I've got a safe on the floor with my system installed.
And their head of sales is like, Thomas, your
system holds 12 guns. I said, with all due respect,
that's a 12 -gun safe. He goes, that's a 40 -gun
safe. And I said, sir, there's no way you can
physically fit 40 guns in that safe. And he started
laughing. He goes, yeah, I know, I know. That's
our industry's little white lie. Welcome to episode
18 of the Fugle Firearms Podcast, the podcast
that has a mission to make you save money, to
be able to afford other things in your life,
and still be able to afford and enjoy the shooting
sports to the maximum extent that your budget
allows. But you know what happens if someday
you come home and all those firearms that you
worked so hard to acquire aren't there anymore.
Have you thought about that? Have you thought
about the process of replacing them and what
you're going to have to sacrifice in order to
do that? So today we're welcoming on Tom Kubik
from SecureIt to be talking about... options
for storage in ways that you probably haven't
thought about. And if you haven't thought about
storage, you need to. But even if you do have
a storage solution, is it really going to serve
your need at the time of need? Tom has a lot
of thoughts on this. I've listened to him on
some other excellent podcasts. Definitely wanted
to have him on this show to expose him to a different
audience. But first and always, we're going to
bring on our co -host, Ken. Ken, good morning.
How are you? Doing very well. Looking forward
to this discussion with Tom here. And I have
owned one of Tom's products now for more than
five years. So, and I've got some thoughts and
hopefully it'll be a great conversation. So again,
welcome to the show, Tom from Securit. Tom, tell
us about who you are, kind of how you got started
briefly. You had a great story that has to do
with an MP5. really got you rolling in this industry.
So give us a little bit of your background and
why you're relevant in the space. I will do a,
it's about a minute and a half rapid, as fast
as I can go from the beginning. Graduated high
school as a guitar player. I played heavy metal
guitar. I played in bands, toured all over the
place for about 10 years. um moved california
had an article in guitar player magazine about
me as the best unknown guitar player i was obsessed
with it i developed tendonitis shortly after
that article and my career was over i could not
play again so i took a job telemarketing because
i had no other skills two years later i quit
and started my first business as a telemarketing
computer supply company built that sold it started
another one got into the internet in the 90s
and started creating websites selling tape racks
and laptop storage cabinets when And the HIPAA
laws came out early days before Google, Yahoo.
I got really good at SEO. And back then you could
kind of game the system. I had 36 websites all
focused on laptop storage, all cross -linked
and stuff you can't do anymore. And we crushed
it. And then 2001, a guy called me, said, can
you store an MP5? I'm like, sure. What's an MP5?
I didn't know. And he goes, well, it's a little
submachine gun. I start laughing. I go, who is
this? And he goes, with the FBI. And I said,
you know, there's no reason we can't. And we
talked for about 10, 15 minutes. I said, give
me a week. Let me do some research. So I started
looking into, again, this is back in the day
of Google. It was a little harder to do research.
But I kept finding references that the US military
was struggling. They were transitioning from
the M -16 to the M -4. from a standard rifle
to a modular weapon system. You know, the M4
with all the attachments and armories were failing.
So I called one of my manufacturers who made
my laptop cabinets. I'm like, Steve, I got a
crazy idea. Weapon storage. He started laughing.
He said, Canadian government called me about
a month and a half ago. I'm already working on
it. So he and I compared notes and came up with
a weapon storage solution. Made in Canada, Securit.
I formed Securit. It was originally Secure IT,
selling laptops. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Oh,
I never would have thought of that. Secure IT
for securing. So we started getting it. I thought
this, again, at the time, I wasn't a gun guy.
I could shoot, but I just wasn't. I was a musician.
It's a whole different culture, but I just thought
it was fascinating and kind of cool. And the
Gulf War. And at that point, and I was never
in the military, but I thought if I could do
something to help this effort, I really want
to do it. And so we started working with my Canadian
supplier, and we were the U .S. distributor for
their product, selling it. And we didn't know
anything about this. We had to look like idiots
to the customers because we're coming in. We
didn't know the nomenclature. We knew nothing
about defense contracting, but we just. kept
plugging away at it and slowly learning. 2007,
we BS'd our way into a contract with U .S. Army
Special Forces Command to survey all of their
armories nationally and then write them a report
as to why they're failing inspection and make
recommendations. We were a three -person company
up against Harris Defense, L3, these huge companies.
And we won the contract and I spent 18 months
on the road traveling to every special forces
armory, spent a day with the armor, watched the
workflow, tons of notes, tons of photographs.
And it was during that time that I became the
leading authority on small arm storage and armory
design. We became the pros from Dover, and that's
when we designed and patented the Securit cradle
grid technology solution, which is a very simple,
adjustable gun storage system. And we showed
that to... the SOCOM, the special forces guys.
And we're like, we gave them the report, broke
everything down, said, here's our solution. And
we're like, we didn't know if they're going to
like it, laugh at it or what. And they just lit
up. This was in 2009, late 2009. By 2011, we
were the primary supplier to the US military.
So it went quick. Would you, I heard the story
before, and I think this little part of the story
is worth repeating. And it's not, some people
would take it as maybe critical, but I would
take it as you're leaning forward and you have
confidence. How did you, quote unquote, become
the leading authority? Well, are you talking
about the story about meeting with the colonel
at Fort Bragg, probably? I am, sir, yes. Yeah,
that's... You know what? This is a lesson in
life kind of a thing. And it's not, in hindsight,
I look back and say, that was brilliant. At the
time, I was making it up as I go along. Gary
Myrick was my sales guy. He and I, and then I
had a girl that ran the office. Gary looked like
an operator. He was ripped, bald, and he wasn't.
His background, he's a sales guy, but he looked
like a SOCOM guy. So we got this appointment
with the colonel who was running this. It's going
to be the arms of assessment. This is before
the solicitation comes out. Once the solicitation
comes out, you can't talk to anybody. All you
do is submit a bid. So we got a meeting with
this guy. And I'm walking. We get to Bragg. And
we're like, can we do this? And we're just, we're
nobodies. We're nothing company. And we walk
into one of the buildings on Bragg for, I think
it was third special forces group. We're walking
down the hallway and there's all this, you know,
there's all the photos and memorabilia and all
this stuff, the history. And I'm looking at everything.
And it just hits me. Nobody knows how to do what
we're being asked to do. There is nobody knows
how to how to solve this problem. So I walked
into his office and just. And you mean including
you? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, nobody. Nobody knows
the space. But we were there. We had the appointments.
I walked in. I said, good morning, sir. My name
is Tom Kubanek. I'm considered the leading authority
in small arm storage and armory design. I really
believe we're the company to do this for you.
Let's let's have a let's talk about it. We sat
down, talked for 20 minutes, which is a lot for
a colonel to get that much time. And we walked
out and Gary's like, we get in the parking lot.
I'm just, I thought we had a great meeting. I'm
walking to the car. He stops. He's like, dude,
what the F was that? I look at him, I go, I look
at him, I go, and he goes, the leading, I started
laughing. And as I said, Gary, you know what?
It hit me as we were walking down the hallway.
Nobody knows how to do this. The other people
that supply weapon racks are our office furniture
companies that. are making these things that
they think the government wants. Nobody knows
this. We just told them we're the experts. Let's
win the contract and let's become the experts.
We won the contract and we dug our heels in and
just spent 18 months doing a deep dive into armories.
And the whole thing came back to the reason we
won. The reason Securit is the global leader
in military weapons storage is simplicity. We
had two big competitors. One had a modular weapon
rack with 278 different components. The other,
which was the main supplier to the Marine Corps,
had a modular weapon rack with about 88 different
components. So you get the rack, configure it
to store the guns. If the guns change, you simply
swap the components and you're storing the new
guns. Our system had one piece, one moving our
upper cradle. It holds everything from an MP5
up to most shoulder launch. and mortar -based
weapon systems. Adjusts on the fly, vertically.
No tools are required. It's got a patented profile
to it, so it picks up barrels, foregrips, magwells.
And we took this thing down to the armorer walks
up to our weapon rack with, doesn't matter what
gun is in his hand, he can reach in with one
arm, adjust it, place the gun, and walk away.
