About This Episode
In today’s episode of Tactical Business, host Wade Skalsky sits down with Jeff Regnier from Kee Firearms and Training. Jeff shares the inspiring story of how his business provided free firearms training to over 20,000 people in Chicago despite government pushback. From navigating strict regulations to fighting for their right to operate, Kee Firearms and Training became a pillar for responsible gun ownership. Hear how they overcame legal battles, community challenges, and restrictive laws to educate and empower people. Subscribe for more insights on firearms, laws, and advocacy!
Insights In This Episode
- New restrictions on transfers led to a shift in business strategy, including moving inventory to Georgia for legal sales.
- Expanding training over two years required strategic investments in facilities, trainers, and logistics to accommodate 20,000 trainees.
- New restrictions on transfers led to a shift in business strategy, including moving inventory to Georgia for legal sales.
- Due to zoning restrictions, they invested in a $500,000 mobile range trailer, offering flexibility in firearms training.
Today’s Guest
Jeffery Regnier : Kee Firearms & Training
Kee Firearms & Training is a trusted gun store serving the Southwest suburbs of Chicago. Offering a wide selection of firearms from top brands like Colt, Beretta, and Ruger, they provide quality guns, ammo, and accessories at competitive prices. In addition to sales, they offer expert gun training to enhance confidence and safety. Conveniently located, Kee Firearms proudly serves numerous Chicago-area communities with top-tier products and professional service.
Featured on the Show
About Tactical Business
Tactical Business is the weekly business show for the firearms industry. The podcast features in-depth interviews with the entrepreneurs, professionals and technologists who are enabling the next generation of firearms businesses to innovate and grow.
Episode Transcript
Wade: Welcome to the Tactical Business Show. I’m your host, Virginia Beach based firearms entrepreneur and copywriter Wade Skalsky. Each episode, we’ll be exploring what it takes to thrive as a business owner in the firearms industry. We’ll speak with successful firearms industry entrepreneurs about their experiences building their companies, leaders and legislators who are shaping the Shaping the industry and tech executives whose innovations will reshape the future of the firearms industry. Let’s get after it. Welcome to the Tactical Business Podcast. I am your host, Wade Skalsky, and today I’m speaking with Jeff Regnier from Kee Firearms and Training. Jeff, how are you doing today?
Jeff: I’m doing good. And yourself? Wade.
Wade: I’m doing well. I’m doing well. It’s cold here in Virginia Beach.
Jeff: So.
Wade: It’s like in the 20s. So we’re freaking out over here. We’re in the world. Are you?
Jeff: We’re in the Chicago area, and it’s minus ten out there today.
Wade: So you’re used to this, though.
Jeff: You got that right.
Wade: Yeah. Well, I grew up in North Dakota a little bit over, but my blood is thinned in my older age, so I’m like, this is too cold. I’m actually wearing a my woobie right now, which keeps me warm, so that’s good. But yeah, I’d love to hear a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are right now.
Jeff: Well, it’s a crazy story. You know, it started out we’re contractors, municipal contractors, and I come from a background of law of law enforcement officers. My family’s Chicago law enforcement. So when they passed that concealed carry law, we were one of the last states to get one. So I got in to get my concealed carry license and was done by some retired police officers. And in Illinois, you got to spend 16 hours in class. So the end of it, we’re at the range and we’re doing the shot. And the guy next to me can’t put bullets in the magazine. He’s putting them in backwards. And I said, at this point the trainers failed because if we’re at the range and they don’t know how to load a magazine, what have they taught anybody over the last 12 hours? Nothing. So I moved forward. Our licenses are good for five years. Five years later, I go get another renewal. It’s a three hour class we got to take, and we get into this class. And very similar to the first class retired police officers teaching the class, the students don’t know what they’re doing. We get to the range. You see it all the time, specifically with females. They always have a gun that they can’t shoot correctly. It’s too big. They can’t rack the slide so they get a revolver. 357 usually snub nose.
