feel free to let us know. Yeah. And the, and the email is there for that. And you know,
the website is a very simple one, but it, it should be like, I didn't throw a bunch of stuff in there
that we didn't need. It has the links to our social media. It has the links to all our episodes. It
has the links to our email address, but Thanksgiving is upon us. And you know, I've seen a lot of stuff
on social media. It's kind of unfortunate where people who didn't get what they wanted in the
most recent election, um, kind of don't feel connected to their family anymore. And that's,
that's a mistake. I think because yeah, you're, you're going to live. Yeah. You will live to
regret that. I mean, these are, so even if somebody in family doesn't agree with you,
you know, their family, so treat them, treat them with respect, invite them to the table.
Uh, you share a common history, uh, and you need to celebrate that. And this is the time of year
to do that. Yeah. And take a history lesson too, because I don't mean that that sounds
disrespectful. I didn't mean it that way. Take the history lesson that shows, you know, the
founding fathers, the early Congress, things like that, they had disagreements just as vigorous as
what we have now, but they would also get together and pray for some cases hours before entering a
session. And they found the common space to get along. And that's the thing that you need to do
as a family. Um, you know, don't let your, you know, don't be braggadocious about the fact that
if you're on the winning side and, and don't be overly depressed or despondent if you're on the
losing side, because it's an ebb and flow process, isn't it? Yeah. But, but, but the one thing
that doesn't swing back and forth, it only once swings one direction is time. So don't let time
get away from you and enjoy your family. So anything else, Ken? Nope. With that, I think
we can just close out. Yeah. Lucky number 13 coming up next. So thank you all for joining us. Good evening, everyone.
Now you're ready for the ones with the big audiences. I mean, not Joe Rogan yet. Not yet Joe Rogan.
Yeah. Well, I know, Joe, I actually know Joe. Come on, man.