Our competitor's rack would require you to set
the guns down, go get some tools, unscrew everything,
disassemble the rack, rebuild it. You're into
an hour and a half now. And you've also got to
go buy the new components, which in the military,
just going out and buying stuff is really difficult.
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. We just solved it
with simplicity. And then the other piece of
our system that we really didn't know if they
were going to laugh at us, our cradle grid system
properly stores all guns, whether military or
civilian. The other part of our system, the gear
storage, was the really critical function in
our opinion because the amount of gear associated
with the military weapons at that point when
they were transitioning to the M4, gear was growing
exponentially and it's continued. Gear is growing
much faster than weapons. So our gear storage
solution is modular bins and trays and you can
buy most of this stuff at Home Depot. So where
my competitors were 100 % proprietary, and once
you have their system, you have to buy everything
from them, and it's expensive. You buy my system,
you can go to any hardware store and buy components
that will fit into my rack. Do we give up sales?
Sure. I don't care. We're crushing it because
we're allowing, whether it's a military or a
consumer, we're allowing them to solve problems
the way they want to, not the way we think they
should. And I'll tell you something, for the
people in our audience who are not thinking about
Tom's products for their home, and they're thinking
maybe along the lines of an agency, I want you
to think for a second, too, about the importance
of what Tom said, because buying parts is not
just buying the part itself. It's the labor involved
in. costing the entire thing, competing it if
it's at a certain dollar level, you know, how
many people are touching that purchase order
and what's the total cost of the purchase is
a lot higher. So, Tom, why then, given the military
background of your company and, you know, large
scale storage for lots and lots of weapons, easily
reconfigurable. how does that translate to the
home market how does that translate to your consumer
and and maybe start off with i mean why would
i even let's say i don't have kids in the house
you know why not stick a gun in a flower pot
or just underneath you know my pillow in my in
my room i mean why even bother with with gun
storage to begin with in states where it's not
part of the law well it's our mission our part
of our plan is to make sure every gun in america
is properly locked and secured All of our solutions,
we class them as fast access solutions. We've
just developed our new HSFA locking system, which
we can talk about later. When you look at tragedies
in America surrounding guns, when you look at
child deaths, accidental discharge deaths, or
injury, and you look at these things, quite often
you look at the story of what happened, and it's
kind of a crazy set of events occurred in a certain
order. that resulted in a kid or an adult accidentally
discharging a gun. And it's those unsecured firearms.
Again, give you a real simple scenario to think
about. You've got a couple that's in their late
60s. Their kids live out of state. Their kids
don't have kids. They have no grandkids, just
the two of them in a house. And he's got a couple
of handguns, rifles, and they're just next to
the dresser and drawers in the house. Next door
neighbor is a young family. Father, mother, father,
three kids. They're in their 30s. The dad has
a stroke out of nowhere and drops. Ambulances
show up. The wife is freaking out. They don't
know what the hell's going on. And the guy's
getting in the hospital. And then the neighbors
are all good neighbors. They all get along. We'll
watch the kids go. Go with your husband. Get
to the hospital. You need to be there. We've
got these guys. We'll take care of it. So now
there's this very nice couple. with no kids and
their kids live far away, have three, let's say,
six, eight, and 12 -year -old boys in their house.
And they're not used to it. They have not planned
for it. But again, in a crisis, we adapt to take
care of the crisis. We all help our neighbors.
We do what we need to. But they've just created
a situation where these kids are now, let's say,
two days go by. The kids are getting bored and
kids explore. You can see where this is going.
But those are the scenarios. I mean, it sounds
crazy, all these random things happening in this
order. But when you dig into the stories of accidental
discharge, you see these patterns. So what we're
saying is simply having the gun secured breaks
all the chains. It breaks them every single time.
And when I say secured, I do not mean a trigger
lock. I mean secured out of sight. Kids don't
need to, if they're not old enough to be trained
and learn how to shoot, they don't need to know
you own firearms. Secondly, we can demonstrate
that a properly locked gun is faster to access
than a gun hidden in a closet, hidden in a drawer.
I can be in a high ready or low ready position
with my, I shoot a SIG 365 or 320. I mean, if
I'm at the safe, I'm just about a second. It's
that quick. If I've got the safe in a cupboard,
it's two. you know, 1 .9 to 2 .2 seconds. It's
really fast. I mean, we encourage everybody,
if you've got guns for home defense, lock them
all, then practice your combination. You know,
next to your bed, if you've got a fast access
safe, every night, go to bed, turn the light
off, practice your combination, let it open,
remove the firearm, put it back, close it, go
to bed. You're building muscle memory. My background
is playing guitar. I practice eight to 10 hours
a day. Practice is not playing. Playing is playing
songs. Practice is metronome running. You're
building muscle memory exercises to program your
hands to play quickly. So I could play guitar
whether I was nervous, whether it was dark. With
my eyes closed, I could simply play. You need
to do the same thing with firearms. They used
to say that Randy Rhoades would practice scales,
just scales for hours and hours a day. I would
sit sometimes watching TV just practicing scales
for two hours. Watching TV, that's kind of a
break because you really want to be 100 % focused,
but I drove people nuts because I would take
the hardest part of something I was working on
and for an hour, painfully slow. If you're doing
dry fire drills with a handgun, I'm learning
red dot, so I'm doing a lot of dry fire drills
so I can pick up the red dot when I present the
gun. You do it ridiculously slow because your
brain doesn't know time when it learns, but you
want to do it. really slow. So now when I do
it fast, boom, it's right there every time. Then
I'm going to put in a plug for one of our previous
guests, Mantis, with their X10 product. Absolutely.
It's a great product. It's a great product. So
you're saying then, or you're inferring, that
the model that you follow is probably not the
traditional model because I think that most people
would go out and they'd say, you know, I want
this. huge fort knox or liberty or some other
company's safe that has you know they use car
paint on these things to make them just beautiful
gold filigree and things like that um and then
maybe because they spent so much on this safe
they're going to prominently display this in
a den or office or maybe even a living room or
something like that your idea is distributed
storage And that's maybe the key to the fast
access. So what's kind of the difference in your
model versus those traditional models? Well,
we developed this working with the Marine Corps.
They call them reaction force teams that would
basically, if a base was attacked directly, these
were the guys that would defend the base. And
we moved their weapons out of the main armories
and created these small little armories close
to the point of where conflict would be. We called
it decentralized storage. The same thing happens
with your home. The traditional safe model, and
I'll start this off by saying, any safe is better
than no safe. Okay, just make sure you got something
to lock your guns. The traditional model is buy
the biggest safe you can afford, goes in your
basement, and all your guns go into it. And buy
the biggest one you can afford because you're
always going to end up getting more guns and
you'll grow into it. Oh, yeah. Traditional gun
safes, the ads typically will talk about... family
heirloom. It's an investment. It's a showpiece.
And the photograph is this beautiful safe next
to a pool table, river rock, fireplace, view
of the mountains. We come from a security background.
We're not a gun safe company. And I look at that
as just being crazy. All of our safes are narrow
or they're not deep. They're designed to go in
closets. They're designed to go into discrete
locations. Our safes are much smaller. Our thought
is buy what you need. to store your guns. If
you get more guns, buy another one. You don't
buy, a young couple getting married doesn't buy
a Chevy Suburban because they think they might
have five kids. You wait till you have the five
kids. And we're the same mindset, but smaller
modular storage also allows you to break up your
gun collection. We call it, again, decentralized
storage. When you look at my home, I have a firearm
next to my bed and a fast access safe, nothing
more. I've got front hall closet next to my front
door. I've got one of my agile cabinets. I've
got six guns, one of which is a pump shotgun
with rounds in the tube. I've got an AR -15 that's
racked in my kitchen pantry. I have another agile
six -gun cabinet with got some lever guns, but
I've got an AR -15 that's racked, that's ready
to roll, all set up for fast access. And I just
work through it that way, as opposed to saying
all my guns are in my basement or in my den in
this great big heavy safe. Our safes are also
all lightweight. Yeah, but extremely well made
in the fact that it's, you know, short of sitting
there with a blowtorch and, you know, crowbar
for quite a while, you're not going to get into
it. This is not something that you're going to
get into. Because when I purchased your safe,
as I said, about five years ago, I ended up getting
the Model 47, which is, you know, narrow and
tall. And I was actually looking for a drawer
safe that went underneath the bed, bolted onto
the bed frame. and I was looking around looking
around but I wanted a full -size pump shotgun
which I wanted laying on the floor and and I
know you make the three the 36 or whatever the
which is yeah the model 47 drawer is will be
available in August it's it's in production right
now good because that's really what I wanted
yeah because what I what I ended up was getting
your 47 and then basically you know mounted it
onto the floor uh but it the door opens up but
then you got to reach in it'd be better to have
the drawer so I I look forward to, that'd be
great. So you said, Tom, that these large safes,
you grow into them. But I think that there's
a reality here that when they market safes, I
mean, maybe for logical reasons, you see a big
cavernous thing that's carpeted on the inside
and it's empty. So if they advertise a X number,
you know, of guns in this safe, how many does
it really hold? As opposed to how many do your
hold? It's a tough, it's a sore subject for us.