Jeff: They can’t hit the target and they spend hours and hours of that. So at that point I said to my dad, which is also a retired police officer, he said, he said, you know what, we can do a better job than all these trainers out there. There’s nobody out there doing this. But we got to own the whole environment. We can’t just be trainers, we got to open the store and we have to own everything. So we went down that journey. We went down and got our license with the NRA for instructors. We took that class. We went and applied for the FFL. We went through all that struggle. Then we had to get the zoning done, which was challenging because we were in Illinois and they’re not really gun friendly state. So the zoning was crazy. And then our governor had an FFL that you got to apply for now through the state. So we had to apply for that. And we finally got the store open and it was just a side business. We broke off a piece of our building that we had for the construction company, put up some temporary walls, and we said, well, we’re going to sell probably we’ll stock a couple hundred guns and we’ll do this training class and see where it goes. And so we started as a by appointment only business, and it took us a year to open with all the regulations.
Jeff: And we opened right at the time Covid hit. And, you know, it was a very challenging part because we didn’t have a name at the time and Covid made everybody stay home. And it was challenging to get inventory that to get anything out there. And we were by only appointment. So there was a lot of challenges and struggles that had that get to that point. We never gave up and we just continued to ride with it. We got through the Covid times and we were able to get some inventory and make a name for ourselves, and we went out. And the only good part of Covid is all the other gun stores wouldn’t let anybody in their store. So there was a line out the door. And so we sent people out there to poach their customers, give them gift cards, give them discounts. Everybody’s lined up outside the door. So it’s everybody’s there to buy a gun or ammo. So it’s not like we’re picking and choosing. And so we just boom every day we’d send them out there every hour and we’d pass out flyers and gift cards for people to come to our store. Some did, some didn’t. And we learned one of the lessons that I learned in that is we were real busy and we were selling a firearm.
Jeff: And people buy guns. When the market is unstable, when our economy is great and everybody’s living life. Nobody thinks about it. But when the stock market drops out, boom, gun sales go up. When there’s a pandemic, gun sales go up. When there’s rioting in Chicago or other cities, gun sales go up. People feel unsecure, so they go out and buy guns, especially new gun owners. So we were working and there was this one lady was a single mom with three kids. And she came and she bought a Taurus. Taurus is a couple hundred dollars gun. She was her first gun. She didn’t know anything about guns. She bought a little safe so she could be safe. A little key safe and a box of ammo. I don’t know, maybe it was 300 bucks. And she said she wanted to buy it because she felt that she needed to protect her kids. And this world was falling apart at the time. And she said, hey, can you teach me how to use it? Well, we were busy and I didn’t have time, and I was like, I cannot right now. I could just run you through the basics. And then we were busy every day, so it wasn’t like, oh, come back Tuesday morning. And so I let this lady leave, and after I left her leave, I felt that it was very irresponsible for us as a gun shop to allow a customer to leave, not knowing anything about the gun and asking for help.
Jeff: And where would she go to to find this information out in a big city like Chicago, they don’t have any gun stores in the city, and it’s been you can’t have guns forever since I could been alive. So I said, at that point my son was with me, and I looked and I said, you know, we’re going to we’re going to give a free training. We want people to come and we want them to learn how to exercise responsible gun ownership. We don’t want anybody to get hurt. And we’re going to just do this. And he said to me, how are we going to make money doing that? I said, we’re not. And sometimes in life it’s not all about money. It’s about doing the right thing. And in my heart, I can’t sell guns to people and not let them know how to do this. And there’s nowhere for them to get any education. There’s no clubs or nothing that they could go to. So we did it for a month and we had probably 10,000 people sign up, and there was no way we were going to get 10,000 people through a program in a month.
Wade: 10,000 people. Holy smokes.
Jeff: So we then extended it, you know, next month, next month, next month. We kept doing it. We ended up doing it all the way for probably about two years. We didn’t have a range, and we were going to build a location with a range. And so we ended up buying a range trailer that was almost a half $1 million to shoot out the customers in the life training for convenience, and the state helped us out and gave us a liaison for the concealed carry licenses for people that applied because we had so many people going through there, and some of it gets challenging in governmental websites. So they gave us a liaison to help, and I think we ended up doing almost 20,000 people that we did training for, for free through that time period.
Wade: Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s go back to the beginning. This is before you do the free training. What do you think it was that got you as a brand new business that got you through that tough time in Covid? What was the strategy? What did you do that allowed you to survive during that time?
Jeff: We had another business that was bringing in money. So even though that business had its challenges, being a business owner for ten, 15 years, you always save for a rainy day. When you’re a business owner every week, you don’t make money like people get a paycheck. We put in a pay app this week. We might make money, but we might not get another payday for another three months. So we need to make that make that money last for three months until we get paid again. So you’re used to just putting money away and saving it and saving it. So when we open this business up, it was more of a drain, really. Be honest with you, because we were taking money from the other business to stabilize that business. As any business, it’s a long term investment, right? Most businesses don’t make money the first year they’re in business, but you invest in it and then you build a name and then you hope it pays back. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. You know, you could keep it for 20 or 30 years, and you make your money back in long term investment versus short term.
Wade: And then you also had the physical space, too, because you said that you used the building that you were already in. Walk me through. Was that easy to do? Did you have any zoning issues? Walk me through that.
Jeff: To be honest, it was a total nightmare. You know, the town that we were in had a gun store a long time ago, and they had gotten broken into from what they told me. There was still guns on the street that they couldn’t find at this day. So initially, the town banned gun stores in general that they wouldn’t even be allowed to open. And then there’s a lawsuit that’s still pending in the city of Chicago that’s being sued because they don’t allow any gun stores. And so the town didn’t want to get sued. So then they came up with these crazy rules that you could open a gun store, but all this crazy stuff had to be involved before you could get approved. And we were the first one that we’re going to test these rules. So they didn’t even know what it was. And what what was required. And we went in there and we had to bring in a structural engineer to reinforce the buildings, and we had to get pinch points, uh, bars. We had to make sure that they couldn’t come through the roof, through the sidewalls. And then we had to do this. All secretive, not open to the public, so the public wouldn’t know what our security measures were. So then once we got done with the initial build out and got it approved by the village, then the village got rid of all the plans so nobody could follow them.
Jeff: And then we went into an expansion and then it was another argument through the village, because they weren’t even aware of what we did the first time, because they didn’t have any plans, because they discarded them. So it was like starting over again. And all these arguments that we went into with the village to get it open. And then at one point the village came in and shut us down. The mayor sent his police department in there and shut us down and said, you’re not going to do this here. And then we had to go out. We ran a campaign and we went out and put flyers in everybody’s mailboxes that were in the town and said, come out and support us. We need the village. We need the people to come and let the village know that they want this business in their town. It was overwhelming. It was one of the first times the village packed the hall, and we had people come out to support our business. They were standing out in the street. There were so many people to show support for our business. And then the mayor realized that we had more support than they thought, and they allowed us to open the store back up and continue operating.
Jeff: And then when we got the range trailer, it was another argument because nobody has a mobile range trailer. So the So the village would allow us to have an indoor range, but this is a mobile range trailer, and it was going back and forth because they wanted the building inspector to inspect it. But it’s a semi trailer. What is the building inspector have to do with a semi trailer? It’s not a building and they have no right to even govern that. And then there was an argument on were we going to stripe it and how big of striping were we going to put on it. Because it would be a billboard and they wouldn’t allow us to put any signage on our building, and they wouldn’t allow us to advertise any signing off our property. So it was very challenging. Every time we would put up a sign somewhere, we would get a ticket, and they never allowed us to do. We had we literally had to rent the billboard in town to drive traffic, because we could not provide any signage anywhere in the town. Even to this day, they don’t feel like they’re very helpful in the firearms industry specifically.
Wade: No, but I mean, has the regulation side of things calmed down a little bit, or are they still kind of giving you a problem?
Jeff: Every time we do something, there’s something in the back end. So as long as we’re where we’re were at. If we decide to update a sign, let’s say. Then we had an issue. You know, we have a fence in the back of our building. We put a windscreen. I even asked the village, they said, is there any rules on windscreens? They said no. I said, okay, I want to put a windscreen on my fence to block the building off. They said that’s fine. So I went and had a windscreen printed and the print said keep firearms and training on it. And I put it on the fence and then they came and ticketed me. I said, I got an email, I asked you guys if there was any ordinance against windscreen. You said no and that’s a windscreen. So what is the issue? And here we go to ticket back in court, fighting them on whether it’s a windscreen or whether it’s a sign and what the judge is going to determine. And I even asked permission. As I told the judge, I said here, I asked them and if they had something at that time, this would have been the time for them to tell me they only allowed black windscreen or green windscreen or non printed windscreen. They said they don’t have any ordinances. So what did I break the law doing? We ended up coming to an agreement to take the windscreen down in lieu of a more permanent sign, of course, on our property. But they wouldn’t even allow us to put a sign on our property. We just put one on there. And then they changed the ordinances and said that everything had to get approved and my sign wasn’t approved, and we needed to take it down.