We're launching a campaign this summer called
Truth in Storage. And we call out the industry
a lot because the capacity has gotten to a ridiculous
level. I had meetings with, when we first decided
to go into retails, late 13 into 14, we had developed
kits to upgrade safes. My thought was, I don't
know this space. Let's license our cradle grid
technology to gun safe manufacturers. So most
of the big manufacturers in the US are near Salt
Lake City. You got Payson, you got Salt Lake.
They all grew out of one company back in the
60s. So I went out there and I met with most
of the major safe manufacturers. And sitting
in a boardroom, we're talking to these guys and
I've got a safe. on the floor with my system
installed and their head of sales is like, Thomas,
your system holds 12 guns. I said, with all due
respect, that's a 12 gun safe. He goes, that's
a 40 gun safe. And I said, sir, there's no way
you can physically fit 40 guns in that safe.
And he started laughing. He goes, yeah, I know.
I know. That's our industry's little white lie.
Stack on says 36, Fort Knox says 38. So we say
40. And it just goes back and forth. And we're
at a point now. We've just revamped our whole
gun safe upgrade kit line. We've brought all
the manufacturers in the US. We were able to
actually bring the price down by going to injection
molding on a bunch of pieces. So we've built
all these safes and I've got an 80 gun safe here.
And we went through, we got a video on, we fit
17 guns in it. It's an 80 gun safe. You mean
by industry standards? All they're saying is
they take these brackets with the little Ws cut
into the wood and they put leather or carpeting
over it. If they can fit 80 little Ws, they're
saying it's an 80 -gun safe. You couldn't lay
that safe on its back and pack it full of 80
guns if it was empty. There's just no way. But
the industry has just gotten so ridiculous. So
we look at your average 30 to 40 -gun safe is
a 12 -gun safe. And that's what most people have
in them. And then traditional gun safe, your
guns are stacked front to back, side to side.
They're all leaning. They're twisting. There's
no real organization. So getting to the gun in
the back of the safe requires you to take everything
out, lay it on the ground, kind of dig back there.
Our solution, this is based on all of our military
work, is one arm, one gun. We call it straight
line access. You open the door of my safe. You
select the firearm you want. You pull it out.
It will not hit or touch the other guns. Optics
stay zeroed. clean and neat. All your gear is
stored and organized in what we call organizational
awareness. You open the safe and you can see
immediately if something is missing. What do
you know about guns getting damaged just as a
process of getting them in and out of safes?
There was an article I read, and this goes back
quite a ways, and there's a website, I think
it's called The Truth of Guns or The Truth About
Guns website. It's an old website. It's still
up. And they did an article on wear, tear, and
damage. point at the end of the article was the
number one cause of damage and wear is going
in and out of gun safes. And they weren't critical
of gun safes because at the time, that was the
only solution. They were simply saying, guys,
be very careful because you got to position the
gun to go underneath the shelf and stick it up
so the barrel goes up in those little Ws. If
you've got a scope and you've got an AR -15 with
a quad rail and optics and things mounted, all
those edges are sharp. If you've got a couple
of vintage lever guns, you just nick one, you're
putting a, you're scraping the finish. You know,
it's so easy to do. So our solution solves that
problem. But we need people to accept the idea
that they say the safe holds 36, and I'm telling
you it holds 12. And I get pushed back. People
say, well, I've got more guns than that. Then
buy two safes. I don't want to buy two safes.
Then you're going to end up packing your guns.
You know, we're going to start a thing is, you
know, this campaign about the guns hate their
guns. The guns hate their home. Your guns hate
your safe. I love that. When you're teaching
your kids, you teach them about respect for firearms.
That's a term that's used by the NRA. It's used
by a lot of instructors. When I look at storage,
I look at gun safes. I'm saying, are you showing
any respect? And we say respect should not end
when you close the door of your safe. And the
guns are all packed in, stacked on top of each
other. I'm saying you're not showing much respect
for those guns that you spent a lot of money
on, you spent a lot of time training with. Our
solution provides proper storage for each gun.
Nothing touches, everything's free and clear.
Optics will never lose zero. Gear is stored in
a way where you're not going to damage your guns
if you drop something. So it's our military mindset,
but we think it makes more sense. I have to completely
agree with it because I've got stuff that is
like, oh, would you like to go, you know, we're
going to range, we get short order, you're going
to go to range. Like, yeah, but I want to take
that and it's way in the back and it's going
to take me 20 minutes to get everything out and
20 minutes to put everything back. And it's like,
you know, and they end up not shooting something
that you kind of enjoy, but it just, it just
got pushed to the back for whatever reason. I
guess that's a form of disrespect as well to
the firearm, just never using it because it happened
to migrate to the back because you have an optic
on it and taking the optic off to make room for
another gun is, you know, a choice, right? What
kind of misconceptions are out there, in your
opinion, Tom, about what the big heavy doors
and safes are in terms of actual security? Because
I think that there's also a body of thought there
that I have more bolts than you do or something
like that. Yeah, that goes back again. We don't
approach things from looking at what others do.
We don't approach things from how does the world
do this or that. We go in and pull data. And
when you look at actual data of safe breaches.
They focus a lot on doors and bolts, which I
can get to. When you look at actual breaches
of safes, they cut the side open. In a modern
circular saw with a carbide blade, they sell
these blades to concrete industry for cutting
rebar on job sites. It's up to one inch rebar.
Cuts pretty quick. I can cut the side of a safe.
Doesn't matter what brand. Doesn't matter the
thickness of the metal, really. Even if it's
quarter inch, I can cut it at about the rate
I can cut three quarter inch plywood. These blades
are that efficient. And the biggest number of
breaches of safes was in the cell phone industry.
That's where I had most of my data because cell
phones were, this goes back probably about 10,
11 years. Cell phone theft from stores was becoming
an epidemic. And the only thing, they couldn't
afford. a true concrete -filled safe. And they
weren't big enough. They were all buying big
gun safes and storing all their phones in at
night. And these stores would get broken into
if they used to cut a hole in the side of the
safe and take all the cell phones. And that's
where most of the data that I came across. A
lot of gun owners don't report their guns being
stolen. for various reasons. And I understand,
I mean, you don't want people to know what you
have, but a lot of it, if you don't have insurance,
a lot of it goes unreported. That could also
skew why so much of my data was on the cell phone
industry. But we've demonstrated that my safes
aren't more secure. You know, we use the same
gauge steel as Fort Knox, as Liberty. We're all
using the same material. I don't have drywall.
I don't have carpeting. Our safes meet, you know,
the military AR -190 -11 and the OPNAV. naval
requirements for secure storage of firearms.
There's no fire ratings. None of that is part
of any of our safes. And then our safes are shallow,
so they fit into discrete locations. The reason
a gun safe is deep is not capacity. It's so the
safe doesn't tip over when you open the door
because the doors are so heavy. The industry
focuses in the marketing, all the attention on
the door, plate this, drill plate here. You know,
bolts, corner bolts. There's so much stuff. Level
one, two, three levels of security all focus
on beefing up the door. These doors get so heavy.
If you open them, the safe has to be really deep
or the safe could tip over. But again, when you
look at the crime data, the doors are ignored.