Wade: Yeah. I mean, I think the business lesson here is there’s an extra level of regulation risk always with the firearms business. And, you know, just people have to be aware of that when they’re making their plans. So all right. So you get the store up. You’re going through all this process. Are you still doing free training?
Jeff: We are not. We paused it at this time. You know, it was getting a little out of hand on the location that we were at. You know, we had a warehouse we ended up cleaning out. I mean, the warehouse was bought for construction, so, you know, it was basically a warehouse building and overhead doors to park semi trucks and bobcats and equipment. So we got all that stuff out of there, and we ended up putting tables in, and our class sizes were approximately 100 to 150 people every class. And we got it down pretty good. We hired about ten trainers And everywhere you went, we had somebody training to get that information out there and to allow. But the limitations in our building, parking spots and the bathrooms were a big issue because the building doesn’t have bathrooms to deal with 100 people. So we went out and we got, you know, a portable trailer with bathrooms in it that people could use. And it just started to get out of hand. And, you know, it was expensive to train 100 people. Things that people don’t understand is how much soap you go through, how much toilet paper, how much paper towels, you know, clean up at the end of the day, how much garbage you got to get through and what’s expensive, and to continue to push that training program. We did it as long as we could to provide the free training because it’s free to them. But it wasn’t free to us, obviously, you know, well, it costs money.
Wade: How many people did you say you trained total.
Jeff: You think approximately 20,000.
Wade: That’s insane. That’s awesome. And then. But do you feel like that that had an impact on sales or on people coming into the store then? Or kind of walk me through. Like, did you see any correlation with that?
Jeff: Here’s how it breaks down right in the training portion. No, because people are there. They don’t have a foid card. In our state, you need a Foid card and they don’t have a concealed carry license. That’s why they’re taking the class so they can get their concealed carry license. So usually the customers are coming in for training at initial time or not buying anything from you. Now some customers do come back when they get their license and say, hey, I took your class here, now I want to buy a gun. And then they would give you their business and that their license takes about three months to get. So you did see some people come back through there? I couldn’t say. It obviously helped us get our name out more. And Facebook and the newspapers, they don’t let you promote firearms specifically, but they’ll let you promote training. So because our name is Kee Firearms and Training, obviously we sell guns. So without saying we sell guns we can advertise the free training. We can put it on on Facebook, free training. We could put it on Groupon. We Groupon. We could put it out in the newspapers as an advertisement. Take your free training. And ideally, if you were looking for a gun, obviously Kee Firearms sells guns. So even if you’re not looking for training, you still see the article. Maybe you come in and check out what we had.
Wade: And that’s a kind of a smart workaround. I think that maybe people need to look in their own areas because there is such high regulation, especially on social media or advertising or local advertising, is that you have to get a little crafty with some of these things because the environment, especially where you live. I mean, you’re at a really high regulatory environment. This episode is brought to you by TacticalPay.Com. Every few years, it seems large banks and national credit card processors suddenly decide that they no longer want to process payments for firearms and firearms related businesses. And so they drop these businesses with almost no notice, freezing tens of thousands of dollars in payments for months on end. If you want to ensure your partner with a payments provider that is dedicated to supporting the firearms industry. Or you just want to find out if you could be paying less for your ACH, debit and credit card processing. Visit TacticalPay.com. Again, that’s TacticalPay.com. Have you seen a change in the business over the last, let’s say since you started? Has there been any, you know, are the types of customers you’re seeing different, or are there any trends that are different now than when you started?
Jeff: We ended up buying a lot of things that most shops don’t have. So because we had money, you know, we’d buy a Gatling gun, one of five might cost 100 grand, and someday we’re going to sell it. But it brought people in the business to check out this Gatling gun that nobody has. Right. We’ve had saws. We had Barrett 50 cal straight from the military. We would buy SIG Sauer M18s that were listed for the military when there was an overstock. We had high end guns like Cabot and Alchemy and Nighthawk and Atlas and staccato did a lot of shops don’t carry and we would have 50 of them, and we probably have $300,000 just in high end guns. So you would get people talking about it because they come in your store would be like, oh man, you got a Gatling gun. And then they go home and they talk to their friends as they’re having a beer, and their friend wants to come in and look at the Gatling gun. Now, they might not buy it, but now you’ve got them in your store, they might buy something else. The problem with Illinois is, is they pass a law that you almost can’t have anything. In 23 they pass a law that you magazine cap at 15 rounds, no threaded barrels and no AR platforms.
Jeff: Anything that has recoil springs, semi-auto shotguns with pistol grips. I mean, it almost just took everything out of what you can sell here. So it really handcuffs the gun business. Because what we noticed is you buy a Glock, you get a Glock anywhere, right? They’re all about the same price. 450 bucks is a great gun. It shoots, you know, it’s reliable. You get a bass pro, you can get it in my shop. The problem is, is once you get a Glock 19. You don’t need any more. So when you come in the store, you like the little pdcs. You like the 308. Now you got a 5.5in with a 308. You want it in a 300, so you buy the 300. You know what I want to buy this. This saw. I mean, you’re never going to use it, but it’s just cool to have. Right? It’s cool. I’m going to buy. It’s 20 grand. Let me get that thing now. You can’t own any of that stuff. So now all we can sell are handguns. I’m not sure there is another state that has a 15 round cap. So even like when you get 20, 2011, 19, 11, the the double stack, they come with ten round mags and they come in 18 round mags.
Jeff: Nobody has a 15 round mag, so nobody wants to buy a ten round 19. What’s the whole purpose of having a double stack? 1911 is to get more, you know, eight rounds or ten rounds. So, you know, I know there’s a lot of lawsuits going on with the state and some day they’ll knock it down, you know? But in our state, what you got to learn and what I have learned is the government will make a make a regulation. They don’t care if it’s unconstitutional. They they know it’s going to get tied up in court for ten, 15 years. When they get struck down, they’ll just make another one and we’ll start the process over again. And they’re just going to continue to do that until the United States courts actually come out and say what guns Americans can own in the Second Amendment and what they cannot. And until until they make that decision, all of these states are or that want to make a ban on something can just do it because they can. Like California, you got to have a list, you know, if you’re not on the list, well, who updates the list? Who’s in charge of the list? You know, that list probably ain’t been updated in years. You know what I mean?
Wade: Yeah, well. And so what is your business look like now, then? I mean, are you just selling just handguns or is that it? Or do you have paid for training? What are your income streams from the business now?
Jeff: Well, it’s pretty handcuffed right now. And we’re hoping on the transfer of these laws. My sister in Georgia, she lives in Georgia. She’s opening a store Using the same name and same environment to try to take our stock that we can’t sell here in Illinois, which is in the thousands, and move it in Georgia, where you can actually buy Ares and pistols and things like that. And we’re going to see how that works out.
Wade: Yeah, I lived in California until 2019, and then I moved to Virginia, and it was just incredible. The difference in Virginia, your ability to purchase a firearm versus what you had to do in California. It’s crazy. Yeah, we have an election this year now. And I think it depending upon who wins as governor, we may have some more regulation here. So do you see the store continuing then? I mean, is it a loss leader for you for the construction business, or are you able to kind of stay even, or are you going to keep the store open?
Jeff: I think the operational move it to Georgia and get out of Illinois altogether until these laws get changed. There’s a ton of gun stores that are just closing left and right here, because it’s almost impossible to stay up. Before, there used to be a lot of not only kitchen table gun dealers. They would do transfers so people could buy guns online, and then they do the transfer of 20 bucks. Now here in Illinois, you see these dealers charging 75, 90, 100 bucks to do a transfer. And the only people that could really buy Ars are police officers and correctional and military. They won’t even transfer them to them because they don’t even want the problems. They’re like, I won’t even do it, so don’t ever send me one of those guns. So it’s very challenging for them. You know, there’s some ranges that are out there and our ranges here charge like 15, 20 bucks an hour. I mean, I don’t know how they stay alive in order to pay because I know our store in general, it’s just not feasible to make that cost. You know, and especially in the town that we’re in, the regulatory is so expensive. You know, you got alarm systems that go right to the police station.
Jeff: You got to pay for that. And the security system on every day. And your employees, you know, and again, you know, getting into that type of stuff, your worker’s comp is high. Your insurance is high here. Taxes are high here. So it’s almost impossible to just sell firearms that have 15 round mags or less. And I think that’s by design. I think the governor wanted that. I think they wanted to close not only when they forced the state to get an FFL and he signed that in. We went from like 4500 gun dealers down to 2000. And then now you make a regulation where you can’t sell anything but firearms. I mean, I don’t know the statistics on that, but I personally seen a lot of guys just hang up their guns, their gun licenses, give up their FFL, and they’re like, there’s just no money in it anymore. The companies that stick around are guys that have like, you know, like a Bass Pro, but even smaller, you know, guys that sell archery stuff and, and knives that have been around for 50 years. So they got a name, but their firearms business is down to one counter now.