You know, the piece of their industry that is
they're using drywall and carpeting and calling
it a fire rating. We don't offer a fire rating
and come out and say fire ratings are nonsense.
They really are. The only safes that will give
you any level of protection and fire, and a true
fire, is a double -walled safe filled with a
concrete composite. Fort Knox. Actually, no,
I'm sorry. It's American Security BF series of
safes. It's a double -walled safe with a concrete
composite fill. It gives you a decent fire rating.
We make the true safe, which is a similar construction,
double -walled steel filled with a concrete composite.
These safes are very expensive and they're very,
very heavy, but they do give you a modest level
of fire protection. And the problem with fire
ratings is they all use the same test and the
test is not testing real world conditions. They
put them in an oven and bake them. And they say,
well, you baked it at 1300 degrees. It went an
hour. It's a one hour rating. And fire in your
home is not baked. It's a convective force. I
was just going to say this convection. Yeah.
Yeah. The air in your home can move in excess
of 60 miles an hour. And what I would like for
people who don't just to visualize this and better
understand it, if you're home making a pizza,
you got your oven at 450 degrees. You're going
to put the pizza in there like a frozen pizza.
You can open the oven, put your hand in that
450 degree oven. Just hold it real still. You
can keep it in there for about two minutes before
it gets so hot you have to pull it up before
it burns. Now, picture a small jet engine mounted
to a bench. The exhaust is the same 450 degrees
coming out at 60 miles an hour. Put your hand
in that exhaust stream. You will lose your hand
in less than a second. You'll have third -degree
burns almost instantaneous. You're going to lose
all the skin and muscle off the bones because
convective air. transfers heat an order of magnitude
faster than static air. And that's a big flaw
in the industry. We don't do it. We just think
this is crazy. And those materials, the drywall
and the carpet they're using is also why they
sell golden rods and desiccants. That's the source
of corrosion. Those materials are all banned
from armories. They're all banned from museums
because of their corrosive nature. And behind
all of it, though, is... You don't need a fire
rating. When you look at, again, we crunch a
lot of data. Fire data statistics comes from
the insurance industry because they track everything
because they're paying the bills. And the rate
of open flame heat damage in homes is unbelievably
low. Fires of all kinds in homes is dropping
every year. Every decade is going lower, lower,
lower. 94 % of all fires in homes. are contained
in the kitchen and the fire is contained within
a pot on the stove or within the oven. The insurance
claim was for smoke damage. Actual open flame
burning in your home is extremely rare. And even
when that occurs, the bulk of those fires are
contained within one room. Usually it's human
air, it's cigarettes or like the little portable
heaters misused. Those are the two big causes
that I see. Well, in the West, of course, we've
got, you know, 2 ,000 homes will evaporate in
a matter of a wildfire. When you look at those
fires, though, there's no gun safes that survive
those. I mean, in a fire that hot, I'm not sure
our true safe. Our true safe, using the standard
safe ratings, runs around three hours in an oven.
But in an actual raging fire, you know, we list
it as two hour, 20 minute. Based on standard
testing, in a real raging fire, you probably
got 20 to 30 minutes, which is typically enough.
I mean, it's, again, the risk of fire in a home
is so rare. And the last piece of that one is
even if you have a fire and you open your safe
and you've got some AR -15s, you got chassis
guns, you open the safe and you look, hey, the
guns are good. Okay, do you know how hot your
safe got? You don't. We cooked off a safe, a
90 -minute safe out of the secure ranch. Built
a simulator room, cooked the safe off. 90 -minute
safe went 12 minutes to 400 degrees in our fire.
We put the fire out and we were just grilling
some hot dogs waiting for it to cool down. 20
minutes later, the safe was 720 degrees inside
because the hot metal continued to transfer.
The significance of that is hardened steel changes
properties at 380 degrees. That's your bolt and
your trigger group. A kneeled steel, that's your
barrel. That changes properties at 680 degrees.
So that's safe at 700 degrees. Depending on how
the safe cools down determines what the properties
of your barrel are, your bolt, and your trigger
group. So you've got a 300 wind mag. You're going
to put that next to your cheek and squeeze the
trigger because if that barrel cooled down a
little quickly, it's now brittle. Barrels are
soft enough to flex. If it cooled down quickly,
well, you just hardened it. It's not been annealed.
So guns in a fire, regardless of what you think,
should never be fired. Yeah. And the opposite
would be if it cools down very, very slowly.
Now you've tempered it too much and taken out
all the hardness. Right. Now your bolt is now
soft. Right. So it's from a safety standpoint.
And fires are so rare. People are sold this idea
that you want a good fire rating. Again, we decentralize
our storage, so my guns are distributed throughout
my home. In the event that I had a bad fire in
one room, maybe I lose a couple of guns. But
I don't believe my house is going to burn down.
If you live in a city with a professional firefighting
force, response time is usually two to four minutes.
I live in a small town volunteer firefighting
force. My response time is 11 minutes. Anybody
can call their fire insurance provider. You give
them their zip code, and they will tell you.
what the response time is because they track
it for every address because they know, because
that's how they rate policies. And it's pretty
quick. So I store for fast access or discretion,
security, and really fast access. Those are my,
you know, if you, if home defense is part of
the reason you own a gun, store it in the manner
that you can actually get to it very, very quickly.
And let's go along that because I want to talk
about the combinations. I've got a cabin up in
the mountains, kind of 5 ,500 feet in elevation,
and it's out there 17 miles to the nearest grocery
store. And I got safes up there. It's similar
to what I have at my standard house down here.
But one of the things I did not want when I was
buying my great big refrigerator -sized 2 ,000
-pound safe was I don't want any electronic locks.
I want the old standard left, right, left, right,
left, hit the button, boom, boom, boom, and it'll
open type of thing. And it's got a key lock to
even turn the dial. And the reason is, you know,
if I'm up there, I do not want to rely upon some
nine volt battery that doesn't work type of thing.
And especially if I'm not driving down the bottom
hill or if it's an earthquake situation without
rule of law situation, whatever it is, I want
to be able to think of the old standard mechanical
locks. So that's why I like simplex locks that
are on some of my smaller boxes. Mechanical lock,
you know, lots of different combinations. And
I tend to go for those for both car situations
and cars, as well as, you know, my cabin in the
mountains type of deal. So what are your thoughts?
And you said you had a new lock you were developing.
I don't disagree with anything you said. But
you're not looking for fast access there. You're
looking for the fact that you're so remote, you
can't rely on traditional battery technology.
And I get that. That makes a lot of sense. But
also, again, being that that's remote, if a couple
of guys get up there and they want to steal that
safe, all you need is time to break it. You can
break into any safe. All you need is time. If
the cabin burns down, it's not going to survive.
However, when we look at our locking solutions,
the Simplex locks are tough. They're very expensive.
And the ones that we've looked at don't have
enough combinations to meet the security requirements
that we want to meet. Because you're limited
with a mechanical lock to the number of ways.
You can't push the four twice. You know what
I mean? We want 10 ,000 plus combinations on
all of our locks. So our HSFA locking is electronic.
It does use a battery. It also has a USB port.
So if your battery dies, you've got a couple
of options. There's a key override if the battery's
dead. Plus you've got a USB port you can plug
a phone into or a charger into and it will power
it. We tell everybody every New Year's Day or
every New Year's Eve, replace all the batteries
in your smoke detectors and your gun safe locks.
And just do it every year. I do every day on
New Year's Day. I get up and I go through all
the smoke detectors and I go through my safes
and replace all my batteries. And it's something
I've been doing for a long time. The keys for
your safe, I tell everybody this, are Agile.
They have the backup keys. You don't want to
lose the keys. If you forget the combination,
and people do sometimes when things happen, I
tell everybody, we've got these very high secure
laser cut keys. You get two of them. I say, you
can store one wherever you want. The other ones,
you've got a bunch of cabinets. Put them in a
Ziploc bag and put them in your freezer in the
back. You will always know where they are. And
nobody's going to look there. It's just simple
things you can do. But going to the fast access,
our HSFA locking was developed last year. We
host and we put on and we try to do a lot of
training events. We're very big on training with
firearms. We're not a firearms company, but we
provide solutions. We want people to train with
their safes. So we market and sell with a lot
of firearms instructors. And we were doing a
force -on -force training. It was a two -day
training course down at Summit Point. a training
center with Gary Melton and Paramount Tactical.