Wade: Yeah. Well or a hunting. Right. So I’m sure you can do, you know, whatever for that. And it’s sad because I mean like a business like yours where you guys train 20,000 people and had a huge impact on your community. It’s like it’s you’re forcing those you’re actually making the state less safe, because you’re still going to have people who are going to have firearms, right? But they’re not going to have the access to the training. They’re not going to have the access to the expertise, you know? And at the end of the day, it’s like criminals aren’t going to abide by any of those laws.
Jeff: Right? We say that all the time. You don’t come through our store, do all the paperwork, get a background check, wait three days and come back and pick up the gun. They’re not gaining from us. They’re getting them from out of state. They’re getting them from rogue places. They’re not getting them from legal, law abiding citizens are not buying guns and giving them to criminals to go shoot each other. It doesn’t work like that. So every law that they enact only infringes more on our rights. And like you’re saying, that’s why we did the training because nobody was out there in the big city, different in the suburbs, maybe because you might have an uncle or you have a grandfather, or your father has guns and you got a little farm. They go shoot and they go hunting in the city. There’s none of that, and there’s just nowhere for anybody to promote it and to train people. And if you want to, even if you don’t even want to get your license, just say you’re interested a little bit in guns. Where would you go? You know. And so that’s where we did the free class. Take the class. You get 16 hours. You want to get your concealed carry license? You can, but it’s not mandated. But it gives you all the knowledge about firearms. We go through every bit, talk about long, short, what type of guns, concealed carry laws. And then you get a live fire. And every one of our instructors were certified. So it’s not even just a bunch of guys that are going out and getting shot, because that’s what we didn’t want to do is when you get into trainers, military guys, cops, they always come in and they assume you know some information about guns and safety.
Jeff: We just took it down like everybody’s ignorant when it comes to this. So let’s just start on basics. This is a gun and this is what you do when you have a gun or you you see a gun. What’s the first thing you do? You got to make sure it’s not loaded. Don’t. Every gun is loaded. Don’t point at anybody. You know. You just start with the basics and don’t assume somebody knows something. And then when you get out of here, you’ll know. And we train. I mean, we had ladies that were in there that were 96 years old. That was the first time they were taking a gun. Class 96. I mean, just we had people from everywhere. And then we even broke out free training for families. And we invited a community service officer to come there to show children. What do you do if you find a gun at your friend’s house, your dad’s house, whatever bring out. Let’s teach parents how to safely store their guns if they have children in the household. Things that I grew up with because my dad was a police officer, and he always allowed us to see his firearms and taught us firearm etiquette. But that doesn’t mean everybody in the world does. And they might not be teaching their kids. And so if we can make a difference, then let’s do that.
Wade: Absolutely. It seems like a long term plan, unless there’s a really big change in the regulatory environment, is to move the operation down to Georgia. Do you see there being like an online component to what you’re doing, or do you just say, no, we’re just going to do brick and mortar down there. Like, are you looking at maybe doing a range down there? If you move to Georgia, what are the changes that you think you’re going to make?
Jeff: Well, I definitely would look at a range. You know, it helps in the marketing and in the training program. People in Georgia need the same help in training that they need in any state. You know, there’s just the firearms business. People just aren’t doing it. They focus more on the money and the business aspect, and they don’t view more on the responsibility and the community aspect. The you know, the online is always a component. The problem is, is the companies that are way bigger than us dominate the industry when it comes to Google searches and things like that. So you’re never going to compete in the market with big guys that have big names, that have been in business for a long time, that spend a ton of money on marketing for that. So that’s a challenge. The only time that’s going to work is if they don’t have firearms to sell people. So then it’s a transfer. I’ve said this a lot of times companies that do that, they need the dealer to do it. There’s been a lot of arguments that I’ve gotten into with the big companies, because they sell a product to an end user, and then they then they use you to transfer it, and the customer comes in and they didn’t know they had to pay a transfer fee. And they’re arguing with you that they bought the gun online, you know, and they’re not really your customer.
Jeff: They’re their customer, you know. So how good can my customer service be to somebody else’s customer? And I try to tell all the other gun dealers they need us. Unless those companies want to buy a network in every state to distribute their firearms, then we need to stick together and we need to say, no, we’re not doing that. We need to charge enough money to move forward and to keep our doors open. If you, as a customer buy a gun online and you find a $50 cheaper and I charge you $100 transfer fee next time, I always tell customers, give the local gun dealer a chance. First, see if he could give you the gun for a similar price. Once you figure in shipping and transfer fees, it’s a customer base and you know people love to buy stuff online, and the gun dealers never seem to charge enough money for their time. They always think that if I transfer the gun for 20 bucks, the customers in my store next time, he’s going to buy from me. No he’s not. He’s going to buy online again. And when he walks out of that store, he’s going to buy his ammo online. He’s going to buy his holsters online. He’s going to buy his sites online. He’s never going to give you that business. So why even compete for it?
Wade: Yeah, it’s competing on price is always a race to the bottom.
Jeff: Correct. If you buy your red dot from us, we’ll zero it in for you. We’ll put it on for free. We zero it in. You know you can’t do that at Amazon. You know you’ve got to focus on things that they can’t focus on. And that’s why I said it’s customer service. You don’t know how many of these big box ranges we get out there that somebody gets around stuck in their in their gun or it doesn’t discharge correctly, they won’t touch it and they send them over to me. They’re like, hey, go over to Keith. They’ll look at it. You know, we take our gunsmiths, you know, obviously safe. We make sure that the round is spent and then we open the gun up, get the round out. A lot of times it’s just a spent round that didn’t eject correctly. It takes you two minutes and we give it back to the customer. He’s like how much you owe? I don’t owe you nothing. Just get out of here. But now that customer’s mind, because they worked on his gun for free, it was a spent round. It took me five minutes. Customer service. That’s what he’s looking for. At the end of the day, he can’t get that on online. He can’t even get it at the big box range. So now I just want that customer over. And that’s what we focus on is customer service.
Wade: Yeah. That’s a through line of every successful firearms business that we talk to. Is is customer service is key. The thing about a brick and mortar is that you can compete with an online, because the gun business buying a firearm is actually a personal thing. Every person there’s not one gun. You know, I’m a Glock guy, so half the audience hates me. But a Glock isn’t the right gun for everyone. I’m a big dude. Like, I just like the way it fits in my hand, but that may not work for someone else. And those are things that you can have a human being talk you through.
Jeff: That’s one of the things that that you’re correct on. We’ve done that in our store and we taught it in our class. One gun doesn’t fit everybody. Your hands are different sizes. Mine. You like a different trigger pull than I do. You’re going to shoot the gun better. I mean, even myself. I’ve been out in the range toying around. You know, I got a high end H and K out there. We’re shooting, and I pull out a out a Kanak out of the box. I could shoot the Kanak way better than I could shoot the H and K, you know. So if I’m going to spend an H and K is a lot more money, obviously. And it’s a better built gun, allegedly. But what good is it if I can’t shoot it? If I don’t shoot good with that gun, what good is it in my pocket or on my hip or in my drawer? So that’s why we tell customers, come on in. We have a rental wall. They could rent all the guns that are there. You know, we charge. I think it was $25, and they could rent any gun they want. They only could take three at a time in the range, but they could come back and switch them on anything they want. And if they buy a gun at our store, we’ll give them the $25 towards the purchase. So it’s really cost them nothing if they buy something, but come out and check it out and see how is it going to shoot. Do you like it? Do you like the sights? Night sights, not night sights. You know, red dots. I mean, I grew up old school with with regular sights. You put a red dot on it and you go out there shooting. Now I got something else. I’m looking at this little red thing flying around on the screen. You know, that just confuses me more. It doesn’t help me shoot any better because my brain is like, what is this little red thing running around on target for, you know, just sighted in and shoot. You know.
Wade: I’m an iron sights guy. I mean, one of my guns is an iron sight, and the other one is I did put a red dot on it, but, you know, if you can’t shoot iron sights, you shouldn’t shoot a red dot.
Jeff: And they fog up, you know, you see people with them on their side, right? Your body temperature. You know, when you get a cold environment like this, you got a jacket on. Now you pull that thing out and you’re outside and it’s ten below zero. What do you think that site’s going to do?