He's a partner. He's a friend. And you're in
the catwalk above these rooms. We're watching.
And it became really obvious. We had men, women.
We had people that were shooters and people that
were not shooters put in these scenarios. When
you trigger somebody to fight or flight, you
know, true, like somebody kicks in your front
door and discharges a firearm into your home,
you're not going to be in a normal state. Your
body will go to fight or flight because you're
in that scenario. All of your brain power goes
down to the very base of your brain. You lose
fine motor skills. You're going to get tunnel
vision. You're going to lose cognitive ability.
What we found was your traditional lock, people
couldn't get their fingers to do the buttons
because they were too small and too close together.
And with that loss of dexterity, we watched people
trying to do this simple combination, a four
-number combination we had it down to, just four
numbers. And they couldn't, they were struggling
to open the safe because they were panicked.
So the HSFA locking solution is a large format
buttons lock. We put it on all of our products
now because it doesn't change anything. But having
the really large buttons, as we say it, it gives
you the fastest possible access when you're not
at your best. Because most civilians do not do
stress inoculation training like the military.
simulated dangerous situations so that we're
cool as a cucumber under fire. And we're not.
And quite frankly, I'm not going to bother with
that. So we developed a locking solution to give
our customers the fastest possible access in
a true crisis situation. That was out last year.
It's just been incorporated across our entire
product line. So some people are thinking in
the audience right now, well, wait a minute,
isn't biometric faster? And I don't have to remember
a combination. I think you have some comments
on that too. I do. Biometric is, we include biometric
for convenience. And for us, it's about if your
friends are over, you want to show them your
new gun, you can open the safe with your finger
without having to hide or telegraph or give up
your combination. The problem with biometrics
for home defense, and this is the same, like
the military would never use this technology.
And they use the term never fail technology.
Biometrics is not never fail. If your hands are
wet, it doesn't open. If your skin's really dry,
it might not open. You're wearing gloves, it
won't open. If your hands are dirty, it won't
open. If you haven't reprogrammed the lock for
six months, it may not open. So there's a whole
lot of reasons. A biometric lock is designed
to say no access, and certain conditions are
just right. The problem is it's hard to recreate
those conditions, and if you're being shot at,
You don't have time to try your fingers three
times. So we just say, in the time it takes you
to put your finger on a biometric and it opens,
I'm already there. You can't be faster than me.
The other one that we're seeing now that we find
very problematic is RFID. We're seeing those.
I mean, I did a video with Hornaday. I love Hornaday,
their ammunition. I shoot their lever action,
their lever evolution ammo, almost exclusively
when I hunt. I reload with their ammo. I do a
lot of reloading. I think it's a great company.
The people there, I hear, I don't know them,
but I know people who are great people. But they're
marketing these RFID locks. A lot of companies
are where you get the safe, you get the little
fob that goes on your keys, you get the little
card that goes in your wallet, maybe a thing
you put on your finger, a wristband you're going
to put on, and all you do is wave it in front
of the safe and it opens. Okay, well, the time
it takes you to get the fob and wave it, I've
already got the push button open. I'm already
open. I've already got my gun in high ready.
But what's really bad or dangerous is you're
introducing key controls. to people who aren't
experienced with them. Most civilians don't deal
with key controls. We deal with this with the
military all the time. We did a lot of work.
I spent three years on RFID projects with the
military back in 2013 to 16. Military moved away
from it for all of the reasons we're talking
about, but you get the safe, all these fobs.
Well, what do you do with them all? So you put
them on your keys, then you get three more. What
do you do with them? You're going to put one
in your wallet, you're going to put one in a
drawer. So they're on your keys and your keys
are hanging on a little, like my house, the keys
hang on a little board next to my back door.
That's where all the keys go. I get kids, they
just hang your key. Well, somebody breaks into
the house, they see your keys. They got a fob
that says with the Hornady logo. I'm like, huh,
he's got a Hornady safe and I can open it. Kids
see parents with this type of technology. Oh,
that's cool. Parents that are around, they want
to play with it. It's, you're exposing, you're
introducing a safe into your house with six things
that can open it. by anybody, even a two -year
-old. And it's not getting you. We can demonstrate
so easily that it's faster to manually do the
combination than it is to use an RFID tag. So
we're hoping that they will move away from it.
We pressured them to say, guys, look, you make
great ammo. Please stop making the RFID because
the average consumer, they're selling it as a
cool tech. But you're introducing a security
breach into your home, in our opinion. Again,
our background is not gun safes. Our background
is defense, is more real world. And speaking
of creating a security breach, and without being
attributional about how this happened, a lot
of safes, the digital ones, are sold. And have
a backdoor, if you will, a master code or something
like that. And I guess what I'd like to hear
you repeat is what your philosophy was when you
were offered the opportunity to have those codes
just in case a customer can prove that they own
the safe but can't remember how to get in. And
maybe what the problems would be if, let's say,
your systems got hacked or a subpoena came your
way or something like that. Yeah, that's we all
know the story we're talking about when a safe
manufacturer gave up a code and the world woke
up to the idea that manufacturers have backdoor
codes. I wouldn't call it a backdoor code. It's
a master code. It's not meant to be back there.
They're not being nefarious. They're not being
sneaky. The real safe industry, you know, your
jewelry store safes, the big true vault safes
have the manufacturers have. They have the manufacturer's
code. In the event of an issue where the safe
won't open, there's a whole protocol with licensed
locksmiths. There's a whole security protocol
they go through for the transfer of the code
and the process to open the safe. Gun safe industry
doesn't have that. They simply, the lock manufacturers
go to the manufacturer and say, boom, boom, here's
your locks. We're going to pack it this way.
This is a standard code for the customer. It's
just six ones. Here's your master access code
for this lock, and each safe is different. And
they keep them, they claim, as for warranty work.
So if they had to get into a safe, they could.
That was presented to us. We used to use Securum
locks. We now, all of our locks are proprietary.
We're made by us. And they came to the same thing.
And I wasn't thinking about safety or security
or somehow. My thought was, why would I want
to maintain a database with all my customers
with combinations to all their safes? What a
pain in the neck. I'm talking to my head of ops.
We're like, Frank, does this make sense? He goes,
I don't want to do that. Our position is, and
this goes back to, again, goes back to our military,
you know, where we came from is, if you buy my
product, we trust that you can manage it. And
we're not, you know, if you lose the combination,
you can't open your safe. We can work with a
locksmith to breach the safe. You will be replacing
the lock. We will be destroying. I mean, there's
ways to do it, but you can't open the safe. But
the giving it up to the feds, to the FBI, people
were mad about that. Even if Liberty had said
no, they would have got a subpoena in a matter
of hours, probably, or days. It was going to
happen. I view the biggest risk, though, is...
In the world of computer hacking, you have news
articles several times a year of a company, like
your credit cards get hacked, they get 10 ,000
or a medical or a place where all of a sudden
somebody has access to 10 ,000 records, customer
records. Well, somebody hacked a big safe manufacturer
and they had 10 ,000 safe owners. They had their
address. They knew the size and model of the
safe because you fill your warranty card out.
They ask you for all that, you mail it in. And
they had the master code. So they've got the
address. They just picture, we're the biggest
safes. And they just do a road trip. And you
could go crazy with this. And you can't change
the master code. They just publish it. Say, hey,
guys, here's all these addresses with master
codes. You know what? If you got that safe, time
to scrap it. Because to my knowledge, there's
no way to. To remove the master code. When we
worked with S &G, they'd give us the locks. We
said, we don't want a master code. I'm sorry
they come with it. So we simply gave the customer,
here's your base code, 11111. This is the manufacturer's
master code. We do not keep a copy. It's up to
you to put that in a safety deposit box or store
it. I tell people to create a contact on their
phone and make the master code the phone number.
And just something that's random, nobody would
ever see, but you know what it is. But that was
our philosophy really based. It wasn't based
on security as much as it based on, we're all
about simplicity. I don't want to maintain that
database. To me, that's just like, why do I want
to be responsible for all that? I don't need
to be. We trust our customers to do what's right.
And that means maintaining your combination.
Don't rely on us to fix it if you can't do that.
Yeah, completely agree. I mean, I've been in
IT for 40 years. I just retired a couple of weeks
ago. And my opinion is, if it's connected to
the internet, it's already been compromised.
Yeah, there's something to be said. I was talking
to somebody the other day about the good old
days of DOS and computers. Yeah, DOS. So how
do we handle in states? I mean, I don't know
if this is unique to California, and many things
are unique to California, but there might be
laws in other places that say, just like we have
a handgun roster in California, there is coming
a storage device, and I'm going to call it device,
roster in California, that if you're not on the
approved list, you're not storing something.
safely and putting quotes around the word safely
because some of these things are probably crap
but but they've been submitted and approved where
an actual bona fide this is an actually secure
item to store your firearms in wasn't approved
therefore it's de facto unsafe are you trying
to even comply with that stuff or is this just
a kind of like micro stamping where a lot of
companies just folded their arms and said nope
we're not doing it We actually comply with it
all. It's not a hard, the California DOJ compliance
is not a difficult standard. We crush it. In
fact, most safe companies crush the standard.
What they're trying to do is get rid of the really
cheap tin can little lock boxes. And there was
also, there were some problems. There's locks
that use, it's a spring loaded piston. When you
do the combination, there's a little electromagnetic,
electric charge, electromagnetic little. magnet
that fires the pin. It works great. But if you
drop the box and also the momentum of that pin,
also their safety, if you just drop them, the
door pops open. That's what drove the California
DOJ security standard. Most of the other states
that we see looking at this are simply adopting
that standard. It does require every product
we make, we have to send either two or three
of them to a test center. and have them tested
and then they certify it and we go on the doj
list but everything we make the only product
that we don't have on doj is our true safe and
we're simply it's a seven thousand dollar safe
we're not giving them two of them no um and california
is the number one state for the true safe because
of the fires yeah it's but again we tell people
still though when you're in that kind i i lived
in camarillo and i lived in chatsworth i mean
when the chatsworth fire is They got right up
to our house years ago. When you're in that kind
of a wildfire, you know what? There's a reason
it's scorched earth. There's nothing left. And
the safes are gone too. It's just when you get
that level of heat, it's destroying everything.
And you're not going to protect yourself. If
you've got a remote cabin, if you've got a scenario
where you want absolute fire protection, you
can do it. And we've built several of these or
assisted. And that is you buy a... a quad con
or a tricon is basically a smaller version of
a shipping container or get a 20 -foot shipping
container and you bury it and you make a ramp
you like the you like the storm door of the old
houses and you make a door like that where you
open the doors up you walk downstairs open up
the the shipping container and that is a buried
bunker or buried armory And we've done a lot
of those in Texas and some of the areas where
they have tornadoes. Because again, if you have
a single -family slab home, they typically build,
in modern construction, they'll build a vault
room in the very center of the home for tornadoes.
We turn those into armories all the time. And
then we've got companies that bury shipping containers
and we do armories like that. So that's, I mean,
if you got, again, I've got a hunting ranch that's
fairly remote. We're building a lodge on it right
now. We're not going to have that many guns out
there, but we may still, just for creating content,
I may still pick up a 20 -foot, use 20 -foot
containers, you know, $1 ,000, $2 ,000, even
pretty cheap if they're decertified, spray, you
know, prime them up really good, seal them up
good, and then bury them. Well, what's the typical
timeline? And, you know, when a burglar comes
in, he's not going to try to unearth something
in the backyard. I mean, I think it's a cool
idea. I wish I could do it myself, but I can't.
Typical burglary. How long do they want to spend?
Where are they typically looking? And just, you
know, based on the same statistics you were talking
about earlier, I imagine it all derives from
the same place. You know, what does that profile
look like? And why do your safes work better
in this environment than the typical storage
solutions? We pull all this from FBI crime data.
And it takes a while to drill into it. But again,
we went into consumer storage. Not like, hey,
we're a gun safe company. We were a defense contractor.
So we just started doing research on what are
we protecting against? I don't think the safe
industry ever looked at it. So FBI crime data,
thief breaks into your home. He's going to master
bathroom, master bedroom closet, home office
den, dining room, and then he's out. He's out
in about nine minutes. Most break -ins occur
between 1230 in the afternoon and 130 in the
afternoon. What they want is prescription drugs.
When they find them, they leave. They don't find
those. They go to the master bedroom closet looking
for jewelry. They find it. They leave. Then they
go to home office den looking for anything of
value. Dining room would be silver. And then
they're out of the house. It's rare that somebody
spends a lot of time going through an entire
home. Time is the enemy of a thief. Once they
have something of value, they typically leave.
And that's the bulk of break -ins. The number
one thing people can do to prevent break -ins
is... lock your doors, lock your windows, and
keep bushes, keep vegetation trimmed around your
house so it's pretty visible. And at nighttime,
motion sensor lights. If you can light up your
house, not just one light, but light it up. Thieves
are like bullies in school. They don't want to
break into everybody. They're looking for the
easy target. And if you present a house that
just has any level of like, well, maybe not this
place, they will go next door. So when you talk
about what do we do, are our safes better? The
only thing, if you follow our principles with
traditional safes, you're going to get the same
benefit. It's just that they're kind of too big
and too heavy to move around. Our solution is
that when you decentralize your storage, you've
got safes, small safes located throughout your
home. And our Agile safe is 100 pounds. You can
move it with a hand truck very easily. It's no
less secure. than a 500, 600, 700 pound safe.
Same metal, it just doesn't have all the drywall.
But following those principles, even in the outside
chance a thief is spending some time in your
house and they find one of your safes and they're
able to cut it open, you might lose a few guns,
but once they do that, they win, they leave.
If you've got one great big monster safe, they
cut that open, they're taking the contents. So
it's, again, decentralizing allows you to minimize
in the event of a loss. You're minimizing your
risk because you're spreading things around.
But home invasion, break -in, thieves where they're
stealing guns isn't that common, as people think.
Prescription drugs are the number one thing stolen
in America because that's the easy money. Yeah,
and easily hidden. Like you're not walking out
with a, you know. a long gun or a bunch of long
guns that make you very conspicuous very quickly.
And the most secure room in a home, just to let
people know, I mean, if you've got really nice
jewelry you want to protect, get your little
jewelry box, put it in your kitchen pantry, put
it in a cabinet in your kitchen. Thieves don't
go into kitchens. They're not hungry and there's
nothing of value. There's nothing they can resell
in a kitchen typically. That's why I do like
my kitchen pantry. I've got some of my really
high -end guns in an agile cabinet there because
nobody's going there. And from a gun storage
standpoint, we spend a lot of time in the kitchen.
That's a number, you know, bedroom, kitchen is
a number two room. Daytime is the number one
room where we spend the most time. I like a fast
access gun in my kitchen because that's where
I normally am. And I've also got an exit point
from the most kitchens have a back or side door.
You can arm yourself, get out of the house. Are
you aware of any cases where insurance companies
give people homeowners breaks for having secure
storage in their house? I tried to look into
it. I didn't get a long ways. I'm really not.
The NRA offers firearm insurance. A lot of people
look at firearms insurance, and you've got to
do a lot of documentation of your guns. And a
lot of gun owners just don't want to share that
data. And I understand why you don't want to.
I've got a couple of vintage military. guns that
have some value, not crazy, but I'm not, you
know, I don't have, I don't buy guns that are
of the level of value where you'd want insurance
policy. Again, if you've got some truly rare
vintage, you know, $50 ,000, $100 ,000 guns,
I'd add insurance to those. But basic, I mean,
to me, firearms, I don't want to lose them, but
you know, all the guns on the wall behind me
are. Under $1 ,000 each. Yeah, if you ever get
an opportunity to look at Charlton Heston's gun
safe, I guess you'd call it, gun vault, he literally
built it under his house and built a house on
top of it. It's probably, I don't know, 1 ,800
square feet inside it with a bank vault, with
an honest -to -God bank vault opening to it.