Wade: Yeah. Now when you say you take it to the range, is that the semi range that you guys have that you still have. You’re driving that thing around.
Jeff: Yeah, we still have it.
Wade: Are you going to send it down to Georgia. Is that the plan if you move down there or are you basically.
Jeff: That’s the plan.
Wade: What’s the timeline on that. How long do you think until that’s going to happen?
Jeff: You know it’s probably going to be about another six months is what we’re thinking. You know, in a perfect world, it’s yesterday. But with all the regulations and the towns, you know, the gun business, as you know, is very restrictive. If we were selling gumballs, I could buy a shop or and open it up tomorrow. The town would be like, thanks for opening up gumballs or, you know, ice cream place. Gun stores. Oh, man. In some of these areas, is it county and is it towns? Some they don’t even know some of these rules. They don’t even know because they’ve never had a gun store. Want to open up? You go into a town that doesn’t have a gun store and hasn’t had one. And the people are like, I don’t even know what the rules are. We do have rules on the book, but how do they apply to what we’re doing? And those rules might have been written 30 years ago, which the market’s different now. So now you got to go in and you got to get the village to change the rules to be modern day rules. And then now we can apply for a license to open up in that location. So it just adds another layer of government bureaucracy that doesn’t need to be involved in that. But it is what it is in this world.
Wade: Are you going to move down there or are you going to have your sister run it?
Jeff: I’m not sure, to be honest with you. You know, my my sister, I mean, I have to help her get it off the ground, no doubt. I’m not sure. You know, I don’t know enough about Georgia to say. My sister’s lived there for there for 25 years. You know, I’ve usually just been through Georgia, either through the airport from Atlanta, you know, or driving down to Florida. You know, I mean, I’ve never really spent any time in Georgia to know very much about the state.
Wade: There’s good people down there, man. It’s a fun place. I like the South personally, even though I grew up in North Dakota. So. But I’m in Virginia Beach, so that doesn’t count as a South. People are like, oh, it’s the South. I’m like, oh, I don’t know if it is, but. Well, I really enjoyed talking to you today. Obviously it sounds like a very stressful time, but I’m happy to hear that you’re going to keep the business going if you can. Um, how do people find you? How can they ask you questions? How can they support what you’re doing?
Jeff: You know, the easiest way right now is reach out to us on our Facebook app. You know, it’s Kee firearms and training type key firearms and will come right up. I’m sure you know, we have probably 15,000 followers. So when you type Kee firearms in Facebook, it’s one of those ones that pop up. You know we have two pages, ones for training and one is for store itself. You can find us online. Keefirearms.com. It’s a landing page right now. We’re working on a new website. We’re transferring from one company to another company. So that’s it never works the way you want it to work. And.
Wade: Yeah, exactly. And if there’s a business owner that’s maybe experiencing some similar, you know, problems, they want to kind of bounce some ideas off of you. What’s an email. Because there’s some places we can email you.
Jeff: Absolutely. My email is I’ll give you the short one is Jeff Jeff@kee2010.com. I’d be more than happy to help anybody in this business. I say that all the time.
Wade: It’s a through line man. Successful people in this business. Like, the one thing I’ve noticed is that they really do. You know, they do want to help other people that are in the space. Because the more, more successful businesses we have, the more political power we have, the more I get to keep my guns.
Jeff: Yeah. I mean, we got to stand up, you know, that’s what a lot of people don’t understand in this world is we have rules and we have a constitution for a reason. And, you know, when those rights are infringed, people might not think about it, but it’s that old saying, give them an inch, they take a mile. Right. You know, it starts in one spot and it and it continues to go. And if we don’t stand up and push back and say no, that’s wrong, then what are we turning over to our kids? Then that’s another freedom that we enjoyed that get taken away from our children. So our parents and the generation before us stood up for us to have the freedoms we have. And now, as I get it, to be an adult middle age, then it’s our responsibility to stand up for the next generation and make sure they can have the same freedoms that we enjoyed in this world.
Wade: 100%. Well, I’d love to have you on the show in six months and and hear about the North Carolina adventure or or Georgia adventure, I should say. Um, yeah. Man, I’d love to have you back on the show. And thank you so much for coming on today.
Jeff: Thank you. Have a great day.
Wade: You’ve been listening to the Tactical Business show by TacticalPay.Com. Join us again next episode as we explore what it takes to be a business success in the firearms industry.