And he walked into it, and it was lined with
his entire gun collection and had leather couches
in there, sit there and talk. Phenomenal. Anyway,
I don't know if it still exists. Ken is now the
host of the Expensive Firearms podcast. We have
built the largest home armor in the world. And
it was a gentleman who owned Gemini networks
back in the, he sold it back in the nineties.
And it's the fifth largest home ever built in
America. And that was a, that was a, that was
a massive project. And then we've done a lot
of celebrities homes. We do. We don't talk about
a lot. We've done a lot of sports stars and stuff.
We don't, we don't share the information on many
of these. We ship to a warehouse. We have no
idea where it's going. But we do build a lot
of pretty high end. We got a video, Chris Dorsey,
Dorsey Media Group. We did a great job. In fact,
I was there for the install. We shot a video
of it and a beautiful, beautiful gun room. I've
done the design work for Ted Nugent. He and I
spoke and we haven't done that project yet. Well,
we are frugal firearms would be. Yeah. So, I
mean, I love looking at what I aspire to if I
ever win the lottery. But in the interim, we
will keep it on the low end, which is what our
focus is. Well, yes. To that point, you mentioned
shipping. I mean, you're talking about shipping
some steel. This is expensive. What kind of shipping
cost is a person looking at as an additive to
purchase? Yeah. You know, a lot of gun safe companies
will say free freight, free freight. You're paying
for it in the price. Of course you are. It costs
$300 to $500 to ship a gun safe. That's just
what it costs. Now, you can save sometimes at
stores when they're moving truckloads of safes.
Our Agile cabinet, I think the freight is around
$100. We do freight promos at times. Sometimes
if we have it in a closer warehouse, the freight
can be a lot less. What we prefer to do, we discount.
We do run. We've got a promo coming up over 4th
of July. We do every year. But we typically don't
do free freight because people don't know what
freight actually costs. We just say free freight.
They don't realize how much of a discount. I
can say free freight and it's costing me $100
a cab as a discount. If I say $100 off, I sell
more safes on the sale. Because when people see
free freight with me, they're thinking, oh, cool,
I'm saving $35. I said, no, you're saving a lot
more than that. Our true safe is only available.
We do not allow customers to install it. The
price of that safe includes shipping and complete
white glove installation. We work with local
installers. They meet the truck. They deliver
it with all the proper equipment. They set it
in place, bolt it down, remove all the packing
material, and leave you just absolute white glove
service. But again, it's a $6 ,600 safe. And
in that price, we've built in the delivery on
it. Of course you have. Yeah. I mean, this isn't
a charity. You're not going to. lose money on
the transaction. I mean, that would be silly.
And we make that safe. The only reason we made
the true safe, it's not a moneymaker for it.
It's not a high margin product. We don't sell
a gazillion of them, but we just... My point
is most people don't need a fire safe. But if
you do, get a real one because you're spending
money for drywall safes that are not going to
protect you in a fire. And that material is going
to be the source of your corrosion. Golden rods
are desiccants with our safes. Even in humid
areas, if a gun is properly cleaned and oiled,
it's not going to corrode. But if you've got
a traditional gun safe in a humid area, that
drywall's off -gassing because of the ferrooxidants,
the pyrite, the things in the drywall, it off
-gasses sulfuric and sulfurous acids. Go into
any store with gun safes for sale. They're new
safes. If the door's been closed, open the door
up. Slowly, put your nose in there. You'll smell
sulfur. That's the acids. They're really strong
when they first make it, and it's slowly, slowly.
It's like a half -life. Over the years, you get
less and less. But even 10 years out, if the
humidity goes up, ferrooxen and bacteria eat
pyrite and put out sulfurous acid. So it's always
going on. Do you know of any cases where there's
been successful break -ins against your safes?
I don't. I do not have a, you know, thank God.
But I do want to stress that I'm not saying my
safes are more secure. They're not. I'm not more
secure than Liberty, than Fort Knox, but we're
not less secure. We're the same. Yeah, that's
important. At the end of the day, the guys who
are going after gun safes know that they're there
and they're planned and they're organized. It's
very, very rare. Most break -ins are going after
drugs and simple valuables. The reasons for gun
safes are to stop the quick targets. You got
a party over. You got people. Your kids have
people. Something's happening. There's people
in your home, and you're preventing somebody
from, oh, that's cool, and taking it. That's
the bulk of, or somebody breaks into your home.
You got unsecured, like a firearm laying against
a chair, laying in a corner. Somebody breaks
into your home. They simply pick the gun up,
and now they're armed. You know what I mean?
You don't want those scenarios. But we look at
it as we take all the military regulations that
we deal with and we try to apply them to homes
because the military has been securing firearms
for 150 years. They're really good. Modern armories
are extremely secure and the management of the
security is extremely regimented. And they've
been doing it so long with our solution in the
armories. And when we came out, we completely
changed the way they store guns and gear. Their
armories function really well. So we just look
at what they do and say, well, if you applied
that to the home, it's pretty simple stuff, but
it's a little bit better way to do it. I think
besides the fact that you have designs that really
address the problem, as opposed to the image
of the problem, which are two different things,
you are pretty proud of not just your value proposition,
which is... by the way, why you're on this show,
but at the same time, your customer service.
And did you want to just throw in a couple comments
about that? Because I know you're very proud
of your team. I've got a great team of people.
And there's a passion here for the company mission,
for what we're trying to do. We've been hailed
as one of the best customer service companies
in the industry. And there's no magic to this
other than I've got a great team of people. And
then we take a policy of when somebody calls
us with a problem, solve the problem. And the
checkbook doesn't factor into this. So if it
means we're sending you a complete new safe,
we're sending one. If it means, you know what,
we're sorry, whatever it takes, I want the problem
solved. Because for me, yeah, somebody buys a
safe, it's... $1 ,000 safe, $300 to get it there.
And there's something happens. There's damage
occurs or something. You can, well, it's fixable,
but it's going to have a scrape on it. You know
what? Don't worry about it. We're simply going
to replace it. And we're going to lose our shirt
on the sale. But to the customer, it's like,
because they call and they're mad. And they're
like, I got so many notes that say, yeah, I was
really upset. Boom, boom, boom. Whoever it was,
I talked to Brandon and I said, his service was
so good and you guys took care of everything.
I was just blown away. I get these messages all
the time, but we empower the customer service
team. They're not up against, if it's over $50,
you have to get approval. They don't have that.
Once they go through training, they can solve
the problem without a checkbook. So sometimes
we lose a lot of money on customer service, but
you know what? In our industry, We've never had
that guy write us up online as like, what a bunch
of jerks. It's always, hey, I had an issue, but
holy cow, did they take care of me? And that's
what we want. That's the goal for me, for my
company. I'm an older guy, so it was magazines
when I was a kid and like Land's End and Orvis
and all those companies. Orvis is a great example.
They built their whole company on the best customer
service. L .L. Bean was another one. If you're
a fly fisherman, they did a lot of stuff and
a lot of clothing. But their whole thing was,
if you buy from us, it doesn't matter why something's
not right. We simply take care of it. And we've
taken the same approach to online selling. And
most online sellers are stick and move because
the margins are so tight in most online businesses.
You can't afford customer service. I mean, A,
you have to have a product that doesn't get returned,
but then you empower your people to just solve
the problem. Hey, Tom, I really appreciate it.
I mean, we've had you here for a while. I don't
want to keep you too long, but as kind of a closing
thing, do you have any funny or entertaining
stories that you'd like to share with us? Funny
or entertaining stories? Boy, my most entertaining
is going into the colonel's office and just blasting
him with my world's greatest gun storage guru
piece. But, you know, it's funny. I don't have
a lot of... We have a lot of goofy stuff. I refer
to the company here as the band of misfits. And
I've always done that with my employees because
I want everybody working here to be themselves.
And all of us are weird and quirky in our own
ways. And we try to get people. I want people
to work in this organization with the same craziness
as maybe when they're alone singing in the shower
or driving, doing stuff that they know they only
do when they're by themselves because they'd
be too embarrassed to do it in front of anybody.
to just be who they are. We're very successful
with it, but it's not really a funny story, but
Securit is the band of misfits. And when we hire
people, I have this conversation with all of
them. It always starts with, look, I don't pay
you to work. I pay for results. That's what we're
going to get. So other than that, I need your
creativity. I need you to check your ego at the
door. I need you to, when you come in here, when
we sit in a room to meet about a problem, We're
all equal. If you think I'm wrong, just tell
me I'm wrong. If you think I'm being a jerk,
say, dude, you're being a jerk. Shut up. The
goal is to solve the problem. There's no egos.
There's none of that corporate crap. It's like,
let's just get the job done. Not really funny
stuff, but it's kind of who we are. Yeah, that's
a good thing, though. I appreciate that. Exactly.
So other places that either you're going to,
your products are going to appear, that people
could come see them if they wanted to. Other
forums that you're involved in, if you want to,
you know. Talk about your website. Right now,
the bulk of what we do is direct -to -consumer
through our website. I'm not really interested
in big box retailers and those types of businesses.
We did work through several of them, Bass Pro
in the past. I didn't like the relationship at
all. So we work through training centers, Gunsight
Academy, America's largest training facility
in Arizona. has all of our products. It's a full
showroom. They're going to incorporate our train
with your safe and some of their handgun classes.
We're going to have kids, people actually doing
their combinations to start a training drill,
removing the gun from a safe. But that's a showroom
where people can go take a training class and
see all our products. We do the same thing with
Paramount Tactical, which is at Summit Point
Training Center, just north of DC. Those are
our two biggest. And we're working on relationships
with or other training centers. And that's how
we like to work because we love all of our stuff.
I'd rather have people say, you know what, guys?
Here's where you can see it. Book a class. Take
a handgun class. Bring your boys. Take an introduction
to Leverkus. Something. Get people shooting and
see our products as opposed to, you know, I got
no interest in being in Bass Pro. I just, you
know, we don't work with companies like that.
They don't treat us well. And I think the customers
also ultimately pay the price. In terms of treating
people well, you're trying as much as you can
to either keep manufacturing or bring manufacturing
domestically. It's brutal. People are shocked
because we do manufacture. We're out of China
for the most part. I got some manufacturing in
Vietnam. The products I make there, I can't make
in the States. It's not that I don't want to.
I'd love to. It's a pain in the ass. Shipping
containers across the ocean is expensive. The
logistics are difficult. Everything about it
is hard to do. But we put out RFPs and RFQs to
the United States, probably 75 a year, and everybody
comes back. We can't handle the work. We don't
have the tonnage prep. We don't do that level
of precision. There's all these reasons they
come back, but the underlying reason, and it's
manufacturing in America is not coming back,
despite the tariffs. It's not, and it's simply
because we don't have workers. We send all of
our kids to college. Get a degree. Oh, great,
great, great. All these college graduates are
struggling to find work, meaningful work based
on their degrees. We don't have any tradesmen.
The average press breakman, metal bender, is
56 years old. The average machinist is 58 in
America. There's no kids in these fields. And
the companies that we do work with here, I've
got a very good friend who runs a precision machine
shop, and she sold her. This was a high -end.
They made high -end military stuff. She sold
the company last year because she was Tom. In
seven years, my workforce is done. I can't work
anymore. And she goes, I've got one apprentice.
I need 15. And she sold the company to a much
larger firm because she said, I'll be out of
business. And that's what's happening in America
right now. If people want, if they're dead set,
they want manufacturing in America, have your
kids learn trades. You know, I'm not a college
graduate. I was a guitar player. I don't, Securit
does not consider college and hiring entry level
positions. We don't ask. I don't care. I want
to know who you are. I want to know, are you
willing to learn? Do you want to jump in and
just go crazy? Just really jump in and focus
on your personal growth and company growth. Boom,
we want you. We do have a list of colleges that
we will not hire people from. If colleges are
blocking free speech, if there are some of the
things we've seen going on, we have a list. I
said, I don't care. If you got a degree from
that school, I don't want the baggage that you
bring. And I'm hoping other companies will do
that and we can drive these universities to get
back to actually teaching people actual skills.
I agree. Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame, he's big
into that. I mean, so yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan
of what he's trying to do. Yeah, me too, me too.
But it's, you know, we've moved a lot back to
America, but the actual steel manufacturing,
I can't get, I mean, I don't want to sound like
a pain in the ass here or anything, but I can't
get the quality in America. that i can get overseas
it's not the quality of the workers it's that
the the companies here that are bending metal
don't run the tonnage presses to do the precision
bending i need for my for my product our agile
lightweight cabinet it's it's a ship's flat you
have to assemble it to make this work The bends
are extremely high tolerance. The way you do
that is where these guys would have a 12 ton
press. I need a 68 or a 75 ton press. You need
that much force to get the level of precision.
And there's not enough companies here left that
can do that work and they're maxed out. So it
is a challenge, but we are for the most part
out of, there's some things that are made in
China that aren't made anywhere else in the world.
And we all use that stuff because that's where
it's all made. Yeah. It's just an economic and
a business reality. It is. And the people of
China, I've been to China. I was just in Asia
two weeks ago. I spent 10 days over there. The
people in China are great people. They're great
workers. They're loyal. They're dedicated. They're
focused. The government's a mess. Workers in
China, workers in Vietnam that we work with,
they're paid well. This whole thing, I don't
pay them anything. Where we manufacture our products
and what I've seen in the factories I've toured,
everybody's motivated, they're excited, and they're
all moving forward. And certainly Vietnam has
a buzz right now. It's a growing, growing economic
powerhouse. I think you're going to see a lot
coming out of Vietnam just because they're doing
it right. And it's a well -run country, and the
people there are just excited about their future.
All right, Tom, you've been very generous with
your time today. Today, we're recording this
as a Friday, hoping you're going to have a good
weekend and hoping that as that 4th of July sale
comes up, that at least by then, we'll have this
show out well before then. And people will come
back to your site and maybe save a couple dollars,
but really rethink the way that they do storage.
I mean, I'm a victim of that too. I mean, you
might get an order from me here because maybe
I haven't been doing it right either. Well, we
all, you know. Everybody has their ways of doing
things. And it's hard to step back and say, is
this the best way? We happen to fall into this
one. There's tons of stuff I do with my vintage
cars and things. I'm like, people are like, dude,
why are you doing it like that? It's horrible.
Why don't you do it? Oh, I never thought about
it. So there's always room for us all to learn
stuff, I guess. Exactly. Exactly. So, all right,
Tom, thanks very much for being on the show.
All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. So
again, thanks to Tom Kubanek from SecureIt for
coming on our show today. You know, really, that
was an expose of stuff that just too many people
don't think about. Like episode 17 was people
not thinking about their bona fide need for medical
stuff that is at hand and available in the time
you need it. I mean, how many other people have
thought about storing stuff? in a way that's
not only secure but distributed in a way that
the thieves won't find but puts it at hand quickly.
Absolutely. These are both shows that just, you
know, they've opened my eyes to stuff I hadn't
really thought about enough. Yeah, exactly. And
as I say, when I went looking for a particular
safe or a very particular location in my house,
and this was like five years ago, I went out
and I said, Secure -It had the best solution.
There's no doubt about it. And purchased it and
been very happy, generally speaking, with what
I have. And I'm actually very intrigued by some
of his agile line that he has out now. And I'm
actually going to give that some pretty good
thought, particularly as I move forward with
my cabin and other places that I want to basically
add distributed storage safe, as he was talking
about. So it's good stuff. Maybe it puts the
brakes on the idea that you have to have something
that looks like a actual bank vault even if it
isn't as secure as a bank vault and you don't
have to expose it to the rest of the world and
exactly you know hey did you you know like you
can't control that message like your friend comes
over and tells his friend about what a great
safe you've got and then that person tells somebody
else and then pretty soon it's in the wrong hands
yeah Exactly. Anyway, so I promised everyone
that we were going to have an optics manufacturer
on this show, and that didn't happen. It didn't
happen because we're still in the testing phase
of those optics, but I promise the listeners
it's coming up very soon, probably the next show.
In fact, Ken, you're going to be doing some testing
on that stuff here in the next week. absolutely
will be exactly so what do people need to do
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of the shot show 2025 we were pointing out our
favorite products during that show. But that
doesn't mean that those products were necessarily
new at the show that year. They were simply the
best representation of what we thought was value
at the show, irrespective of when that product
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